As our regular readers know, we like to go on occasional backpacking trips to interesting destinations. This January, we headed down to the small town of St Marys, Georgia, in order to catch the ferry to Cumberland Island National Seashore for several days of hiking and relaxation (and, very unexpectedly for Georgia… a few inches of snow!). The ferry only runs periodically, so the act of loading the ferry is pretty involved: you show up early in the morning, they have you load your larger items (bikes, backpacks, etc.) onto the ferry, and then you’ve got about 45 minutes to wait around the small town of St Marys while waiting for the mandatory Park Service briefing before the ferry departs. The local volunteers that help load the boat and direct traffic very helpfully have suggestions for some of the places near the ferry to check out while you wait, indeed, one volunteer very enthusiastically recommended a fairly new coffee shop just down Osborne street from the ferry dock: Kraken Coffee & Kitchen Co.
Stepping inside, Kraken Coffee & Kitchen Co. is a very warm and inviting coffee shop. Opening just a few months before (in August ’24), they’ve nicely refurbished the spot to have a few welcoming seating areas with couches, a few high-top tables, and a service counter. It’s rather a nice spot, especially when the weather outside was a bit cold; this was a nice place to warm up with a good cup of coffee.
But the dock volunteer who sent us in search of Kraken wasn’t just recommending the coffee, but had a hearty endorsement of a particular bakery item: a cinnamon roll. Carol got their cinnamon roll with the classic cream cheese frosting, and I’ll have to say, this is a seriously good cinnamon roll. To start with, this isn’t some small dainty cinnamon rolls, but a nice, generously-sized one, nice and tall, with a golden brown crust to it and a nice spiral. Biting into it, the exterior has a delicate crispness to it, but the interior is that nice, fluffy pull-apart dough that’s nice and cloud-like. But the most important thing I look for in a good cinnamon roll is… cinnamon. Too often, a nice roll like this only has a bit of cinnamon, and I want bold. Bold I got, with a nice, flavorful filling that was also plentiful and well-distributed, so that as you tear a piece to eat you can be assured it’s got a good coating of filling. Add in a reasonably good cream cheese frosting, and this was a great treat. I got one as well, but instead of doing the standard frosting, I got their peanut butter frosting (well, this is Georgia…), and thought the modest peanut flavor of it actually added nicely to the overall cinnamon roll. Very enjoyable, even if I think I was still cleaning up bits of cinnamon and frosting as we boarded the ferry.
In fact, we enjoyed our rolls so much that several days later as we got off the boat, we decided to come back, this time deciding to dine in, enjoying a nice warm cup of coffee and another round of cinnamon rolls as we waited for our hotel room at the nearby Spencer House Inn to open.
So, three cheers for local volunteers recommending their favorites. Kraken is a great little spot in St Marys, with both great coffee and great baked goods, the cinnamon rolls not to be missed. And, for those keeping track, this means Offbeat Eats has added Georgia to the list of states where we’ve done reviews (35 states down, 15 to go!).
