Making real food, and making sure people who need it, get it, is a passion for Rose Mitra, owner of Rose Ridge Cafe and Deli on Snoqualmie Ridge.

Mitra purchased the former Spicoli Sub Shop in June of 2011.

“My goal is to serve people ‘real food’,” says Mitra. “My goal is to make you feel at home.”

She explained where the cafe’s name came from.

“With help from the locals, we came up with the name Rose Ridge Café & Deli,” Mitra said. “I wanted the Rose to be a play on words,” so the rose in the name is the dot in the I of “Ridge.”

“I wanted to do more than just subs, due to my culinary background,” she said. “I love doing breakfast. It gives me so much pleasure when I feed people their first meal of the day.”

She found it hard to get people to try a “sub shop” for breakfast, so Rose Ridge Cafe & Deli was born on January 1 of last year. Mitra serves breakfast and lunch, and she’s very happy with her offerings, which include hot entrees Monday through Friday, fresh salads, gluten-free breads, homemade goods and sweets.

Her biggest seller is a breakfast sandwich served with fresh home fries.

“I sell these to several coffee stands, so when I am not serving breakfast, you can still get them,” says Mitra. “Some of the locals have a nickname for these sandwiches. They call them the ‘SOBS’, Simply Outrageous Breakfast Sandwiches.”

Food for the homeless

For the past three years, Mitra helped provide holiday meals to the homeless, prepping, cooking and delivering most of the food served at the North Bend Community Church’s homeless shelter Thanksgiving dinner last November. The shelter has been open one year.

Mitra worked with Snoqualmie Valley Winter Shelter staff member Mary Small to make the meal happen.

“For the past two years, I have put on a Thanksgiving dinner at the restaurant for all to enjoy,” Mitra told the Record in an e-mail. “I tried to get the word out to the homeless, but after the second year, was told the Ridge was too far for them to travel. So I packaged up about 20 full dinners and went around to where the homeless hung out and gave them a free dinner.”

The first year, she got eight diners. The second, nine. Small suggested she team up with the shelter, “and the rest is history.

“I loved seeing all the hard work that went into making the food, appreciated,” she wrote.

She has donated food for the local art walk, senior center Christmas fair, local churches, children’s fundraisers.

“The community has given me support,” Mitra stated. “The least I can do is give back.”

Rose Ridge Cafe and Deli is located at 7823 Center Boulevard Southeast, Snoqualmie, in the former space of the Spicoli Deli. Hours are 6 a.m. to 5 p.m. Monday through Thursday, 6 p.m. to 7 p.m. Friday and Saturday, 11 a.m. to 4 pm. Sunday.

Call the cafe at (425) 888-7827.