Exit the train station in Allenhurst — a blink-and-miss-it Jersey Shore burg just north of Asbury Park — and look to your right. You’ll notice The Gray Street Coffeehouse, nestled cozily in a corner across the tracks. Perhaps you’ll want to stop in because you just experienced a prolonged delay on NJTransit and need a pick me up. You’ll be pleasantly surprised.
The Gray Street coffeehouse has repurposed a 200-year-old building into a sleek and welcoming new business, which takes the word “community” seriously. It’s at the heart of the mission for owner Isaac Ashkenazi, executive chef Pat Trama, manager Sam Shabot, and creative coordinator Sonia Betesh, who came together to open this location in late June.
What do they mean by community, exactly? The Gray Street Coffeehouse offers a seasonal menu of healthy food options, with ingredients sourced from local farmers in Allenhurst and the surrounding areas.
“With our seasonal menu, we have local bakers come in and show us a plethora of goods they make in-house. We like to choose two/three bakers each season,” Ashkenazi told NJ Advance Media. “We try to maintain a certain nutritional element with organic ingredients and vegetables we get from a variety of different local farms.”
Chef Pat Trama has operated out of his restaurant, Trama’s Trattoria in Long Branch, with a menu that specializes in Tuscan style Italian menu. The Gray Street Coffeehouse presented him with a welcome challenge.
“What really made me excited about this project is a menu that’s kosher,” said Trama. “A lot of my clientele come from the community here, and many eat kosher. We saw an opportunity, and we took it, and we’ve had some tremendous success with it.”
The menu is curated to highlight food choices meant to be both nourishing and healthy. I like a good meal that’s good for you, so I sat down at one of the kitchen counters made from locally sourced wood and ordered organic chopped egg on toasted rye. The free-range eggs are served with red onion, mustard, and capers with a dill pickle on the side. Each ingredient is balanced, and the taste of the mustard doesn’t overpower the capers and onion.
I also had their Spanish latte, a mix of expresso, cinnamon, and sweetened milk (I substituted it for oat milk). The kick of the expresso is still there, but it’s the combination of how the milk is condensed with the flavor that stood out to me.
The pillar of community carries on in how The Gray Street partners with local artists and guest speakers. When I visited, the coffeehouse displayed three paintings on the wall by Asbury Park artist Keely Angel, also available for purchase. The coffeehouse also partners with local apparel and jewelry makers along with florists.
To build on their successes, Ashkenazi says the coffeehouse is gearing up to make a few upgrades, including a juice bar and extensions of its kitchen and outdoor seating/event space. Even when looking toward the future, Ashkenazi is thankful for the present moment.
“I can’t express my gratitude to the locals around here,” says Ashkenazi. “Even Asbury Park and Long Branch towns saw what we were doing, and it landed. It resonated. That motivates us to continue to grow and get better.”
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Murjani Rawls may be reached at [email protected] and followed on Twitter at@MurjaniRawls.