We Are A Scratch-Made Kitchen

At Courtyard Cafe we are a ‘Scratch-Made Kitchen’ and proud of it!

What that simply means is, the majority of the dishes we create are made from scratch. That includes everything we cook, bake and combine together – it’s all made from scratch, the Courtyard Cafe way!

Indeed, it takes extra time to stir, blend, chop, ferment or hand-mix the different ingredients.

We could make our lives much simpler and just buy boxed and pre-packaged gluten-free, vegan doughs, sauce and soup products with all of its preservatives and chemicals to sustain a longer shelf life.

But, that’s not what we do at Courtyard Cafe and we don’t want to be known as taking unhealthy cooking shortcuts.

Those pre-packaged products come with a price; ingredients and chemicals you can’t even pronounce. These unpronounced ingredients are the grand indicator that we don’t know what they are or how they might affect us. At the very least, they are suspect.

At Courtyard Cafe, we do not boast of an extensive menu. This enables us to provide fresh and seasonal ingredients on hand. We pride ourselves with the quality of ingredients, serving clean foods that are made with little to no preservatives, locally bought and as organic as possible.

In this way we are assured of the amount of control over the entire handling and cooking process in our scratch-made kitchen. Count on us to have the freshest and cleanest foods and ingredients.

If we won’t eat it, we won’t serve it to our patrons.

Actually, this is one problem we, from time-to-time experience, given the organic foods we provide. Due to no artificial preservatives or chemicals in the food we use, there have been times when we had to throw out full batches of kale, spinach and strawberries ‘fresh’ from the supplier. We even returned a 5 lb bag of organic coffee due to a suspicious inorganic taste.

We also research extensively on how to ‘pop’ taste buds, expand the palate and present ‘eating with your eyes’ masterpiece dishes. We want our guests to realize wholesome and organic foods don’t have to be bland. Although this may take a bit of education and even re-education.

I’m reminded of when I needed to research the differences between our Hollandaise sauce and other restaurants’. Ours seemed to lack?

At the time we were following an Instagram site that posted pictures of any and all Eggs Benedict dishes they would come across. They would actually travel around and find cafes and restaurants posting elaborate, enticing and drool-worthy photos of the Eggs Benedict dishes they were about to eat.

Our presentations and photos did not include the very rich creamy hollandaise sauce clearly evident in the other photos we witnessed.

Why? Why was ours lacking? What ingredient or ingredients were missing? What recipe would we be able to discover that would give us that same creamy edge? What could we experiment with to make the difference we saw in the pictures that looked so yummy and inviting?

I was shocked to know that what I finally discovered was not something I would incorporate in our recipes– ever! No discussion.

Totally by accident, I discovered the answer to the grand quandary or maybe I manifested the answer as I had so much energy attached to wanting to understand the difference. If other restaurants had this very rich and decadent looking cream on their poached eggs, why couldn’t we?

While shopping in my local grocery store for foods not even related to the Cafe, I found a packet of Hollandaise Sauce hanging all by itself in the processed ‘boxed’ bakery isle of the store. Similar in shape and size of an envelope of Brown Gravy.

More experimenting and then voila! With the help of the all-in-one Hollandaise ‘packet’, I made a very rich decadent creamy Hollandaise sauce by just adding… water. A sauce that, by the way, we will never serve to Courtyard Cafe patrons.

The mystery is solved.

One look at the processed ingredients, including MSG, gave me the answer I was so diligently looking for. The end result was that our Hollandaise Sauce may not be as rich and creamy, but you can count on it being authentic and that’s all we are interested in. After all, we are a scratch-made kitchen.

After a year and a half of being open for business we have learned a lot. We are beginning to acquire a reputation for providing healthy high-vibrating foods.

Whether you enjoy our courtyard garden under a canopy of rustic old oaks or choose to sit inside, you will find a relaxing environment to decompress and regroup.

Chances are good that you will hear us stirring, blending, chopping or whipping up ingredients for authentic health conscious food that’s good for the Soul.

Our ultimate goal… is to make sure every patron will say: “What an enjoyable tasty and relaxing experience, I can’t wait to visit again.”

See you soon.