Cafe

Either you are a big fan of oat milk, or you prefer your cream from other sources (be it almonds or cows).

A customer of Café Van Gogh, a 100% vegan restaurant in Brixton, clearly fell into the latter camp.

After visiting the establishment, they left a one-star review – since deleted – accusing the cafe of “forcing” them to drink oat milk.

The note read: “A coffee that doesn’t have normal milk?” Very strange experience.

“It says ‘vegan friendly,’ but he’s just vegan.

“I had to have an oatmeal cappuccino. It tasted like porridge.

Rather than just sitting around and accepting the usual anti-vegan vibes, Steve Clarke, 47, who runs the nonprofit with chef and co-owner Bonita de Silva, decided to fight back.

Steve accused the anonymous customer of “vegan baiting” and then called him a “poor sausage” (one made from tempeh, imagine).

Steve replied, “You walked into a fully vegan cafe. We make no apologies, it is a big part of our ethical position.

“You would have been asked if you preferred oat milk or soy milk. You could have left then, but instead you allowed us to “force” you to drink a cappuccino that you didn’t like.

“For reasons unknown to us, you didn’t tell the staff anything at the time (we probably wouldn’t have charged you) but chose to sign up on Tripadvisor to relay the horrors of your experience to the world with your a- star review. (Which doesn’t say anything about our coffee, just your palate.)

“You put a big smile on all of our faces. We love a Keyboard Warrior, and we hope we didn’t hurt you when we forced this coffee down your copper neck.

The Cafe is a nonprofit social enterprise that trains and employs adults with learning disabilities and “runs on kindness” – operating a pay-in-advance program where patrons can purchase coffee for those with disabilities. who cannot afford it.

Steve thinks the reviewer was having a bad day and notes that while he wouldn’t respond normally, he was a little fed up with these kinds of messages.

“Poor sausage,” he said. “I think it was just vegan bait. I think the guy walked in, a bit of a keyboard warrior, and didn’t say anything to the team about his displeasure.

“We don’t know who it was, it’s just disappointing enough. We try to run on cuteness.

“My response to the review wasn’t as kind as it might have been, I’m aware, but it got me thinking.

“We’re a non-profit social enterprise, some of our team have learning disabilities, we work really hard to try to get it right.

“We tend to do very well with our reviews, and I prefer people to give personal comments.

“We are not vegan evangelists, this is how we run our business, we try to stick to very high ethical standards and I don’t think we can honestly do that and serve anything other than plant milk. .

“But we’re not anarchists, we’re not radicals, we’re not trying to change people’s minds. People come with their own expectations and that’s okay too.

While other one-star reviews have popped up in place of the deleted one, overall Steve’s answer seems to have wowed some potential customers – so it all worked out in the end, the oat milk and all. .

Steve added, “I don’t want a customer to leave disappointed. So, you know, if he had had his balls on the bottle to say, “Oh, I’m not very keen on this”, he wouldn’t have been charged.

“I’m not going to jump on the bandwagon saying you don’t have to have oat milk, but cows are forced.”

“It would take a lot for me to try and damage someone’s credentials with a one star review.”

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People spent the whole summer at Speonk station asking when they would open Little Gull, lunch at the place that was once a local institution, the Trackside Cafe.

The cafe, on the east side of North Phillips Avenue, across from Long Island Rail Road station on the west side of the road, has been a popular spot in the community for decades, and Chef Will Pendergast looks forward to continuing his work. tradition of breakfast and lunch served in what was once the station waiting room.

Renovated and refurbished, the cafe is welcoming, with iron-bottomed tables topped with faux marble in front of wooden benches and a long, handmade wooden counter for those who stop for a quick bite. An array of plants adds a clean green to both the quaint porch and the interior of the building.

Mr. Pendergast and his wife, Johanna, carried out most of the renovations to the building. Even the kids, Phineas, 12, Van, 9, and Doone, 4, took action: Van designed the Little Gull logo and the restaurant’s Instagram features a photo of Doone’s painting.

“It was fun – all these kids painted, we had friends from out of town, the family came to help us. We built all the planters ourselves, ”said Pendergast.

Ms Pendergast herself hung the wallpaper in the washroom, with its unusually high ceilings, with the help of friends who handed her coins to her as she stood on “a very large ladder.”

