MEET: CHEF NICOLE BASSIS, CAFÉ MUTSI, Andes
Chef-baker Nicole Bassis on her 30-year old Finnish sourdough starter, Finnish design + running Cafe Mutsi on its own.
Interview : Susie Davidson Powell
Photos: Heaven MacArthur/Cafe Mutsi; xx/Cafe Mutsi + Susie Davidson Powell/The Dishing
Location: Café Mutsi, Andes, N.Y.
Tastemaker: Nicole Bassis
Role: Chef/Owner | IG @nicolebassis
Where: Andes, NY | IG: @cafemutsi
Hometown: New York, NY
Current city: Andes, NY
Personal style: Nordic
Listening to: The Felice Brothers
Favorite classic cocktail or non-alc drink: Negroni
Coffee or tea – and what’s your order: Coffee - Oat Flat White or new summer face Blood Orange Espresso Tonic
Biggest professional industry influence(s): Julia Child, Magnus Nilsson
Industry trend that should end: rewarding burnout culture
Welcome to The Dishing’s Quick Serve interviews where we talk matters of taste with tastemakers in the hospitality industry and trailblazers at the intersection of food, culture and art. Today we’re talking with Nicole Bassis, baker-owner of Cafe Mutsi in Andes, about Finnish design, her daily bread, and celebrating Cafe Mutsi’s 2nd anniversary.
Nicole, thanks for talking with The Dishing. Let’s get into it!
Cafe Mutsi is a bakery, an all-day cafe, and really a gathering space in the small town of Andes. You sometimes feature Friday night dinners, host bar takeovers and collaborate with the local vinyl record shop or Isolation Proof gin which is in neighboring Bovina. You opened Cafe Mutsi in 2024 with your partner Raoul, but you entered 2026 as a solo entrepreneur at the helm. What’s coming up for Cafe Mutsi this year?
Right now, I’m looking ahead to summer and bringing back our wine evenings. We used to have just a Friday Night wine bar night, but in this new iteration, the team and I are planning for both Friday and Saturday evenings. We’ll launch them on April 10 for our Wine & Vibes—a Catalan wine list takeover curated by @wilpetre with tapas from Mutsi.
We’re also celebrating our two year birthday at Mutsi on Mothers Day weekend! Mutsi is a slang term for “Mom” in Finnish—it’s what I call my mom—and as it’s our name, it felt right to open on Mothers Day weekend and it always feels special to celebrate. I think of Mutsi as my child, so last year for our 1-year birthday we threw a party with cake and balloons. We had Greg Evens from Sounds Good Music record shop DJing and will likely do something similarly colorful and celebratory this year during the day. We’re also in the planning stage of a Bar Takeover by our local favorites, Jake Sherry who owns Isolation Proof Gin (in Bovina) and Cory from Method Vermouth, for the evenings over that weekend.
Your family is Finnish and you spent every summer with your grandparents in Helsinki and at their rustic country home an hour outside of the city. What are some of your early childhood memories of food and who was cooking, either at home with your parents or in Finland? Do those taste memories play out in what you bake at Cafe Mutsi?
My grandma in Finland was called Maila (but I called her Mummu)— she was a professional baker her whole adult life. I would arrive in Finland from NYC jet lagged and unable to sleep, and have vivid memories of her getting ready for work at 3 or 4AM while it was still dark out and having a car service pick her up to take her to the bakery. I also have memories of visiting her at work and braiding Pulla (cardamom buns).
We spent a lot of time in the countryside, always cooking, always baking, the only refrigeration was a deep cold storage cellar. My grandparents had a potato field with many different varieties of potatoes and I remember digging for new potatoes, washing them with a stick, swirling a bucket, boiling them and eating them with salt, butter and dill that same evening. We’d also pick berries of all kinds—blueberries, raspberries, strawberries, black- and redcurrants. And we’d go foraging for mushrooms in the woods which were abundant with chanterelles.
I try to weave in as many flavors from those memories as I can at Mutsi, which is easy to do with the Catskills having a very similar ecosystem and climate to Finland. And by making friends with local farmers and cooking as seasonally as I can.
You said mutsi means mother, and I know the stylized letter M in the Mutsi logo is inspired by your grandmother’s handwriting, but how did you decide on the café name?
I knew I wanted a Finnish word for the name of the cafe—the language is so unique and the words so playful. Mutsi felt natural, happy and every time I say it or hear someone say it it brings joy to me. Similar to when guests order a “pulla” at the counter, I secretly feel like I’m teaching any guest that comes to the cafe a bit of Finnish language.
When did you find Andes and decide to move out of the city upstate?
