Cafe Angelique

[menton1]

After all the talk about Tenafly being a restaurant graveyard, it seems a new place is opening in the restored RR station building. This was a hair salon before, and now it is being renovated inside and it looks promising.

Does anyone have any word as to whether this will be a restaurant, cafe, coffee bar, or just salads and sandwiches? What about an opening date?

[Esther Davidesko]

After all the talk about Tenafly being a restaurant graveyard, it seems a new place Does anyone have any word as to whether this will be a restaurant, cafe, coffee bar, or just salads and sandwiches?  What about an opening date?

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Saturday night I had coffee with a piece of cake at chez angelique.

The place looks great; high ceilings, stone floors and one big flat screen tv that showed at the time I was there Cirque the Soleil.

They have a big assortiment of pastries. The tri-chocalate mousse cake I had was very tastefull.

During the day they serve different kinds of salads and sandwiches, hopefully at the same quality as the pastries. They buy their pastries from NY city. I think they have another place in the city.

they opened somewhere last week (I think wednesday).

[Rosie]

Esther--Welcome to eGullet and thanks for your note. Can you post the address and phone # of this restaurant? Thanks.

[menton1]

Esther--Welcome to eGullet and thanks for your note. Can you post the address and phone # of this restaurant? Thanks.

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The address is just the Tenafly RR Station-- it's the restored RR station building right in the middle of town-- can't miss it. (Sorry Rosie, I decided to respond even though you asked Esther! )

It seems that this is not a place for a meal, just a salad-sandwich cafe. I wonder if Jason and Rachel have any input about this new place.

[Rachel Perlow]

This is the first I'm hearing about it (and I was just driving through town). I'll try to stop by there soon. Thanks for the heads-up.

[shugga]

Does any one know the hours of operation? We're always looking for a gook place to go after the movies for coffee and dessert.

[menton1]

Every time I drive by this place it is very, very crowded-- also looks quite attractive. Are we Egulleters missing something good?

[Rachel Perlow]

I stopped in last week just to have a look. It is a very pretty spot to meet up for coffee and dessert and they have some nice sounding/looking sandwiches. I haven't eaten anything from there and they didn't have a take out menu available, so I don't have their hours handy. However, nothing is actually baked/cooked on premises, according to the counterperson (I assume the sandwiches/wraps are at least assembled on site). Some of the pastries look distinctly Bindi. They have gelato. The prices on the pastry seemed high to me.

I think Shugga should try it after the movies and Menton should have lunch there and report back.

[menton1]

Finally got over to Cafe Angelique today... what a terrific surprise!! Place was buzzing, even on a Thursday afternoon at 2PM. A very pretty place, in the restored unused Tenafly RR station. One side is waitress-service tables, the other side is take-out. A great mix of casual and sophisticated. Very New York, and with good reason, they have 2 other locations in the city. Also, the weather was good so they have 10 tables spilling out onto an outdoor sidewalk next to the old tracks. A very nice place to sit.

The menu is the salad-sandwich type, but the prices are reasonable and the food is excellent, everything is homemade. Chicken and tuna salads are terrific, and the salad plates are with mesclun and a lovely vinaigrette. This is a terrific place for breakfast, lunch, an after dinner snack, or just to go sit with coffee and a pastry and while away some time. Incidentally, the pastries looked gorgeous, of the artisinal variety, but I did not find out the source.

The hours here are long, from early in the morning to 10 weekdays and Midnight on weekends.

This type of wonderful Cafe was long overdue in Tenafly, and definitely deserves a "Quick-Bite" write-up in the Sunday Times!! Hope Jason can post some pictures as well, the food here is very photogenic!

[Rachel Perlow]

everything is homemade

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When I checked the place out I was told that everything is made off site or brought in. What do they actually make there?

[menton1]

everything is homemade

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When I checked the place out I was told that everything is made off site or brought in. What do they actually make there?

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They have another place in the Village where the food is made. That's homemade to me. I'm sure they do their omelettes and put the salads together on-site.

I found the NY menu from Menupages.com; I think it's virtually identical to Tenafly's. Their opening hours are much longer, though. Cafe Angelique Menu

Edited April 7, 2005 by menton1 (log)

[Rachel Perlow]

I think the prices on that NY menu are lower than what I saw in Tenafly. I remember the pastry prices being around $4-6 per serving, but maybe those are just breakfast prices? We'll have to check the Tenafly location out and see if they've gotten any take out menus printed yet.

[menton1]

Did a real lunch Saturday at Cafe Angelique, and it is a really wonderful addition To Downtown Tenafly. Judging from how packed it was, here's hoping it will be here for quite some time.

Seating outside is very comfortable, new stainless steel tables, wrapped around the old restored RR station building. Inside is lovely as well, with a touch of the old and the new. Food is wonderful and appropriate for this casual/sophisticated coffee/sandwich/salad/dessert place. They have omelettes all day, about $8. They have WONDERFUL Danesi coffee from Italy. They also have smaller sandwiches, the mushroom omelette sandwich is actually a good size for $3. And they have a large bagel stick with nova for $3. Other larger sandwiches are about $6-$8, on great breads served with salad. The large salads are gorgeous, a work of art, VERY BIG, and are from $8-10. The desserts are beautiful, and although they did not say it, they look like they might be from Payard NYC. Well worth the $4-$6 price tag.