“It was very scary,” she admitted.

The whole undertaking has been both frightening and exhilarating for the couple. Now a resident of Remsenburg, Mr Pendergast said he has had an eye on the site since he first saw it.

He grew up in Massachusetts and Ms. Pendergast grew up in Southampton. The couple met in New York City and moved east about seven years ago. When they first arrived, they were driving and looking around, and the coffee caught their attention.

“We saw this place, and it was always open,” Mr. Pendergast said, “and I said,“ Oh my God, this is just a dream. It really is special. And I think everyone feels that. Everyone who is driving is so excited that it opens again. In fact, I had an eye on it for a long time.

“It was pretty amazing when this happened,” Ms. Pendergast recalled. Friends saw the request for proposals and sent a text message. “We were so excited. That it was even possible, ”she said.

The building is owned by the Metropolitan Transportation Authority, so potential tenants must participate in a competitive process to be eligible to lease the building.

“I made a proposal,” Pendergast said, and he was called to New York for talks. “It’s been a very long process… most restaurants don’t start out like this.”

A graduate of the French Culinary Institute in New York, he knows what he is talking about. Mr. Pendergast has worked in numerous establishments, first in Manhattan and Brooklyn, then in the East End. He worked in the kitchen at the Dock in Montauk, but the commute was exhausting. He worked at Catena’s in Southampton and most recently was a private chef. The last path provided him with the flexibility he needed to get Little Gull off the ground.

Although he has run kitchens before, the chef is new to challenges like payroll or sourcing equipment. He was able to find “liquidation brokers,” who tracked down excellent equipment in businesses that closed.

“Our broker told us the story of each restaurant [the equipment] was coming. He does it to be interesting, but it was still a little heartbreaking for me, ”Pendergast said. “Someone else’s grief was my …”

“No luck,” Ms. Pendergast interjected.

Bringing the historic building into compliance presented another set of challenges, Pendergast said. Health service and disability accessibility compliance “have become a real challenge, this place was obviously not built to accommodate a restaurant,” he said.

Because the building is so old, there has also been a long process with the historical society, “which is good,” Pendergast said, stressing that he did not want to change the character of the structure.

The replacement of a ruined fireplace was the cause of a prolonged examination, noted Pendergast, adding: “There were a lot of cooks in the kitchen.”

Speaking of the kitchen, Mr Pendergast explained that according to MTA rules, the cafe must open for breakfast every weekday at 6 a.m. and on weekends at 9 a.m. While he would like to offer dinner service at some point, the size of the building limits what the family can do.

“For starters, Little Gull’s menu will follow a style of lunch offerings, but a bit steep on the fare,” Ms. Pendergast said. It’s silly not to take advantage of the bounty of local produce, so seasonal produce will be showcased, she said.

“My favorite food is any type of sandwich, and I think any type of sandwich is measured on its bread, and we’re going to make our own bread… I think that will set us apart a bit,” Mr. Pendergast said. .

With a quaint outdoor space on the porch and a cozy interior, the cafe can seat up to two dozen diners.

The Trackside Cafe was originally opened in the station by Dell Donovan in 1958, then was taken over by restaurateur and real estate agent Robert Nidzyn in 2003 after being closed for two years. The cafe closed in 2017 after Mr. Nidzyn’s death.

According to the City of Southampton Historical Resources Report, the depot – a wooden building heated by a suction cup stove – was completed in 1901. An earlier structure had been struck by lightning and burned down that summer.

At first, the couple hoped to open Little Gull this summer, but, said Pendergast, “we’ve been so late”. The duo focused on the long game and decided to take their time.

“We want to do it right,” Ms. Pendergast said.

Mr. Pendergast acknowledged that there may be an expectation from the community in the hope of continuity. “It might not be exactly the same,” he said, referring to the Trackside Cafe. “I’ll do it my way. But it’s always going to be a lunch, and it’s always going to be run by a local family.

A coffeehouse chain associated with a popular global restaurant brand will soon be opening inside the Food District at Square One in Mississauga.

Farzi Cafe, a restaurant operated by the Massive Restaurants brand run by former MasterChef India Zorawar Kalra, will open its first Canadian outpost in Mississauga in the not-so-distant future.

According to the Farzi Cafe website, the cafe concept debuted in London in 2019, just minutes from Piccadilly Circus.

