The most complete guide to
Eating Out in Port Chester
and Rye Brook
A Supplement to the
Restaurant Review
Good food in a bright space at Jack’s Brookside Café J By Jananne Abel
ack’s Brookside Café, off the beaten track in northern Rye Brook, is a bright, cheery place to eat breakfast or lunch during the week while supporting a worthy endeavor. Food is good and prices are moderate. Located at 260 Lincoln Ave. near its intersection with King Street, Brookside Café is on the United Cerebral Palsy of Westchester property. A house that had been rented out was converted to the café to provide food service training and a real life employment opportunity for individuals with disabilities served by UCP. Brookside Café opened on April 7, 1999 as a restaurant for the general public and to provide service to the UCP staff and to the trainees served by the agency at its adjacent facility. “We’re kind of in the boondocks here, so there’s not a lot of opportunity for the staff or consumers (trainees) to leave the campus, so we thought it was a nice opportunity to provide that service,” said Katie Giannini, manager of the café. “In addition to sit-down service at the café, we also provide a delivery service— all the items off the menu and daily specials—delivered by one of the consumers that works in the café.” UCP has a few small businesses, a morning breakfast concession, a company store and a thrift store, the latter now located at Summerfield Methodist Church in Port Chester, and Giannini manages all of them. Stacy Hopf of Port Chester is the waitress and job coach at Brookside Café, working with the trainees all day, taking care of immediate needs, making sure jobs are done and guiding the workers.
About four trainees at a time are working at the café as cooks, bus persons, utility people and runners going back and forth between the café and UCP’s main building. While Hopf is the main person you see at the restaurant, trainees will come out of the kitchen to clear and wipe the tables or to ask customers if everything is all right. “It is a stepping stone for consumers to get out into the community to work in a restaurant,” said Rick Stein, a consultant for UCP who has helped the agency set up its small businesses. It is a step between UCP’s workshop in the main building and getting a real job in the community. There is no timetable for training, said Stein, with trainees working in the café as long as it takes for them to feel comfortable doing their job. Tyrone Burwell of White Plains has been assistant chef since the café’s opening while Kareem Thornton of Mt. Vernon is the current chef. Brookside Café seats 25 at seven tables in a bright, airy space with a cathedral ceiling, skylights,
Brookside Café, located at 260 Lincoln Ave. in Rye Brook, looks much like a house except for its green awning bearing the name of the restaurant.
The bright, cheery dining room at Jack’s Brookside Café. a ceiling fan and two picture windows. Customers sit at blue/green Formica tables with light wood trim and matching wooden chairs. The dining room features a fireplace with mantle topped by a mirror and a wood floor. Plants sit on the mantle and on small shelves bracketed to the walls. On a recent visit we had three large glasses of freshly brewed iced tea, a chicken salad sandwich ($4.25), a Grilled Chicken Caesar Wrap ($5.95) and a Chicken and Cheese Quesadilla served with sour cream and homemade salsa ($5.25). Despite the menu stating they would be served with specialty side salad, all came with excellent tasting thin French fries instead. The quesadilla was the biggest hit, with a good amount of chicken and lots of melted cheese in a flour tortilla cut in quarters and heated till crunchy. The wrap was filled with romaine lettuce, parmesan cheese and grilled chicken drenched with Caesar dressing. We also had a piece of coconut layer cake ($2.50). Our total bill came to $21.35 without tip. Besides the small menu, which features four salads (Caesar, Caribbean with jerk chicken, tomato and mozzarella and house) in ad-
dition to tuna or chicken, homemade focaccia, chili (which they were out of on our recent visit), several sandwiches including an 8-ounce sirloin burger or veggie burger, there are a number of daily specials. On the day we visited, the soup of the day was split pea with ham and special sandwiches included Monte Cristo made with ham, turkey and Swiss grilled on white bread, a Reuben made with corned beef and sauerkraut with Russian dressing on rye, a Swiss cheese burger with bacon, lettuce and tomato, a chicken salad melt on whole wheat and fried filet of cod on a roll with tartar sauce. All came with French fries and were priced from $5.75 to $5.95. Besides the coconut layer cake, dessert included double chocolate cake, also $2.50. Breakfast, which is available anytime, includes Fresh Fruit Plate ($4.95) (but I was told the fruit wasn’t fresh on the day we visited), a three-egg omelet any style with hash browns and toast ($4.95), two eggs any style with hash browns and toast, an egg sandwich made with cheese, ham or bacon ($1.95), Belgian waffles ($4.25) and pancakes (served only until 11:00 a.m.) ($4.25). Bacon, ham or sausage is extra at $1.50.
Juices, muffins and bagels with butter or cream cheese are also available. Everything was to our liking on our recent breakfast visit. Jack’s Brookside Café is open from 8 a.m. to 3 p.m. Monday through Friday. There is free parking in a lot adjacent to the building. Delivery and catering are available, and credit cards are accepted. Going up King Street, the left hand turn-off onto Lincoln Avenue just past BelleFair is easy to miss. There is a small sign with an arrow for Jack’s Brookside Café, but sometimes you don’t see it until you’ve gone by. If you see the large UCP facility on your left, you know you’ve gone too far and can pull into their driveway to turn around. In case you’re wondering who the café was named for, Jack Hodgert was a longtime member of the UCP Board of Directors and an individual served by the agency. He died just prior to the opening of the restaurant, so it was named in his memory to honor him, said Giannini. “He was part of the agency pretty much from the beginning,” she said, living in UCP group homes and later in supportive apartments. “He participated actively in the agency over the span of his lifetime.”