Breakfast nook brews specialty roasts for Shandon
The neighbors know.
The smell of the fresh roast sweeps and spirals through the streets of Shandon. There’s one silver and copper antique roaster and seven different flavors, straight from South America and Africa.
Millwood Coffee Company, which sits just beyond the heart of the downtown neighborhood, is brewing a batch of its small-scale-famous blends.
It’s a twice-a-week ritual, and the customers follow the scent of the brewing beans straight to the cafe’s coffee counter, manager Anna Millisor said.
The company, which is a full-service cafe and restaurant, opened on Millwood Avenue in November. Owners Renee and Tom Perks, who live in Shandon, have been brewing their own coffee with the cafe’s same antique roaster for 13 years.
“There are so many people that like coffee — I just thought, ‘I wonder if I could roast my own,’” Renee said.
They gifted it, and shared it with neighbors, but the Millwood locale is the couple’s first try at the commercial coffee business.
The darker the roast, the less caffeine. The company’s Brazilian coffee is a dark roast and the Rwandan bean is the lighter one. Costa Rican falls somewhere in the middle. A cup to-go is $2, or $1.50 with a meal, and a 12-ounce bag is $11.
The deal gets better: The stand-alone coffee shop serves breakfast. All afternoon.
It’s a short menu that pulls together southern staples and the expected eggs, bagels and freshly baked pastries to create an inexpensive gourmet brunch — seven days a week.
There are combinations of bacon, eggs, hash browns, pancakes and waffles. The biscuits and gravy, made with house-baked biscuits, takes a classic and exceeds the competition.
An orange slice and strawberry sit beside the bowl of Adluh grits that come with the meal, and the crisp bacon breaks and melts into the yellow fluff of scrambled eggs. The grits are still piping hot, and the gravy tops the thin and floured biscuits that look a bit like an English muffin but pack the flavor of a home-style favorite.
Customers can also create their own breakfast sandwich with biscuits, bagels or English muffins and swiss, provolone, cheddar, American or Monterrey jack. It’s $3.50 for the sandwich and $6.50 with a side.
“The menu was a collaborative effort,” Renee said.
She wants to serve what people like. There aren’t any outliers on the menu — each dish fits with the next, while still offering the needed touch of variety. She took customer suggestions and still hopes to build the menu around the suggested meals.
Breakfast is served through 3 p.m., when the company closes, and lunch starts at 10:30 a.m. But if someone asks for it earlier, they try and make it happen, Millisor said.
Four sandwiches and four salads: it’s all that’s needed to touch on every whimsy of the lunchtime palate. The grilled chicken wrap and turkey club, both $7.50, stick to the healthier, deli-style side, while the Angus burger and Reuben tackle the savory.
Millwood takes to-go orders — Millisor even delivers hot cups of coffee straight to customers’ cars as early as 7 a.m. — but the cafe itself makes for a delightful sit-down experience.
The front of the shop is a wall of paned glass windows that shine light through to the back of the small but open space. There’s a front door and sliding side door, both greeting customers to a seat-yourself sampling of traditional tables and bar-style seating.
Hand-painted portraits of bass and flounder hang on the walls, each for sale by a local artist.
“I’ve always gravitated toward these little, quaint, eclectic places that are kind of different,” Renee said.
Most of the customers are from Shandon, Millisor said, but there’s been a good bunch of loyalists from USC. They do have free Wi-Fi.
It’s the only restaurant or coffee stop on its stretch of Millwood, so the competition is limited. There is, Millisor notes, an Applebee’s close by.
On a Tuesday afternoon, a student studied at a two-top in the corner while two men chatted over a lunch break.
Renee wrangles her 2-year-old daughter Isabella — who flips back her long blonde curls and searches for a bottle of bright pink glitter nail polish — while she arranges pastry displays and seats a first-time Millwood luncher. She makes connections with her customers and gushes about Millisor, who bakes the shop’s muffins each morning.
The food’s already fresh, and a lot of ingredients come from local farmers, but Renee hopes to make that an even greater company mission. She wants quality.
Within the next month, the Perks hope to open the cafe’s back porch and create a dinner menu. The porch will be dog-friendly, with Milk Bones and fresh-baked biscuits filling out a Fido-fit list. Live entertainment and a latte machine are also a part of the plan.
Millwood Coffee Company is open Monday through Friday, 6 a.m. to 3 p.m., Saturday 8 a.m. to 3 p.m. and Sunday 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. It’s at 2911 Millwood Ave., across from Epworth Children’s Home.