Kalra, who has been called “the prince of Indian cuisine”, was mentored by Jiggs Kalra, her father and a man sometimes referred to as the “tsar of Indian cuisine”. According to the Farzi Cafe website, the Massive Restaurants brand operates a number of fine dining restaurants around the world, including Jiggs Kalra’s Masala Library, Made in Punjab, Pa Pa Ya, KODE and more.

Food wise, the London location has small plates and salads, main dishes such as Tandoori paneer and mushroom butter masala, a vegan menu, Sunday brunch, group menus and takeaways.

The Food District restaurant is scheduled to open in October.

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In the middle of the room, an old plum jam-colored Mercedes-Benz. The counter was draped in American flags and decorated with tchotchkes: ceramic chef figures, model Viking ships, miniature cars and framed objects. One menu advertised American and Korean breakfasts: egg sandwiches, Philly cheese steaks, burgers and burritos with Spam and pineapple. And then, what I really came to see: the walls and the ceiling, a living collage. Almost every inch of both surfaces was covered with brilliant photographs of smiling people.

One of the best parts of writing about restaurants is learning what they mean: for their communities, for the cuisine in general, and for the people who spend their lives there. Restaurants can be a lot of things: craftsmanship, luxury, nostalgia, home – whatever qualities the owner wants to add to the world. In the case of this little Santa Clara cafe, it’s a man’s desire to connect with others. To meet their needs and feel needed in return.

Kenny Kim, the owner of the cafe, says he’s taken from 20,000 photos of its customers during its nine years of activity. While her niece helps on rare occasions, Kim is usually the only person working in the restaurant, always entering and leaving the kitchen. The place was more crowded before the pandemic, especially since Kim, from Seoul’s Yongsan District, regularly offered free food to members of the US military. But anyway, he always takes the time to chat with people. He takes pictures of them with his phone, speaking to general contractors, soldiers and employees at the San Jose airport who enter with the glee of a tourist taking photos from a cable car in San Francisco.

While I waited for Kim to cook me a burrito, I paced the room, circling the car to look at the photos. Some older spots were faded, the images fading into a sea foam haze from age and sunlight. You could tell which areas were the most recent by the way they showed subjects pulling face masks to smile. Some smile broadly, others seem almost shy. In a few, Kim was able to convince someone else to take the photo while he stood in the center of a group, crouching and flashing peace signs.

When I called him later to talk about his restaurant, he said, “I was thinking, why do people come here? No one tells me my food is good. He’s laughing. “I think they like me, not the food.” Service has always been his main calling, he said. Before the restaurant, he sold cars for 25 years, although he didn’t know anything about cars. Instead, he won the favor of customers by making them smile. While I think he knows a bit more about food than cars, it’s easy to tell where his heart is.

“At home, I can make people happy, even for a minute or two. Because, me, I never had this kind of feeling.

Twelve years ago, shortly before Kenny’s Cafe opened, Kim and his late wife, also a Korean immigrant, divorced. During his stint as a car salesman, he said, he spent every night drunk, the stress also causing him to regularly stay awake after midnight smoking cigarettes and working. . After the divorce, he said, his son, feeling smothered by his strict parenting style, cut off contact. “Honestly,” Kim said, “I wasn’t a happy guy.” Drifting away from her family, Kim cashed in her retirement fund to open the cafe.

Every customer smile he captured sustained him, brought him through loneliness. “I try to get everyone to make faces, so every 20,000 photos, all happy too.”

There is something undeniably powerful about the torrent of documentary photography on display here. We rarely see customers from the point of view of restaurant workers: the whole premise of restaurants dictates that they put their talents and personalities in the spotlight for consumption by the former. On the contrary, it’s only the most famous customers, Barack Obamas and Dwayne “The Rock” Johnsons, who get their pictures on restaurant walls. But Kim treats every human who walks into her restaurant as special. A great example of what art critics would call vernacular photography, his work lacks self-awareness or pretense, but remains a fascinating glimpse into the community that has formed around his restaurant.

I’m sorry to say I kindly declined when he asked to take my picture. Being critical has its drawbacks.

