Bear & Dragon Café

Located in a stone “cottage” on Montezuma Street in Prescott, Bear & Dragon takes its name from the nicknames of Adam’s two kids, Bridget (“Little Bear”) and Drake (“The Dragon”). But the name also reflects a British pub tradition dating to the days before widespread literacy, when pubs used pictures to depict their names. Inside, Adam and her husband, Chris, replicated the feel of an English cottage, with wall sconces, floor-to-ceiling books and framed portraits of British literary figures.

Adam fell in love with British culture on her first of many visits to England, and later, serving and bartending in Los Angeles gave her restaurant experience. She returned to Prescott after her children were born, and when she was ready to go back to work, she started Bear & Dragon as a food truck serving specialty coffees, salads and pressed sandwiches. Those items became the foundation of the current restaurant’s lunch menu. The Prologue section offers coffee lattes such as the Jane Austen, with rose and lavender, and tea lattes such as the Charles Dickens, with PG Tips tea, Earl Grey simple syrup and milk over ice. 

Chapter One features breakfast entrées such as the Tolkien’s — eggs, sausages, mushrooms, sautéed tomato, English rasher bacon and beans — and the Queen Victoria: a pot of tea served with British scones, house-made clotted cream, cherry jam and lemon curd.

Chapter Two includes lunch entrées such as the Merlin Salad, with arugula, mixed greens, tomato, bacon, chopped mozzarella and basil pesto dressing. There are pressed sandwiches, too, such as the Sir Lancelot: prime rib, havarti, pickled onion and herbed horseradish cream.

Adam designed the dinner menu, served Thursday through Saturday, to read like elevated cottage food, with entrées that include bangers and mash and cottage pie. An inventive cocktail menu features the War & Peace (peach and orange blossom vodka, fresh lime and mint, floated with ginger beer) and the London Smaug (gin, vanilla liqueur, milk, Earl Grey tea and lemon, served in a teacup over ice).

As this story went to press, Adam was planning to roll out high tea on Sundays. And she’s a purist. “You have to have the sugar cubes and all the little things,” she says, with “amazing teas,” scones, sandwiches and house-made petits fours and tarts. “It’s going to be fun.”