Hawthorne Coffee Branches Out

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Lunch at a coffee shop can be an uninspiring prospect. Something slapped together last Tuesday, a gummy muffin, maybe some soup—it is so often a step down from a greasy spoon, barely a step up from going hungry, giving notions of a utilitarian meal and a quick-mawing of carbs in order to hurry back to getting stuff done.

Stepping into Hawthorne may not immediately lead to different ideas. There is a counter case of cookies and hand pies, a cooler softly beckoning with premade sandwiches—ham and cheese, chicken salad, English muffin or bagel breakfast concoctions. But then you might end up there hungry, around noon, say sometime between Wednesday and Sunday. And you may give in to a knowing and cooly confident nod of secretive advice from the barista, and your low expectations could well be socked with a shaved prime rib and half-melted provolone, with sauteed peppers and spurting roasted garlic mayo, all plopped within a ciabatta.  

Quietly, gradually, over the past few months, Hawthorne has begun introducing just such twists and tweaks to food service, subtle enough that even bonafide regulars, like myself, might not be fully cognizant. First came the sandwiches, populating said cooler case like slow-mounting sentinels staking appetite claim. Then build-your-own was introduced, along with refreshing decision fatigue—you want something “Signature,” or something “Impossible”? You want something with housemade pimento or something, with, no, this is not a question, you absolutely want the horseradish-y “Magic Sauce.”

Then suddenly, all at once, steaming wispy steak wedges unfurled out of that yeoman-like paper wrap in my living room, and everything was at once very different. Tender and saucy, indulgent but not quite sinful, butcher quality but quotidian, the prime rib hit like artisanal Arby’s, with the battering, brawny meat-and-cheese mouthfeel of a Chicago corner Italian beef. Yet the package stays compact, tight, everything lovingly nestled between the bun’s charry insides.

Sandwiches of Love

“Sandwiches are my love language,” chef Kelly told me one day. And it’s a message well understood, even all the way back home, from the couch, the protein pocket holding structure enough to comfortably be tabled atop an upright belly, one sprawled expectantly waiting for an afternoon of football and meat to commence. 

It seems refreshing to be able to offer such a bold reappraisal, yet again, of Hawthorne Coffee Roasters, a place that for seven years has operated as the de facto beating heart of this little nook of airport-adjacent land known as the Town of Lake. Through their days the former bar and bowling alley has stood quietly stoic and resilient on Howell Avenue. Nurturing, mothering, Hawthorne acted as home base for the dearly departed and deeply missed Foxfire food truck, as an incubator for the recently passed Iron Grate BBQ, as a host for the Sunday waffles and sandwiches of Press.

It’s such a narrative of nice and community that it may seem easy to overlook why they opened in the first place—husband and wife owners Steve Hawthorne and Kendra Barron realized they didn’t have a coffee shop walkable from their new home. Talk about grassroots.   

Pandemic Rehab

They used the pandemic to lovingly refurbish and rearrange, adding prominence to the bar and to an extensive booze collection, smoothing some rough edges, giving the sprawling space a sprucing while maintaining that unfussy, lived-in feel. There remains a scruffy charm, impossible to acquire with all the shiplap and mason jar bulbs on all of HGTV. It’s a vibe inherent from the spirit of a southside tavern, where years of all sorts of pouring and spillage and jovial clinking of glasses and coming together of friends has yielded a hard-won comfortable wear-and-tear.

Where their cavernous second room could often feel too big, bordering on empty, now it offers elbow room for those of us tip-toeing toward normalcy in these maybe late-stage pandemic times. There’s ample acreage to let your kids sprawl with art, or a patio to while away a sunny day with a Greyhound, a disarmingly refreshing espresso and tonic, or any of the stiffer cocktails cooked up by Hawthorne since his days working as a bartender at Bryant’s and the Jazz Estate.

Of course, some regulars have seemed to make it a work-from-home office, and, yes, it’s still a place to simply stop and grab beans or a cortado. But it remains spiritually libertarian, undefined in that European, romantic third space sense of the word cafe. Sometimes I go for a coffee and end up with beer—not every journey needs to be predefined. 

Golden Buttery Finish

And now, so seemingly begins another chapter, entirely their own. With the prime rib, with a heartwarming cup of luxuriant broccoli and cheddar, with a “Big Ass BLT” of golden buttery finish, slabby blackened bacon, subtly slicking mayo, comes a feel of revelation. Like when the parks department went all in on beer gardens, like when the Beatles added Billy Preston—here is something so unquestionably solid adding an entirely new dimension. Now it’s impossible to imagine the before times, to remember when a view of the lake at South Shore came without the expectation of an ale, to guess at what “Don’t Let Me Down” might sound like without that electric piano.       

There is an almost indefinable joy in finding a neighborhood place, one to call your own, one to make you hear the opening notes of “Cheers” in your heart as you enter and another smiling barista welcomes your children by name. When that place offers such comfort in an uncomfortable world, acts as an oasis of calm, it is simply asking too much that it might sometimes still excite. It’s easy to want to tell everyone, to shout from the rooftops. Though, truthfully I mostly wish to keep it all to myself, hunkered in a back corner with a book and a pour-over of Guatemala, and whatever is the current lunch special on the way to my table.