What I had at Kenny’s that day was a bulgogi burrito ($ 12), which seemed to be the most popular item on the handwritten menu. Other variations of the burrito come with ingredients kimchi and bacon, spicy pork, and vegetarian bibimbap. It’s not as long as a Mission-style burrito, but what it lacks in length, it makes up for in girth. The bulgogi burrito features sweet and savory minced beef, scrambled eggs, hash browns, sautéed peppers and onions, and melted cheese. It is accompanied by a red salsa with hints of spicy Pace sauce. Half the high protein wrap is enough to fill a belly, so I finished half and sat outside for a while, watching van after van drive to the restaurant and imagining people walking out smiling for their breakfast.

Kim insisted her menu is primarily functional, designed to appeal to blue collar workers who need something warm and portable to eat. But I would say it’s a category of food that has brought the world so many wonderful things: Tiffin Indian breakfasts, Cornish pasties, and San Francisco sourdough among them. Care – what gourmets would also call “finesse” – counts for a lot in this kind of cuisine. It is important that he breaks each egg himself; take the time to sear each burrito on the flat grill just long enough for the cheese to melt and bind it all together.

Kim’s son came back into her life a few months ago after years of casual contact. Philip, now a psychology student and ROTC cadet at the University of Santa Clara, said he was still hesitant but optimistic about their relationship. “I’ve never had a father before,” he said. The incredibly strict and troubled man he grew up with was long gone, softened into the 65-year-old beaming cook that thousands of people in Santa Clara now know.

Even though Philip insists that he can complete his education on his own, his father is dedicated to helping him pay for his education. Although the pandemic has seriously damaged business and made it difficult for Kim to make ends meet, he hopes to keep his lease at least as long as Philip is in school. “I am very happy to continue working. I want to help my son. It’s my dream, ”Kim said. The man who smiled every day to make others happy cried as he spoke.

To be there – to be necessary – was all he had ever wanted.

Soleil Ho is the food critic for the San Francisco Chronicle. Email: [email protected] Twitter: @hooleil

A Cornish cafe owner said a ‘vindictive’ customer tried to shut down the small business over a dispute over gluten allergies – rallying a Facebook crowd to a ‘threatening witch hunt’ and even by calling Trading Standards.

Emma Price, co-owner of The Lighthouse cafe in Mevagissey, said the argument started when she told the woman she couldn’t guarantee her ingredients were completely gluten-free to be safe enough for a celiac – one person. allergic to wheat protein. .

While being honest about the loophole – to put “customer safety above their bottom line” – Ms Price says the “disgruntled” visitor was so enraged that she turned to a Facebook group for celiacs to beg the 26,500 other members not to visit the cafe.

Read: Waitress in tears after customer kick-off because Newquay pub was full

The 48-year-old was alerted to the post on August 19 by another business owner and discovered the abusive comments, claiming that a user threatened to hit staff around the head with a frying pan.

The client even reported the lighthouse to the Cornwall council, prompting a stressful visit from its business standards managers during a busy lunch service.

Inspection found the cafe was not breaking any rules or regulations, and the owner admitted she had been “extremely upset” and felt “vulnerable” by the incident.

She said she wanted to encourage others to think about the impact they can have on a small business before posting “vindictive” and “bogus” reviews or comments online.

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Ms Price said: “I was very upset when I saw those comments. The problem with Facebook is that people can say whatever they want and then there’s this huge bunch of people who have never visited our coffee, never looked at our products and never spoke to us but threatened us with physical violence.

“It makes you feel pretty vulnerable and you know it’s not just us who work in the cafe.

“My partner and I own the business, but we have other employees and especially during the summer months we have students and young people working in our cafe and I really wouldn’t want them. face someone threatening to hit you on the head with a frying pan.

“I think the fact that there are 26,500 people in this group is really a sobering thought, to think that if those 26,500 believed what they read, it could have been disastrous.

“She obviously wanted us to shut down and there are six people who depend on this business for their wages. Not to mention all of our suppliers, customers. It’s such a profound impact of someone making this false statement on a Facebook group. [that we could not reply in]. “

After reading the customer’s scathing review, Lighthouse Cafe posted two Facebook posts giving their side of the story and urging people to think twice before posting “bogus” claims.

Since its posts went live, the client’s original post appears to have been removed from the group it was posted to.

The client originally wrote: “Please don’t go here!

