For his next project, Trevett Hooper is hitting the road.
Figuratively, at least.
He and his wife Sarah have just announced plans to open Pie for Breakfast, a new breakfast, lunch, and dinner spot that will be housed next door to the Hooper’s Legume and Butterjoint in Oakland.
The menu will be pure road trip style, inspired by the cross-country trips that the pair, along with their four children, have taken, including yearly jaunts to Maine, and some recent Southern state adventures.
Pie for Breakfast will open for breakfast all week, with lunch and dinner service Monday through Saturday. In addition, an adjoining bakery will offer fresh-baked breakfast pastries, desserts and coffee to go, plus the restaurant will feature a beer-centric full bar.
The breakfast menu will feature local, organic whole grains, grass-fed dairy products, eggs, and house-made sausage – think elevated diner fare, like yeasted buckwheat pancakes and fried chicken and waffles. Sandwiches, house-made soups, and salads will be served for lunch, and the dinner menu will center around a ‘meat and three’ option, with diners choosing a main course animal protein, and three sides.
“As a chef, I’ve always really enjoyed making simple preparations,” Hooper says. “Composing a lot of elements on a plate really isn’t my strength. With a classic ‘meat and three,’ people can create their own ideal dish.”
The daily rotating selection of entrees is a direct result of Hooper’s insistence on sourcing locally and seasonally as much as possible.
“By the nature of how we source our food, we have to maintain that flexibility,” Hooper says. Dishes such as fried chicken, ham steak, meatloaf and chicken-fried steak will be paired with a selection of side dishes that include baked beans, Black Eyed peas, pickled vegetables and cornbread.
The new restaurant space will need a complete kitchen build-out (it was previously a bank, pharmacy, and most recently a dentist’s office), but the proximity to Hooper’s current restaurants will make the new venture’s price point significantly lower.
“I think that there’s a way that we can be priced competitively to other breakfast places, and still hold onto our core values of using well-sourced food, and really great eggs, and making our own sausage, because of the operational break that we’ll be getting,” Hooper says.
While Hooper concentrates on Pie for Breakfast, current Legume sous chef Tom Lonardo will become the Chef de Cuisine of Legume, and Legume’s current kitchen manager Jessica George will oversee both Legume and Pie for Breafast’s kitchens.
Over the next few months, the Hoopers will focus on fundraising opportunities.
Pie for Breakfast is scheduled to open in early winter.
Been watching and
Waiting !!!!