By Jason Gabak
After being closed due to the concerns around COVID-19, Café 119 at 119 E. Seneca St. in Manlius reopened Aug. 3 to a warm reception and with a slightly revamped menu and approach to its business.
Carolanne Porto, who owns the café and operates it with her daughter Maria-Anne Price, Price’s husband Keith, and Joshua Byrns, said everyone is excited to be back at the café and serving the community.
“We’re so happy to see everyone,” Porto said. “We’re happy to be back in business. We missed everyone. It feels good to be back in business.”
Porto said she was closely watching the developing situation with the coronavirus in March and talked with her daughter about what they would do.
Porto said everyone at the café had to take the safety of the community as well as those who work at the café into consideration.
Even before directives came from the state to close businesses, Porto said everyone at the café was active in monitoring what was going on and considering their options as the virus became a greater cause for concern.
“I called the health department,” Porto said. “I talked with my daughter. We didn’t want to just wait and see what happens.”
Ahead of decisions from the state, Porto decided the safest thing to do would be to close and see how things developed with the coronavirus.
The day after making this difficult decision, the state issued directives for nonessential businesses to stay closed.
As a food service business, Café 119 could remain open, offering takeout and delivery options, but Porto said this was not viable.
“We couldn’t just do takeout,” she said.
But even while closed, Porto and her family were busy and spent the majority of the past five months monitoring the health situation, watching as directives came from the state and health department and planning what a reopening might look like.
Like other businesses this involved not only considering what the physical space of the café could handle for purposes of occupancy limitations and social distancing, this also involved looking at the menu and considering some new options and new ways of serving guests.
Porto said menu items like salads and sandwiches for example were given consideration.
The team looked at what the most popular items were and decided to focus on these top sellers while introducing new options like gluten-free items.
Porto said she loves to bake everything from breads to cookies and these items will be available to buy.
As a baker, Porto said throughout the closure, she was struck by how hard it was to find certain items in the stores.
“I’d go to the store and you couldn’t find flour or gluten-free,” Porto said. “I never really had to buy things from the store. I always bought things from a distributor. So we will be offering ingredients people can buy and take home to bake their own things too.”
Right now Café 119 is putting an emphasis on its dinner boxes.
Porto said each day the options change for these dinner boxes, but no matter the contents, the price remains the same.
At $16, each dinner box comes with a main dish as well as sides and a dessert.
At this time, when so many people are looking for convenient options, Porto said the idea was to offer, good, comfortable food at one price that offered a lot of value and made dinner easy for customers.
Dinner boxes have so far included options like herb baked chicken and mixed vegetables, eggplant parmesan and shrimp cappelli among others and each day Café 119 offers something new.
Additionally many of the staple menu items like appetizers, salads, sandwiches and wraps and burgers are available daily.
Porto said while the restaurant will be open daily until 6:30 p.m., the kitchen will stop taking orders at 4 p.m. and asks those wishing to order to keep that in mind.
After being open just about a week, Porto said the community has welcomed Café 119 back with open arms and everyone at the café is excited and happy to see and serve their guests.
Porto said she has missed seeing familiar faces and reopening has helped connect with regulars as well as new patrons.
“We have to thank our loyal customers,” Porto said. “Without them we would be closed.”
To learn more visit Café 119 at facebook.com/pages/category/American-Restaurant/Cafe-119 or call 315-682-1628.