“I went there for a gluten free breakfast, they said they had [sic] gluten free toast, it wasn’t until I sat down while waiting for my food that the lady told the other lady that she knew it was cooked in the same pan, and it wasn’t the case [sic] don’t tell me anything.

“So I pulled the lady up and asked her if it was cooked separately and she said no I said what about gluten free toast she said it was done in the same toaster as normal bread.

“I told them that your [sic] is going to make someone seriously ill with your lack of knowledge and just because something is labeled gluten free doesn’t mean it’s going to be okay, it is also about the cooking and preparation. I just got a funny look! “

However, Ms Price pointed out that the cafe is always very upfront with what it can safely respond to.

Mrs Price said of the comments: “We spoke to the lady in question and she wanted breakfast, we explained that we have a lot of gluten free ingredients but we cannot guarantee that it is not the case. [completely free of gluten] [as gluten is] an airborne allergen and she was obviously upset by that.

“Our allergy poster is directly visible in the cafe. You know all we could do, we did it and the only thing we did that she didn’t like was not serve her a meal. But the alternatives would have been terrible, if we had served her and she wasn’t feeling well then I could see what her complaint would be about, but we just kept her safe.

“We have a lot of people who come here who are gluten intolerant, which is obviously very different from being celiac, which is a suitable allergy. We always talk to clients to find out exactly how widespread their allergy is.”

She added that customers normally leave her there and understand that her kitchen is not completely sterile.

“What kitchen can be?” Mrs. Price continued. “Unless it’s in a completely protective atmosphere. And we talk to them about how we minimize risks, like using extra utensils, washing things.

“Our deep fryers don’t contain any gluten-containing products, so we really try, but obviously you can’t be 100% and most customers would totally agree with that.

“And if these are customers who react very badly to gluten and they are celiac, they appreciate that we tell them that and I always say” maybe our little cafe is not for you “.

“We would never put someone’s health above our profits, we could, but we don’t. So I really don’t know what she was complaining about, I think it was more the fact. that we couldn’t serve her rather than what we were doing wrong.

“The vast majority of our customers are really lovely, we have a lot of loyal customers and a lot of positive support. It’s one customer in a summer of thousands, it’s been a very stressful week.”

After being alerted to the customer’s scathing attack, the cafe released its own public message.

He said, “It was brought to my attention today that there is a very concerning message circulating today on a certain Celiac Group Facebook page regarding our gluten free offering.

“This original post leaves an unfair, damaging and false portrayal of our business.

“This is then followed by several comments ranging from threats to report us to environmental health; to say that our five-star rating should be removed; personal threats and physical attacks against our people and our business. […]

“For those of you who acknowledged this was turning into a witch hunt or gave favorable comments, thank you. We are very grateful and would love to see you.

“For those who contributed to this witch hunt without ever having set foot in our cafe, please stay away and perhaps think about how your reckless actions might affect the livelihoods of six people and the reputation of an honest company.

“Finally, we are tiny. We cannot fit additional equipment into our kitchen. We have maintained our business through the most difficult times and we are only trying to keep our customers safe.

“Messages like these could destroy our business through no fault of our own and it is extremely upsetting. We are doing our best and I hope the vast majority of our customers will recognize it.”

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A Cornwall Council spokesperson said: “A client with a food allergy has contacted Cornwall’s Trading Standards to raise concerns about his experience in this business.

“A trade standards officer visited the premises and found that the appropriate information regarding food allergens was displayed. The officer discussed the matter with the business owner and provided advice.

“We always encourage businesses and their customers to have conversations about allergies and if they have any concerns or questions, to contact their local Environmental Health or Business Standards team.”

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We all give ourselves that shine and post-containment refreshment. But a popular Aberdeenshire cafe not only reopened with a new look, it also created more space for patrons.

Barn in Foveran has been a must visit for breakfast, lunch, coffee, and cake since it opened in 2018. But with its new look (and additional dog-friendly space), more and more people are discovering what period it’s awesome.

Dog friendly cafe area

For owner Chrissy Graham, her husband Mark and daughter Georgia, The Barn is a family business they work on together. Initially, the space was also home to Chrissy’s spa and beauty treatment business, but as this expanded to its new location, it allowed the cafe to expand.

Chrissy explained, “I used to do beauty treatments at home, but then moved into the spa, which worked well next to the cafe, as you would invite clients for coffee or a meal and their treatments.

