Santé changes story at Aunties
This is not your average bookstore café.
The transformation of the old Liberty Cafe inside Auntie’s Bookstore is now complete with the opening of Santé Restaurant and Charcuterie, 404 W. Main Ave.
Pastries and sandwiches have been traded for upscale dining featuring organic house-made European-style cured meats and sausages made from ethically raised animals.
Chef Jeremy Hansen and his wife, Kate, celebrated the grand opening earlier this month.
They currently offer gourmet breakfast and lunch eats, along with espresso made from Four Seasons Coffee. Dinner is served Friday and Saturday, with a new menu each week.
The current autumn brunch menu features German sausage with berry mustard and grilled French bread ($10) or gravlax with cucumber panna cotta ($8).
Breakfast options range from a wild mushroom omelette ($10) to caul-wrapped pork tournedos served with vegetables and a chenin blanc pork glace ($12).
Sandwich offerings include a Snake River Kobe burger ($7) and seasonal Croque Monsieur, with Kurobuta pork, greens, Granny Smith apple and cranberry vinaigrette.
Chorizo, German sausage and weisswurst (German white sausage) are among charcuterie items in the deli case, along with pies and some jams and confits, Hansen says. Prosciutto, dry-aged sausages and other items will be added in the next six to nine months as they are finished aging.
Santé is open from 8 a.m. to 6 p.m. Sunday through Thursday. Dinner is served Friday and Saturdays when the restaurant is open until 10 p.m. Reach the restaurant at (509) 315-4613 or online at www.santespokane.com.
Coffee Social opens
Pedal, plod or catch a bus to the new organic coffee shop and cafe Coffee Social and they’ll give you a 10 percent discount on a drink.
Owner Rachel Young opened the new shop in the old Scalawag’s location at 113 W. Indiana Ave. in early September. Young worked in coffee shops and restaurants as a waitress in her 20s. After college, she found herself doing office work in marketing and as an administrative assistant.
“I’m kind of a slow study because it took me about 5 years before I realized, ‘I don’t really like office work,’ … it took another five years to get out of it,” she says.
Young and her husband, Matt Karasu, own Coffee Social, while Nicola Payette is cooking and baking for the shop. Everything is made in-house from scratch with local, organic and sustainable ingredients – everything except the Shepherd’s Grain bread used for sandwiches.
Along with breakfast pastries such as banana pecan bread and pear ginger tarts, they offer quiche and Doma organic coffee. Lunch is an array of salads, sandwiches and soups and – something Payette insisted upon – pasties.
Pasties are hearty pastries with meat and vegetables folded inside. Coffee Social’s pasties have either chopped lamb or beef, along with potatoes, carrots and turnips. They also offer a vegetarian version. All are served with gravy.
Young says they offer a discount to those who reach the cafe without driving to promote alternative transportation. Karasu is a cyclist who didn’t get a driver’s license until he was in his 30s.
Coffee Social is open every day from 8 a.m. to 8 p.m. They stay open an hour later on Thursday, Friday and Saturday. Reach the cafe at (509) 327-7127 or online at www.coffeesocial.net.