ON THE TABLE
Under One Roof
Sea to Plate since ’88
Tues. - Sat. 5-9pm
Northtown Coffee, Egghead and Patches’ Pastries partner up
DELIVERY NOW AVAILABLE PLEASE CALL AFTER 3 PM TO PLACE YOUR ORDER FOR PICK UP OR DELIVERY
INDOOR DINING
NOW SERVING AT 25% CAPACITY (CDC TIER PERMITTING)
By Jennifer Fumiko Cahill
Menu on our website or Eureka Sea Grill on Facebook
jennifer@northcoastjournal.com
T
he canopies over the patio at Northtown Coffee flutter above a half dozen people having a late Monday breakfast. Sunshine slants onto picnic tables where diners in beanies and sunglasses hunker over to-go cups, blueberry crumble bars and biscuit and egg sandwiches wrapped in checkered paper. Inside, a red and yellow menu board hangs emblazoned with the Egghead menu — a handful of grab-and-go sandwiches with eggs, pork belly, greens, some with maple butter — and its logo, a cracked egg with glasses, drooling a little yolk. Beside the pair of glass cake stands packed with coffee cake and the covered tray of cookies is a stack of cards for Patches’ Pastries. But this is still Northtown Coffee, right? The 22-year-old coffee joint has done more than adapt to COVID-19, it’s evolved into a three-part partnership, with owner Serg Mihaylo running the central coffee business and maintaining the building and utilities, and Egghead and Patches’ Pastries sharing the space under a profit-sharing plan rather than renting from or strictly working for Northtown. So far, the scheme, built upon experimenting with pop-up Egghead brunches at the café, has been mutually beneficial, bringing in customers and helping a pair of budding businesses get their start. Kevin Dikes wears a white chef coat and glasses that bear a notable resemblance to the ones on the aforementioned cartoon egg. His biscuit sandwiches are a process — the pork belly takes three days from brining, to rub, to slow cooking confit-style, submerged in its own fat, and pressing it under a sheet pan with a brick on top. It’s worth it. The flavor of the meat and the richness of the fat are amplified and yield to biting as easily as the creamy egg yolk and the biscuit, a bready rectangle that holds up under the meat, eggs and translucent threads of onion jam. Raised in Arcata, Dikes served as head chef at Embassy Suites in San Francisco but his appreciation for biscuits and low-andslow cooking comes partly from his years working at Husk in Charleston, South Carolina. After returning to Humboldt, he tried pop-up dinners at Humboldt Bay Social Club but the pandemic put the kibosh on indoor dining. Northtown Coffee had space for
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patio brunches and, after a few months Kevin Dikes, Patch Fraga and Serg Mihaylo at the counter at of Sundays, Mihaylo Northtown Coffee. Photo by Jennifer Fumiko Cahill invited him to take over the kitchen. Instead of renting a portion of the space “would have been not affordable for me, or becoming an employee of Northtown, at least at this state.” The profit-sharing arDikes pays his way by sharing the profits rangement also offers him freedom to manfrom his food. The point of sale system, age the budget for higher quality ingredients while unchanged on the customer side, sorts like vanilla bean and room to experiment. It all the items according to which business makes a difference with items like the Porthey came from — down to the paintings tuguese rice pudding, for which he drew on by local artists on the walls — and the share his godmother and grandmother’s recipes, of profits comes out of the weekly total. “I adding his own flourishes like the touch of don’t owe anything at the end of the month orange. The pudding is luxuriously thick, not and the better I do the better he does,” overly sweet and a good reminder that milk Dikes says. It also means he’s free of the is its own legitimate flavor. The perfectly daunting initial overhead costs of getting cooked rice holds its shape but breaks at the a restaurant — even a truck can run tens press of your tongue. of thousands — up and running. “It’s very That the pudding gets his grandmother’s beneficial to a startup coming into a space.” seal of approval, along with other PortuIt also gives him room to spend a little more guese locals, is important to Fraga, who on ingredients, like eggs from Foggy Bottom seems at home with Northtown’s spirit of Boys farm and Rumiano cheese. Between community inclusion. That extends to being that and shopping for inexpensive seasonal upfront about Patches’ being a trans-owned ingredients at the farmers market, he’s able business, both in solidarity with the LGBTQ to get the bulk of his inventory from local community and to expand non-LGBTQ peoproducers. ple’s ideas about who transgender people “I was looking to partner with people are. “You like that cookie? It was baked by a with energy,” says Mihaylo, who wanted trans person,” he says with a light chuckle. to pool resources and make the most of In the back of the café, the wall once the space. He bought the shop in 2013 and covered with event fliers is now mostly bare updated the kitchen with a new ventilation but for a couple notices and some thumb system two years ago, allowing Northtown tacks. It’s a reminder of Northtown’s life beto do some real cooking. “It’s really a COVID fore the pandemic as a hangout and a stage kind of opportunity — because of COVID, for spoken word, comedy and music open all these entrepreneurs were born … and mic events. Mihaylo looks forward to getting there was all this retail space.” So he looked back to that role. But for now, he is focused at his community network and found Dikes on the connections between his customers, through mutual friends. “We just realized his partners and the surrounding businesses. there was a lot more opportunity working “We all kind of pitch in on that to keep it all together,” he says. rolling,” he says of the expenses and labor Patch Fraga was working as a barista in the café. And he’s proud to have a core at Northtown and looking into running a business that can help launch newer ones. cottage food business, but he had concerns “We don’t have to build three businesses from the ground up,” says Mihaylo. “The about water quality at the ranch where he overhead has been built — it’s the house was living. Once he saw the opportunity that coffee built.” l to make a home for his bakery in the café’s shared kitchen, he jumped at it. “It seemed Jennifer Fumiko Cahill (she/her) is the like the perfect storm,” he says. A graduate arts and features editor at the Journal. of the Oregon Culinary Institute, Fraga says, Reach her at 442-1400, extension 320, or “At culinary school you learn to work in a jennifer@northcoastjournal.com. Follow small space so Northtown is a fit.” her on Twitter @JFumikoCahill. Like Dikes, Fraga says a stand-alone shop
Dear Humboldt,
Tell us your food crush! Yours always, NCJ jennifer@northcoastjournal.com
NCJ WHAT’S GOOD
northcoastjournal.com • Thursday, April 1, 2021 • NORTH COAST JOURNAL
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