“But now that we are moving to the Granite Spa, we had a space where the therapy rooms were.

“During the lockdown between January and April, we turned this area into a dog friendly cafe lounge.”

Tasty food and drinks

The more casual lounge allows people to relax and enjoy a coffee and one of the café’s ‘good parts’ – all fresh and homemade by The Barn’s head baker – as well as for small groups who meet.

“You go through a short walkway to get to the coffee lounge, so you feel a little more private and hidden away.”

It’s already proven itself to customers, many adding to the rafts of five-star reviews The Barn has online.

“We used to have to turn people away, but that gives people who don’t want a full meal another option.”

Feel welcome

Above all, Chrissy and her family aim to create a space where everyone feels at home.

Chrissy said: “My husband and I are both Geordies so we want everyone to feel welcome and there to be a friendly atmosphere.

“It sounds like a cliché, but we really are a big family and we are fortunate to have such a passionate team as we are.”

Comfort food

This welcoming feeling is also reflected in The Barn’s menu, which features high-quality comfort food and well-prepared ‘old favorites’, including afternoon tea.

“Our chic butty fish is definitely something people keep coming back to. We get our fish fresh every day.

She added, “I think after the second lockdown people crave good comfort food, which we have been doing for years. They also need that interaction they get at The Barn – all socially distant, of course!

The Barn’s team of chefs can cook for a variety of diets – just ask and they’ll help you.

The great outdoors

Outside, The Barn offers not only seating, but also a play park for children.

The Barn also supports local designers, with a retail space for small gifts and locally made goods.

Find out more and reserve a table at The barn site.

One of Donegal’s most famous cafes is closing for the last time on Saturday night after serving Donegal audiences for over an incredible 70 years.

The Baskins Cafe in Dunkineely has been a stopping point for generations of Donegal families who have always been guaranteed a great meal.

Now owners Thomas and Frances Baskin decided to call it a day after Thomas’s parents set up the cafe in Rathmullan in the 1950s before moving to Dunkineely in 1958 and then Thomas and Frances took over the cafe in 1978. .

The last orders will be taken at the café just before 10 p.m. when it closes its doors this Saturday evening, August 28.

With Thomas and Frances now 70, the couple have decided to close the doors of the famous café as they prepare for a well-deserved retirement.

“Thomas and Frances have worked so hard over the years since the café was founded here in 1978.

“They are very grateful to all the great employees they say they have had the chance to work with over the years and also to the thousands of loyal customers.

“They can’t wait to rest now so they have decided to close the cafe doors for now. But I hope they won’t stay closed for too long,” a family spokesperson said.

Famous Donegal Cafe Closes After More Than 70 Years was last modified: 23 Aug 2021 through Editor-in-chief

A bakery opens in an east-east Dallas mall that’s dying for something like this. Called Lubella’s pastry shop, it’s a new boutique at 10323 Ferguson Rd. from pastry chef Maria Becerra, and it’s opening at Casa View Center, a newly renovated 1950s mall at the intersection of Gus Thomasson Road.

Becerra has baked for fine dining restaurants such as Bullion and Flora St. Cafe. She opens it with her husband Ismael Trejo Gonzalez, a full-fledged food and drink veteran.

“We’ve been in the restaurant business for years, but this is our first store,” Becerra says. “A few years ago we moved to Casa View so our kids could go to school there and we drove by near the center. We saw they were updating it and decided to see if they had space available. They had another proposal, but they gave us the space because they liked what we had planned. “

The Casa View shopping center makeover has been initiated in 2018 and included the restoration of storefront canopies, lighting and signage improvements, a redesign of the central plaza and the planting of new trees.

Lubella’s, named after her two daughters, Luciana and Isabella, will be a bakery with a cafe component and will face Ferguson Road, a few doors down from Pet Supplies Plus.

“When COVID-19 shut things down, I was going crazy at home and started baking, including personalized wedding cakes,” she says. “It started to work out well. We had been thinking about making our own bakery and we thought maybe it was about time.”

“We’re going to start with the desserts, including the slice cake, and then slowly expand the menu,” she says. “I would like to suggest breakfast items like a quiche, frittata, avocado toast, and then maybe add lunch, depending on what the neighborhood wants.”

