HIVE Café provides food sensitivity-friendly food to Kutztown community
By Kara Armstrong
If you ask Kutztown University students what their go-to restaurants are, HIVE Café is not a likely response. This is not a reflection of the food quality, rather, it’s the result of two factors, the first being its location. HIVE Café is located in downtown Kutztown, but the restaurant is tucked about a block away from Main Street, near a hot yoga studio and martial arts business. If you’re not a yogi or a karate student, you’re not likely to stumble upon HIVE while traipsing Main Street for a bite to eat. It’s out of sight and out of mind.
If you do hear about HIVE (maybe your pescatarian roommate, like mine, raves about the chef’s talents, or maybe you find Yelp’s list of vegan eats in Kutztown, PA), you’ll Google their menu and realize that they’re only open 12 hours per week, 11 a.m. to 7 p.m. on Fridays. and 11 a.m. to 3 p.m. on Saturdays. Then you’ll probably start to wonder how HIVE Café turns a profit, and it will remind you of the Lady Gaga photos that went viral a few years ago, depicting Gaga “doing day jobs for fun because she’s bored.” Is this the passion project of a wealthy someone who likes to play chef on the weekends?
Regardless of the owner’s identity, HIVE is definitely not the local watering hole you can swing by on a whim; a trip takes some premeditation. But if you’re like me, dying of curiosity to see the inside of this elusive eatery, you’ll find the time.
That time came on a Friday in November, uncharacteristically warm at almost 70 degrees. A friend and I had plans to meet up for coffee and, despite HIVE only listing three coffee drinks on the menu (a latte, an affogato and an organic coffee), we decided to give it a try.
The inside of HIVE is a blend of industrial and botanical, and it reminds me of a post-apocalyptic garage that’s been reclaimed by wildlife (a fantasy-world kind that cares about interior design). The floors are concrete, and a large tri-panel door is open, revealing a rectangle of open breeze. A vintage-looking refrigerator offers an array of waters—sparkling, coconut and antioxidant-infused—and plant-based drinks like aloe vera juice. The words MILK EGGS DAIRY PRODUCTS run across the top of the fridge in red letters. Ironic, given that HIVE’s vegan offerings contain none of the above.
There is one employee, who I presume to be the owner. She is a petite brunette woman with a contagious smile and a demeanor that reminds me of a beloved aunt. She wears no name tag and doesn’t offer a name, but a brief Facebook search reveals her to be Sarah, who, as suspected, is the owner of the café. While my friend and I survey the menu, she flies around the kitchen, preparing another order. The menu is written in neat scrawl on a large chalkboard, displaying more vegan options than I’ve ever seen in one place, even with a chunk of them hidden behind the wild fronds of an overgrown plant.
My eye catches on the Blue Bell and Shroom HIVE Burger, a “gourmet powerhouse” made with Blue Bell cheese, organic mushrooms and caramelized onions.
One of my most questionable traits, according to my friends and family, is that I love mushrooms. I’ll eat them on pizza, on a sandwich, on pasta—even just raw—so when I see the Shroom burger, I know this is what I must order. I’ve never tried blue cheese before, having been freaked out by the concept of willingly eating mold. On another day or at another place, I might ask for a substitution. However, fueled by my roommate’s high praise, I decide to put my trust in Sarah’s talents, and I order the burger as HIVE intended it.
I get the Shroom burger; my friend gets the vegan mac and cheese. It’s worth noting that I am not a vegan or a vegetarian, so my experience with animal product alternatives ends at dairy (thanks to growing up with lactose-intolerant family members). We take a seat at the table nearest to the open door, soaking up the weather, and Sarah brings us a carafe of water with two metal cups.
Our food follows shortly after. The burger arrives on a small metal tray with a pickle and a bag of Cape Cod potato chips. Sarah warns me that she made the patty a little big and to be careful when I pick up the burger. My friend’s mac and cheese steams in a white porcelain bowl, sprinkled with a brownish-red spice.
The burger patty itself seems to be made of black beans, quinoa and breadcrumbs. It’s almost as if the blue cheese is infused into it, melted into the crevices. Among the many things I’ve discovered about myself at college, the most recent is that I do not like blue cheese. I can’t pick it off; so I merely ask for ketchup.