I’ve been coming to the area since I was a little girl; my relative has had a house for over 40 years up here—where I currently live—and my parents bought a house up here as a weekend home about 20 years ago. So I was very familiar with the area and have so many good memories.
I realized I just didn’t want to live in the city anymore. Post-pandemic the city had changed so much and I wasn't finding my purpose there anymore which was new to me since I spent my whole life saying I would never live out of NYC! My former partner, Raoul and I, first started looking closer to the city, easy to commute in, but quickly realized that we were getting priced out. Having such familiarity with the Delaware County area—and on our more recent visits seeing the changes with younger families moving up and the culinary scene changing—something felt so right to be up here and part of this.
You attended ICE culinary school in NYC. From there you taught cooking classes at Tastebuds Kitchen for 8 years, training chefs, growing the business, testing recipes and building out the curriculum. So you have this extensive business and culinary experience. But having opened Cafe Mutsi as a bakery-café where you run operations and are the head baker, how do you balance your time and what do you do to relax?
I knew when I committed to this life change and opening a business that it would be an all-in life decision. I didn’t realize how much support and momentum would build from the community around me, and I rode that momentum strong for the first year to year-and-a-half. But I realized that doing it all isn’t sustainable, and we took a pause on our evening service to take a beat and regroup. It was important for me to build a good team and shuffle around how many hours I spend at the cafe before bringing our evening service back.
I’ve trained a wonderful morning baker that alleviates my early mornings coming from late evenings, and a wonderful prep chef - everyone who works at Mutsi has a hand in the prep of the menu and is perfecting the bread process we have. It feels very refreshing to share the load with those excited to learn!
I also wanted to bring our evening service back in a way that is trainable and required less man-power with a simpler menu and focus on the natural and organic wines we have.
People are passionate about your bread and you also have larger wholesale clients like Dear Native Grapes tasting room and Alison Roman who carries your loaves in 1st Bloom, her little store in nearby Bloomville. What’s your signature bread style?
Our bread is made with a 30-year old Finnish sourdough starter. It’s a 4 day process from start to Finnish [laughs], a real labor of love, and the formula constantly needs adjustments with the changing seasons and temperatures.
We bake our breads 8 loaves at a time in Dutch ovens to create a really beautiful golden crust and fluffy tender crumb. Occasionally we pop in varying loaves like dark Finnish rye bread or our half-rye loaves using local rye grains from Wild Hive Farm. But mostly we stick to our peasant loaves which are lighter and more versatile. We sell our loaves at Mutsi and also use it on many of our breakfast and lunch items - in bread plates, tartines, toasties etc.
The cafe menu changes often, as well as seasonally, but what are some dishes that are always available?
The menu changes often because I get excited when the changing season brings the firsts of those flavors - hello ramps in the spring, radishes and bright greens and tomatoes in the summer! I tend to get bored with making the same thing every day and so I keep it exciting for me… But as Mutsi is growing and I’m training a team to perfect the menu, keeping consistent items, our faves, are important.
The pulla, cardamom buns, that are baked fresh each morning aren't going anywhere. They’re my favorite and our guests favorite. I like to take a moment in the morning while the ovens are heating up and buns are rising to have a little silent fika (a break) with a pulla and a cup of coffee before the day begins.
Our shrimp and trout toasts are also very popular and a favorite of the whole staff. We try to sometimes alternate between the two, but always get requests to keep them both on the menu!
The Cafe Mutsi space is this fabulous mix of rustic and mid-century modern with many Finnish design elements from the bold Finnish Marimekko fabrics and ceramics to the mosaic tile on the floor and wallpaper. Can you talk about the interior design?
The Marimekko frames in the dining room are from my childhood bedroom - it was one large fabric tapestry that would hang on the wall behind my bed and came with me as I grew older and shuffled from apartment to apartment in my 20s in NYC. I grew up with the bold prints and Marimekko designs in our home, and every Finnish home, as well as the light wood, round corners and bright open feel. Those felt natural to include in the cafe.
When we closed on the property the dining room was a blank canvas for us to work with, we re-did the floors with a light wood, built the bar, poured our own cement counter, tiled and had a custom bookshelf built behind the bar to house cookbooks, photographs and elements from our own home. We really wanted it to feel like we’ve invited you to our living room.
The coffee counter area was pretty set up as it is now when we purchased the property, so we leaned into what existed already in this area. Building in our market shelves which hold Finnish candies, mustards and our coffee for sale.
You recently had to change the configuration of the entrance into Cafe Mutsi as technically you don’t have direct access from your front porch stairs. Where is the entrance now and do you still have outdoor seating on the porch or side patio?