The space is still under construction, with a goal of opening up in mid to late fall, in time for the holidays.

She will also bake pan dulce and tres leches cakes, which are on the menu at Restaurant Jose on Lovers Lane. But Casa View has a lot of Mexican bakeries, and it wants to do more.

“I can make croissants, Danish, and I want Lubella to have a variety,” she says. “I’m doing everything from scratch, and I want it to be fresh.”

A few months turned into two years, plagued by a maze of municipal permit issues, construction delays, the pandemic and a nagging labor shortage. Run by Cappy’s son Trevor Lawton and a family with the will and the capital to make it happen, Mama’s reopened in May, becoming a solid country-style cafe without all the dusty baggage that came with it.

The clean, bright space of Nacogdoches Road, just outside of Loop 410 on the northeast side, looks like a Texas Mayfly museum selling chicken fried steak. One room is a depository of signed cowboy hats on the ceiling, overlooking long shelves of cowboy boots and a wall of branding irons from working ranches.

The bar is home to iconic neon signs from the long-gone Hipp’s Bubble Room bar and a portrait of Willie Nelson rendered in thousands of bottle caps by Bradford Lawton, a famous designer and brother of Cappy. Reclaimed wood runs in weathered stripes throughout the restaurant, there is a shaded courtyard at the back with a waterfall and a cork ceiling decorates the bathroom hallway.

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It’s a feast for the eyes, however. The real work takes place in a decidedly modern kitchen, producing well-executed dinner classics and a few quirky surprises: you can get a large plate of liver and onions with all the iron fist flavor in a velvet glove that you can get. love. You can also get a grilled steak with a bottle of Caymus.

But the dinner part is where the fun is.

Cornbread sets the “c” in the country, and two large slices served as an appetizer with a side of guajillo honey were grainy and sweet and chewy at the same time. It’s a start and an end, a dessert as good as the coffee’s huge apple strudel, as American as apple pie and as German as the euphoric sense of freude it conjures up.

Stay in the cheerful German mentality long enough to enjoy a schnitzel sandwich, complete with a pork loin finely pounded and fried until cracking, amplified by apple butter, braised cabbage, and funky cambozola. Cabbage also ranked as the best of over a dozen sides, a glossy dark purple punctuated with an afterglow of smoked pork.

The pork receives the American treatment like a plate of reasonably good grilled pork chops. They’ve been thinly sliced ​​and well seasoned, with pops of color on the sides of rich creamed spinach and wild rice pilau topped with veggies.

For maximum color, try something that makes a lot more sense in the bowl than on the page: McQueeney’s Special. They call it a salad, but it’s really more like chili with an entourage of shredded iceberg, corn chips, cheese, and spicy chipotle ranch. But it was good chili, with slices of beef wrapped in a mahogany blend of rowdy red spices.

If you’ve been a fan of Mama for a long time, you’re probably already waiting for me to talk about fried mushrooms. Fine. It was like earthy gold-plated nuggets, crunchy blonde fries, with curls of batter to spice up the magic of the cream sauce and homemade ranch dressing good enough to eat like cold soup. The. Are you happy? Because I was.

This cream sauce energized everything she touched including creamy mashed potatoes and a chicken fried steak that filled its crispy shell from side to side with tender beef but not beaten to death. He cut with a fork and passed the Goldilocks test: not too hard but not too soft.

Also from the deep fryer, a chicken sandwich that did a lot more than deliver crunch and a pickle. At Mama’s, it glistened with macha chili oil and a dusting of queso fresco, with a wide palette of grilled cacti doing the work of southwestern flavor that no pickle could ever do.

On ExpressNews.com: 5 San Antonio area restaurants for great chicken fried steak

The catfish got the clean, crispy fry treatment at Mama’s, maybe even too clean, if you’re craving the silty undertones and cornmeal breading you’re more used to. And some of the original experimentation fell flat, like a toasted peanut butter and jelly sandwich that has nothing to do with this adult menu. It was a wet mess of PB&J, sliced ​​pears and melted cheese between greasy slices of Texan toast. These are small things.

More important thing is what happened to the stuffed eggs in the deep fryer to make the egg whites hard and chewy, giving a bad Easter egg vibe to what is usually at the top of the list of reliable watches in a Texas cafe.