They are open from dawn until very late every day, midnighjt on weekends. All in all, a wonderful and overdue addition to the town-- Go there, it is great!

[Jason Perlow]

Rachel and I went to Cafe Angelique for lunch today at about 3:30. We waited for about 10 minutes in the dining room, and when nobody came to serve us, we walked out. They had waitstaff there working but they were more interested in kibbitzing with other customers than taking our order. To me that's an immediate strike out.

It looks like they have some nice desserts and the salads look decent, from what they were bringing to other tables. The sandwiches seem extremely overpriced for the sizes they were.

We'll probably go back for coffee and dessert sometime, or maybe breakfast, but I don't really see us going back for lunch. It was extremely hot weather today and the place didn't ventilate very well, which is also a big negative and it probably added a couple of points to my level of impatience with the waitstaff.

Nevertheless it's a cute little place and they have done some nice work renovating the train station.

[Rachel Perlow]

Contributing to our impatience was the lack of air conditioning.

[menton1]

Contributing to our impatience was the lack of air conditioning.

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That's a tough building to air condition properly, old stone with very high ceilings, cut them a little slack-- Go back on a cooler day and sit outside...

Also, their pricing is not that high, IMHO, unless you compare to a diner-- but a place such as Cafe Victoria in Teaneck is striving for the same thing, but is not as nice, food isn't as good, and the prices are about the same as Cafe Angelique.

[Hank]

Jason, there is no excuse for your experience. I am sure that ownership will be glad to hear from you so that they can fix the problem so that it does not happen to anyone else again. Isn't it terrible that you do everything possible to invest and build a good restaurant (cafe) and you are still at the mercy of uncaring or unprofessional waitstaff. Believe me when I say this is not the first one I have run across nor the last with this problem.

[Jason Perlow]

We'll definitely be back another time. They seem to be the only place that has a sitdown cafe with a nice selection of desserts in the general area, short of a place like Baumgarts. It's always nice to have a place like that -- years ago we used to go to Bertolloti a lot in Cliffside Park, back when it was run by the original owners.

Miller's Bakery in Tenafly also is sit down and has pastries (and Ciao Bella has some as well) but clearly not of the quality Cafe Angelique appears to have. It seems more of a after dinner spot than a lunch place to me.

[Rachel Perlow]

I wrote this post for this thread: http://forums.egullet.org/index.php?showtopic=90142 where Lemons asked for a recommendation of a nice restaurant to have lunch at in Englewood, and Menton suggested Cafe Angelique in Tenafly. I figure a response would be more appropriate in the Cafe Angelique thread...

Menton, you are always so hearty in your recommendations of Cafe Angelique, but I have to say I disagree with you. Besides the air conditioning issues (since our posts above, I've eaten there inside and out, with my mother and Jason at different times), the outdoor seating isn't all you've made it out to be either. I mean it's nice that there are tables outside, but you aren't exactly in a park-like setting. The patio is parking lot and railroad track adjacent. Not that the train goes by that often, but I've parked in that lot, right next to the tables, and people usually look annoyed that a car is pulling up just a few feet from their table. Sure, there is a small park on the other side of the parking lot, but it's not like the seating area is in right there next to the grass.

Also, as I live and work in Tenafly, I want to love it, the food is good, although the service has been spotty on each of my visits. It's good for a quick bite, lunch, dessert, when you are in the area, but I wouldn't travel to get to it, it's hardly a destination restaurant. Come to think of it, I have even recommended it to people as a place to have lunch if they are coming to my office before or after lunchtime. But I work right across the street, they wouldn't even have to move their cars.

I just don't get why you tout the place so much? It makes me wonder if you have a stake in it or something. (Not that we care so much about shilling on eG, we'd just rather have relationships disclosed.)

Anyway, when someone is asking specifically for a nice restaurant in Englewood, possibly Japanese, I think a sandwich/salad/iced tea cafe in the next town doesn't exactly fit the bill.

[menton1]

Ah, well, I only wish I was financially affiliated with Cafe Angelique, it is quite a successful place, busy busy busy from morning until night.

Of course, this is not a "fine dining" experience, but IMHO in these 2 towns there are only pretenders in that category anyway. Angelique is just a pleasant, fun place for lunch or a snack or coffee and a fabulous pastry. It's good, it's attractive, it's in a relatively quiet area of a quiet town, and parking is doable. I like the place, it's not an important dining experience, but a relaxing one. And it's certainly not worth getting all worked up into a huge debate over.

[tommy]

i think all suggestions are valid and generally welcome. those who spend too much time critiquing others' recommendations should probably spend more time thinking about restaurants or their own recommendations. many a good recomendation has come from people thinking outside of the box, in my experience. when someone asks for a restaurant there's one thing you can be certain of: that person doesn't know where to go and probably wants suggestions, which i'd think are always welcome. or maybe i just don't understand the process. or maybe there's something else at play here. seems to be a pattern with poster menton1 and a few other posters.

[Rachel Perlow]

No, I just don't understand his overwhelming enthusiasm for this place. I see it everyday, there's plenty of times when it's not busy, btw.

[Rachel Perlow]

I stopped by Cafe Angelique this morning to pick up something for breakfast before my office meeting. They seem to have addressed their air conditioning problems and have a new tables and chairs in the dining room. I'll have to give it another try for lunch sometime to see if the service has improved as well.