Taste of home

Author Michael Pollan famously advised, “Don’t eat anything your grandmother wouldn’t recognize as food,” but he’d be really comfortable with the whole ingredients used at TASTE CAFÉ.

My late-afternoon lunch of quiche and salad ($8) was a lovely, warm, light and earthy-tasting compilation of eggs, butter, goat cheese and sliced leeks baked into a savory crust. The side of fresh greens had spinach tossed into the mix, and bits of Gorgonzola added surprising bursts of sharpness that went nicely with the roasted spicy walnut halves and the raspberry champagne-merlot vinaigrette.

“We use all my mother’s recipes — my mother [Jane] is my partner,” explains co-owner and pastry chef Hannah Heber. “My whole family’s English, and I’m the only one without the accent.”

She describes the menu as “old English comfort foods” that have been in her family for years. (You can even get crumpets.) The quiche I enjoyed so much? “I remember going to my grandmother’s house and eating that quiche,” Heber says with a smile, adding, “My mother would have had it with a cup of tea.”

There are plenty of other savory treats (including moussaka, shepherd’s pie and the surprising South African bobotie), plus tea and Doma espresso drinks to go with pastries such as the almond breakfast cake ($2.25). Described as “scratch-baked daily with raspberries baked in the middle,” it is an appealing paradox of butter and almond aromas with mellow flavors — at once rather densely textured and crumby, yet moist and light, with the fresh raspberries offering a tart line of scarlet in contrast to the delicately sweet yellow of the cake.

“I feel that if you bake with quality ingredients and you make [everything] fresh every day, it speaks for itself,” says Heber. I suspect her grandmother would agree.
— M.C. PAUL

Taste Café, at 108 S. Howard St., is open Mon-Fri 7 am-6 pm, Sat 8:30 am-2 pm. (They’re closed on Sunday — for now.) Visit www.tastecafespokane.com, e-mail info@tastecafespokane.com, fax 315-5300, or call 468-2929.