Hourglass

A closer look at Saturday’s Farm to Table dinner 🍽️

Hosted and prepared by This Momma's Kitchen , the evening featured a four-course seasonal menu served here at Hourglass.

From the opening courses through to dessert, the food was thoughtful, beautifully presented and very much suited to an early autumn evening.

It was a real pleasure to see the café transformed into a dinner setting and to watch the whole room settle in and enjoy the experience.

Huge credit to This Momma’s Kitchen for creating the evening.

We were very happy to provide the backdrop.

A little behind the scenes from Saturday night 👀

Last weekend, This Momma's Kitchen took over the Hourglass kitchen for their Farm to Table dinner.

From prep and plating to serving a full room, it was great to watch the evening come together from behind the scenes.

They brought their own style, menu and team into the space and created something that felt completely different from a normal day at Hourglass.

We really enjoyed being able to host the event and give them a space to make their own for the evening.

And yes, the kitchen was very busy. 😂

A big thank you to This Momma’s Kitchen for choosing Hourglass for the night.

A gentle Sunday reminder: today is the final day to reserve a place at the table.

Next Saturday, This Momma’s Kitchen will fill Hourglass with a four-course fall dinner, live music and the kind of unhurried evening that deserves to be enjoyed properly.

We’re especially happy to host Jen after having been part of the early days of her business. Seeing her return with this dinner feels quietly special.

Saturday, September 19
5–8 p.m. at Hourglass
$99 per person

Tickets close tonight through This Momma’s Kitchen.

Tickets: https://www.thismommaskitchen.ca]

This Momma's Kitchen

This is what September tastes like.

Roasted squash and apple. Leeks, potatoes and mushrooms. Garlic, herbs and slow-roasted beef—or a squash and caramelized onion galette. And to finish, a miniature apple pie with cheddar-thyme crust and maple whipped cream.

This Momma’s Kitchen has created a thoughtful four-course menu that feels unmistakably like autumn in Lanark County: generous, grounded and made for gathering.

Saturday, September 19, from 5–8 p.m.
Tickets are $99 and available until September 13.

Tickets: https://www.thismommaskitchen.ca

This Momma's Kitchen

Hourglass Story — Building it Together

Once we had the keys, we had to make the place ours.

Taking over an existing coffee shop is a strange thing.

You inherit everything. The counter. The colours. The layout. The little decisions somebody else made years before you arrived.

And while we weren't trying to erase what had been there before, we knew that if this was going to become Hourglass, it needed to feel like Hourglass.

So we got to work.

One of the biggest jobs was the old counter.

It came out.

And when I say we got to work, a lot of the time that meant Dad and me pulling things apart, figuring out what was underneath, making a mess and then working out how we were going to put it all back together again.

There was a new floor. Painting. Work on the meeting room. A new counter. New signage. New branding.

Some jobs were bigger than expected. Some probably involved considerably more swearing than originally planned. 😂

But slowly, the old coffee shop started disappearing and Hourglass began appearing in its place.

Looking back at the photographs now, what strikes me isn't really the renovation.
It's Dad.

There he is, in the middle of it.

Working.

Helping.

Building this thing with me.

When we first talked about buying a business, that had been part of the idea. For most of my working life, Dad had been the one leading businesses and I'd been supporting him.

This time, we were deliberately turning that around.

Hourglass was going to be something I could lead, with Dad there to support me.

And that's exactly what these photographs are.

They aren't particularly glamorous. There's dust, tools, bits of counter and probably several moments when we wondered what on earth we'd started.

But they're photographs of us building Hourglass together.

Eventually the tools disappeared, the floor was finished, the sign went up and customers walked into a place that was beginning to feel like ours.

There was still a lot we didn't know.

We were still figuring out what Hourglass was going to become.

But we had started building it.

Together.

Time Well Spent.

A full-circle evening is coming to Hourglass.

This Momma’s Kitchen began part of its journey here in our shop, and it has been wonderful to watch Jen grow her business, share her cooking and bring her farm-to-table dinners to venues across our community.

On Saturday, September 19, she returns to Hourglass for an intimate four-course dinner inspired by the fall harvest, accompanied by live music.

We’re proud to provide the setting. The evening—and the beautiful meal at its heart—belongs to This Momma’s Kitchen.

Saturday, September 19
5–8 p.m.
Hourglass, Perth
$99 per person
Tickets available until September 13

Tickets: https://www.thismommaskitchen.ca

Hosted at Hourglass. Created and presented by

Time Well Spent, Around the Table.

Great opportunity heading your way.