To enter Mutsi from Main Street, Andes, you walk up a dirt road called Lee Lane. You’ll see our light green house… keep on that road to the back of the cafe where there is a ramp and door to enter - tile floor and woodsy wallpaper that lead you directly into our dining room, round the corner to our coffee counter where we will great you! We love when guests come up to us and say, “we almost didn’t know you were back here” and are excited to find this secret gem. Some refer to as a “speakeasy cafe;” the locals and those in the community love wandering in to see who has popped over for a visit and its common for impromptu social gatherings to linger. In the summertime we have outdoor seating on our front porch and side patio.
Although your menu is influenced by classic Nordic recipes, it’s also a showcase of local Catskill farms and seasonal ingredients. Was that important to you from the start and who do you work with most often?
It was really important to me to work with as many local farmers and makers as possible, and sometimes instead of seeking out the item, I stumble upon a product and figure out how to weave it into our menu. We are also such a small community and its valuable for us business owners to collaborate, brainstorm exciting ways to bring events to the area.
We get our beef from local Gladstone Farm and right down the road in Andes we get our delicious pie dough that we use for hand pies from Magpies in DeLancey. We love having pop ups and bar takeovers with Cellar Door Wine Shop in Hobart and Isolation Proof Gin in Bovina, and having Funky Fika daytime DJ sets from our local Andes Sounds Good Music. We truly value all of the businesses and really talented makers in the area and it's exciting to lift each other up!
You added a natural wine program that extends the all-day cafe into weekend evenings. Do you choose the wines?
I love to choose the wines, though sometimes I enlist the help of my team to taste so that we have bottles we’re all excited about. In the end, I like to have a variety of approachable, funky, adventurous and really fun bottles! We don’t want the wine to feel intimidating. I love to learn the stories about the farmers and vineyards for each wine, and share those stories with our guests. And some say you shouldn't choose a book by its cover, I absolutely love a beautiful label and beautiful bottle. The wines are also on display all around the cafe and become part of our look!
The post-pandemic years have shown shifts in dining trends around costs, foot traffic, dining out and delivery apps. What do you see as the future for the restaurant industry?
Guests are looking at dining out as the experience as a whole, not just the food or location, but how it makes them feel, what story is being told, and if it’s genuine. Which is where pop ups, collaborations, vibes are becoming exciting and valued.
Andes feels just that bit further off the beaten track than, say, Hudson which is popular for city weekenders and is now pretty saturated with restaurants, bakeries and bars. Andes feels as if you have to be more intentional about wanting to be there and the people who move in seem to share a desire for making or growing something. What do you think is the appeal of the Andes-Bovina-Bloomville area?
Just like finding Cafe Mutsi off the main road, visitors are excited to find something hidden, something new. The people up here all really care about what they are putting out, whether it's a breakfast sandwich, a pie, sausage, cider or bread. Everything made with quality and care! It’s easy to make a long weekend visit out of it and pop over to all the faves in the area! We love playing concierge at Cafe Mutsi for visitors staying at the Andes Hotel right next door. When they come in to ask where to go for a hike, or local vintage shop or out for a drink later. Being the local cafe is super important as a hub for both locals and visitors.
Okay, so if someone were to come to Andes and Bovina for a weekend, what would you suggest they should do?
Come to Mutsi for a morning Fika [laughs] —and if there are any special events, art gallery openings, music performances we will fill you in! Find a trail to hike if the weather is nice, and when you’re parched find yourself at a local cider place. You have great options for dinner in Andes, Bovina, Delhi, Margaretville and Hamden, depending on if you want casual or more upscale. Some places require a bit of planning and booking ahead.
Visit the local general stores and markets, find the local book shops and wine shops. Chat with all the people behind the counters—we’re all happy to share our fave places with you!
Where are 3 of your favorite go-to spots for breakfast, lunch or dinner anywhere in the Capital Region or Hudson Valley?
If not Mutsi for breakfast, grab a biscuit and pie from Magpies in DeLancey; for lunch, pop over to Tiny’s in Hamden for a Chopped Cheese or one of his other famous sandwiches. And for dinner, it's so hard to pick and choose but I love popping into Hollow in Delhi for a Negroni and shared plates!
Imagine your ideal day or night out, anywhere in the world, with no limits on costs or reservations. Where would you go and how would your day or night unfold?
Just because it's top of mind and I’m planning a trip there in the fall: Japan! Exploring the casual street foods, then finding an authentic omakase for the evening. Really diving into Japanese culture and experience with what the locals would eat and do and taste. Perhaps somewhere on that day relaxing in a traditional onsen for a bit!
Sounds perfect! Thanks, chef. It’s great to see Cafe Mutsi going strong and celebrating two years in business. Looking forward to the return of weekend dinners… We’ll be back soon!