Second on this list is a good burger, but it was tossed at Mama’s house by a thick sledge of iceberg lettuce and wilted tomatoes that took away the well-done beef patty at the base. The third would be the meatloaf, but at Mama, I would have done everything for more meat and less bread.

These are things to work on in a country cafe where almost everything else works. This is not surprising, as this is a family that knows the business inside and out, from a strong branding to the training of a service staff who exudes a sense of belonging on down the line.

If Mama’s were just a country cafe, it could fall victim to the same things that led to its decline in the first place. It’s not. It’s a nod and a nod to country café culture, with respect for nostalgia but a lucid look at the present.

[email protected] | Twitter: @fedmanwalking | Instagram: @fedmanwalking

Cafe owner Bob Barbar has experienced six closures, and now two of his family businesses have been listed as exhibition sites during the latest COVID-19 outbreak in Melbourne.

It is getting too hard.

Mr. Barbar runs the Jolly Miller Cafe in Melton, part of a family-owned chain of 14 restaurants across Victoria.

His cafe was listed as a Level 2 weekend show site. Her cousin runs another cafe The Jolly Miller in the Caroline Springs Square mall, which has been declared a Level 1 site.

“Yesterday we had our worst trading day, ”he said.

“We have lost a lot.

“We threw bread… a lot of our candy, our fruits and vegetables were thrown away.”

To complicate matters, some of her staff had to isolate themselves as they visited the Caroline Springs Square Mall, forcing her business to shut down for longer.

On Thursday, Employment Minister Martin Pakula announced an additional $ 367 million in support for businesses affected by the extended Melbourne lockdown, jointly funded by the Commonwealth and Victoria governments.

But Mr Barbar said there had been long delays before previous foreclosure payments arrived.

“Lockdown number two… it was in July of last year. I only received [the money] during the last week of lockdown number four, which was in June of this year. “

Mr Barbar said he was just getting by with the help of the community, his owner and his staff.

“None of the bills are paid,” he said.

“We’re just breaking even with wages… and when I bounce back from foreclosure, I’ll pay my suppliers, the owner.”

Melbourne West has become a COVID-19 hotspot, with several emerging exposure sites in the region.

The Jolly Miller was listed as a Level 2 exposure site on August 8 after a visit from a COVID-positive person on August 4.

“The person came for a takeout sandwich,” Mr. Barbar said.

“They were in the store for less than three and a half minutes, then we got a call on Sunday night. [telling us what happened]. “

“Make a very fine line”

Normally the cafe can seat just under 100 people, but with density limits in place, there was only room for 65 people, including those dining outside.

Now only open for take-out, Mr Barbar said some days it wasn’t even worth opening the business.

“When you come for take out, you buy coffee for $ 4,” he said.

“If you dine there, you buy a plate of food, you might get a muffin from the fridge.”

Mr Barbar said it was scary to be part of a COVID hotspot.

“Every day I wait for a phone call from DHHS (the Department of Health and Human Services) to see if we [have been listed] as an exhibition site, just to know if I close… do I order for the next day, “he said.

“We have a very fine order line with our orders right now. If you order it and stop, [there is a] a lot of waste. “

“It was difficult. It was difficult, but I am very grateful because we have a lot of support from the community.”

Money to reach more than 100,000 companies, according to the Minister of Employment

Mr Pakula said the additional support of $ 367 million is expected to reach more than 100,000 businesses in Melbourne.

“We are very grateful for the spirit of continued cooperation in which the Commonwealth approaches the issue of business and income support,” he said.

Mr Pakula said the money, which would mainly be distributed automatically to companies that had already qualified for support under existing funds, fell into the following three categories:

• The Commonwealth’s COVID-19 Disaster Payment, which is open to eligible workers across the state who are losing hours due to the lockdown, as well as individual businesses who lose their jobs and are not eligible for Victorian government support
• The Small Business COVID Hardship Fund, which will provide grants of $ 10,000 to small and medium-sized businesses across the state. It will be administered by Business Victoria and will focus on companies legally authorized to operate but subject to severe restrictions.
• Automatic payments of $ 2,800 to over 95,000 businesses in Metropolitan Melbourne through the Business Cost Assistance Program and automatic payments of up to $ 20,000 to eligible businesses under the Licensed Hospitality Venue Fund

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