Bites Nearby: BeanBath Café

There's a café that lies along Route 512 north of Bath that combines the allure of a metropolitan coffee house with an eclectic menu of salads, sandwiches and breakfast platters.

That restaurant/coffee house is the fairly new BeanBath Café, which opened Feb. 3 in the Southmoore Plaza.

The café is furnished with comfortable leather chairs and sofas over a polished hardwood floor. The artwork that decorates the walls and restrooms is primarily from Indonesia and the Caribbean.

“We pride ourselves on cleanliness, both in the kitchen and the dining room,” said owner Christopher Colvin.

Colvin and his family own and operate the café; his wife, Lyn Colvin, is the restaurant’s sous chef, and his eldest daughter, Cezanne, works the counter and behind-the-scenes operations. 

The café’s specialty is in its espresso bar, which offers a full range of espressos, coffees, frappes, fresh-fruit smoothies and Italian sodas, which is a drink made of crushed ice and flavored syrups. The fresh-roasted house coffee comes from the Metropolis Coffee Company of Chicago.

“We’ll order it on Sunday, they’ll roast it on Monday and we’ll get it by Wednesday,” Colvin said. “We do that every week.”

Many of the dishes on the recently renovated menu are named after places in California, which is where Colvin was born and raised. For example, there's the "San Bruno," a double-decker club sandwich stacked with ham, turkey, bacon, two kinds of cheese and avocado slices.

Although the menu, at first glance, appears to be American cuisine, the chefs at BeanBath Café use regional ingredients to make the dishes unique. It’s not uncommon to find chorizo, candied walnuts, avocado or harissa, a Tunisian hot chili sauce, in many of its signature salads and sandwiches.

Breakfast at the café is served all day. One popular dish, according to Colvin, is the eggs benedict -- made with real eggs and butter. The hollandaise sauce is made fresh every morning.

“We don’t have cooks in our kitchen, we have chefs.” Colvin said. “We use all fresh food, nothing processed.” 

BeanBath Café is at 2425 Plaza Court north of Bath in Moore Township. The café offers dine-in and take-out options -- even a drive-through window. The restaurant is open daily from 6 a.m. to 4 p.m. While breakfast is served all day, lunch is served from 11 a.m. to 4 p.m.