Blue cheese aside, the burger is solid. It has a soft sesame seeded bun and a handful of perky greens that are, according to HIVE’s website, locally grown. The caramelized onions and mushrooms add an appreciated layer of flavor, though their small size makes them prone to falling out of the burger.
The patty has some crispiness to the outside while retaining a moist center. Some chunks do fall apart, but I attribute most of it to the oversized patty, hanging off the edges of the bun. Besides, there is only so much one can do to hold a vegan patty together (no eggs, a chef’s go-to binding ingredient). At some point you have to embrace the fall-apartness.
While much of the flavor is infiltrated with blue cheese, the few bites I get without cheese taste mostly of quinoa and black beans (both foods I enjoy). If I were at a cookout, I would be just as happy receiving this black bean quinoa patty as I would be one made with 100% beef—I might just be a little more careful to eat over a plate.
The Shroom burger is priced at $14, and the HIVE Burger Classic is $13.50. For local comparison, the Kutztown Tavern’s vegetarian burger option, the “Beyond Burger” is priced at $12.95. The Tavern’s Beyond Burger features a Beyond Meat patty, cheddar, Cajun ranch and a toasted pretzel roll, served with chips and fries.
There is less than a dollar price difference, and where the Tavern’s burger features a presumably store-bought Beyond patty, HIVE’s patty is made from scratch with organic ingredients. Is it worth the upcharge? I think so.
My friend’s mac and cheese, of which I steal a bite (and then a few more), is nutty and somehow just as creamy as some non-vegan mac and cheeses. She describes her bowl as “more than mac and cheese,” and I couldn’t agree more. Many mac and cheeses rely solely on the cheese flavor to carry them; this mac and cheese can’t do that. The result: a creamy, savory pasta dish bursting with flavor. The red spice sprinkled on top has a little kick to it—chili powder or paprika, maybe.
For those searching for a good vegan mac and cheese—this is it. It’s a HIVE must-try. The mac and cheese is a little on the pricey side at $10 per bowl, but for dairy-free eaters, I’d say it’s worth it.
My friend and I don’t make any plans to order dessert, but Sarah asks us if we want to try free samples of her oat milk soft serve. We say yes, of course.
She hands us heaping sample cups piled with maple vanilla soft serve, stuck with small wooden spoons that remind me of shovels. The menu advertises nine other flavors, including classics like chocolate as well as some hard-to-come-by flavors like matcha and salted caramel cashew.
The notes of vanilla and maple are there but subtle, not overly sweetened, which I appreciate. In my past experiences with non-dairy ice creams, it always seemed as though manufacturers tried to make up for the lack of dairy with heaping amounts of sweetener, resulting in a barely edible attempt at dessert. This is no such thing. The texture of the soft serve is slightly icy, which in my experience, is common with non-dairy ice creams and inevitable when a non-dairy milk freezes. When I let the ice cream melt away in my mouth, I’m left with granules of what I assume are oats.
A soft-serve cone costs $7.50 and a milkshake costs $10. According to HIVE’s website, the ice cream is made from scratch. Is the price fair for the amount of work it takes to make oat milk ice cream from scratch? Surely. For vegans, this is likely one of the only places in the vicinity that serves non-dairy ice cream, so they probably won’t bat an eye at the price tag. Again, I don’t eat vegan, so while the soft serve was tasty, I probably wouldn’t purchase either treat, since there are more cost-effective options around town.
The cost of HIVE’s food ranges from fair to pricey. $14 for a scratch-made organic burger feels fair. $9 for a side of squash fries (which appear to be just grilled pieces of squash, albeit organic) feels like I could make the same thing for a third of the price. Nothing feels like a bargain, so if you’re on the lookout for a cheap place to eat, keep searching.
Would I think twice about the price if I were in a city? Probably not. The upscale menu options and the prices make me think HIVE would fit better in Philly or Kennett Square, not a college town, competing for students’ limited spending budgets.
As one such student with a limited spending budget, would I regularly eat here? No, not when I know my dollar will stretch further at other places. Would I eat at HIVE on occasion to support a small business with a kind owner? Yes, I think so.