After receiving feedback last week from customers during their development week, the Bird Dog Cafe owners Conner and Elliot Bell have made the final tweaks to their menu and are ready to welcome customers on a daily basis beginning Tuesday, August 17. The café will be open Tuesday through Saturday from 6:30 a.m. until 3:30 p.m.
“We will open the doors and have the coffee ready at six-thirty in the morning and begin serving meals by seven,” said Chef Elliot.
Chef Elliot starts the day off with his hot fresh and tasty beef, pork and vegetable breakfast tacos, and a variety of frittatas and quiches, biscuits and gravy, and crusty French toast. Later in the morning, he adds his daily Brunch Specials, which may include shepherd’s pie, shrimp and grits, whole hog jambalaya, poached salmon, or shrimp gribiche. Another menu item is a grain bowl consisting of mixed grains tossed in a black garlic vinaigrette and topped with pickled onions, avocado, radishes, an egg, and sun-dried tomato-pecan pesto with your choice of whole fire-roasted pork or butter and wine-poached salmon.
Pastry Chef Sophie Kasco, a recent LCS graduate, and Elliot will team up daily to create a variety of delicious breakfast pastries and desserts which could include lemon-vanilla scones, muffins, coffee cakes, cookies, chocolate pecan pie, Shaker lemon pie (a Bell family favorite), Hummingbird cake or maybe a chocolate buttermilk pie.
For those of you who don’t know, the Bird Dog Café and the Bell brothers were featured on HGTV’s Home Town. In the episode, Ben and Erin Napier designed and renovated the old Stassi home located on Short 7th Street into the quaint little restaurant with an apartment that has recently been turned into an Airbnb. The old house was a triplex with three separate doors, and it was not in the best condition.
“There was an old mattress on the back porch and holes in the ceiling,” said Elliot.
“We joked and said there were three natural skylights in the house,” added Elliot’s brother, Connor, who takes on the management and marketing roles of the business. “You could stand here and see the sky at any point of the day. Now, it’s kind of hard to believe that it’s the same building.”
The brothers also purchased the Boteler House next door, where they’ve built an outside kitchen with a fire pit to prepare and roast or smoke the meats which are bought from local farms. They also plan to have a complimentary business in the old house.
“We get our pork from Boe Farms in Moselle and our beef from Honestly Beef and the Rogers family in Collins,” said Elliot.
They get their vegetables locally as well. Last week they found a five-pound butternut squash and were able to prepare a number of breakfast tacos and frittatas with it.
There is an adequate amount of indoor seating and plenty of outdoor seating with a newly built 18-foot-by 50-foot deck with tables and chairs, lawn garden area, and benches and lawn chairs scattered throughout both properties.