6 DAYS left to join us for a cozy harvest farm to table diner!

FARM TO TABLE DINNER
SEPT 19 | 5-8PM | Hourglass, Perth
4 course meal | live music | $99/person

Deadline to purchase tickets is Sunday Sept 13th, just 6 DAYS away!
Purchase tickets at thismommaskitchen.ca

$5 from every ticket will be donated to Lanark County Interval House. We’ve raised over $400 so far this summer!

If you’re looking to make plans next Saturday, consider joining us for a cozy harvest meal in the quaintest cafe in Perth as you listen to our fav local musician Jack Surch play. Next Sunday is the deadline to order tickets to our 4 course beef dinner. We’ve been waiting for this one all summer! It’s going to be so delicious and nostalgic!

This dinner features:
local beef, apples, squash, onions, potatoes, leeks, parsnip, greens, cheese, maple syrup and more! As we continue to work with our farmers we will release more information on who they are.

These farm to table dinners promote community spirit, gives you a way to support your local farmers and small businesses, all while tasting what our local farms have to offer through our culinary vision.

Not goodbye, just a new chapter. ❤️
Three years ago, Eve joined us at Hourglass at just 16 years old.

Since then, we’ve had the pleasure of watching her grow enormously — not just as a member of the team, but as a person.

Eve has always been fairly quiet and reserved, but she quickly found her feet serving customers and became a firm favourite with many of our regulars. She works thoughtfully, diligently and, perhaps most impressively, we’re not sure we’ve ever met a teenager quite so willing to get stuck into a mountain of dishes. 😂

One of the things we’ve admired most about Eve is her willingness to step forward even when she might have been nervous underneath it all. Over the years, she has earned our trust completely. Give Eve a job and you know she’ll think about it, learn it and get it done — without anyone hovering over her shoulder.

Now she’s heading off to Carleton University in Ottawa, where she’ll be studying Criminology and Criminal Justice.

She hasn’t always known exactly what direction she wanted to take, and we actually think there’s something pretty great about that. She’s embracing something new, taking another step forward and seeing where it leads.

Eve will still be part of Hourglass, returning during reading weeks and holidays, so thankfully this isn’t really goodbye.

But we do want her to know something:

You will always have a place here.

If you ever need help, advice, support — or simply somewhere familiar to come back to — you only have to ask.

We’re incredibly excited to see where this next chapter takes you, Eve. Keep us updated. We’ll be cheering you on from Perth. ❤️

Good luck at Carleton, Eve. Go enjoy it.

**Why is a tearoom selling creatine?**

Fair question.

Hourglass has always been about more than coffee, tea and cake.

Over time, we have been gradually thinking more about health, food quality, wellbeing and what we actually want to put on our shelves and menu.

That is partly personal.

I have a degree in Sport and Exercise Science, and health and fitness have played a pretty significant role in my own life.

So when we started looking at adding a small range of sports nutrition products, we wanted to keep it simple.

Nothing ridiculous.

Nothing promising to transform your life overnight.

Just a few products that are widely used, well understood and genuinely useful for the right person.

So we are now carrying a small Canadian Protein range:

Whey Protein
Creatine Monohydrate
C-Pre Workout in two flavours
Protein Coffee

Over the next little while, we will talk a bit more about what each one actually does, who might find it useful, and — just as importantly — who probably does not need it.

Because we are not particularly interested in selling “healthy things” for the sake of it.

We are much more interested in making better choices easier to find.

**Before Hourglass was a café, it was almost a magazine.**

Years ago, back in the UK, I had an idea.

Tea always seemed to live in coffee’s shadow. There were endless stories about coffee — the growers, the regions, the craft — but tea felt massively underrepresented.

So I started developing a magazine.

The idea was to tell the stories of the people, farms, artists and cultures behind tea, and perhaps even pair each issue with a tea for readers to try.

I conducted interviews. Friends and family contributed pieces. Covers were designed.

Seven articles were completed.

And then… nothing.

Life happened, the magazine never quite made it into the world, and the idea was put away.

But the name had already found us.

While on holiday with the family in Norfolk, my wife and I walked past an antiques shop. In the window was an old hourglass.

The shop was closed, so sadly we never bought it.

But we stood looking at it and started talking.

Tea is about time.

Water temperature. Steeping. Waiting.

But it is also about stopping.

Making something for someone. Sitting down. Talking. Taking a few minutes away from everything else.

The hourglass seemed to represent all of that without simply putting the word “tea” on the front cover.

So the magazine became Hourglass.

Fast forward several years.

We had bought a coffee shop in Perth and needed a new name.

At some point, one of us said:

"Why don’t we use Hourglass?"

And suddenly the old idea had somewhere to go.

Then came the words:

Time Well Spent.

Because that was really what the original magazine had been about.

And it was exactly what we wanted the café to be about too.

The magazine never properly saw the light of day.

Hourglass did.

Funny how ideas sometimes take the scenic route.