BY GLORIA STRAVELLI
Staff Writer
CHRIS KELLY staff Ron Collucci, a partner in Savanna, sits on a banquette that is part of the renovation that will transform a long-running coffeehouse in The Galleria in Red Bank into an upscale café offering a tapas menu. There are times when a tried-and-true formula needs revamping. That’s the case with Red Bank’s original coffeehouse, House of Coffee, which will reopen at The Galleria on Bridge Avenue recently with a new format and an evocative new name — Savanna.
Spurred by a west side revival, owners of the coffeehouse, including a new partner, have reinvented the popular eatery — the décor, ambiance and menu are all new. Only the well-loved coffee remains the same.
“We’ve evolved into something new now, a small-plate concept. We’re still serving coffee, but we’re taking it up a notch,” explained Jim McHarg.
“People want more, really, than just coffee,” noted Hunter Brown.
“House of Coffee was unique when it opened. That’s what we’re doing; we’re going to give Red Bank something it doesn’t have.”
That something is a tapas bar and hours that extend until 3 a.m., changes designed to remake the coffeehouse into an upscale eatery and after-hours place to see and be seen.
“It’s a brand-new restaurant,” added Ron Collucci, the new partner in the transformation of the coffeehouse to a trendy, upscale café. “The right place and time is now to be on the west side.”
An early transplant to the west side, House of Coffee may have had the best coffee in town but it definitely was ahead of the curve.
“People would come in and say, ‘We love you, but you’re on the wrong side of town,’ ” recounted Brown.
Now, the coffeehouse finds itself surrounded by a wave of development that is remaking the west side, including a state-of-the-art theater across Bridge Avenue, major office projects within walking distance, and more changes to come.
McHarg, Middletown, and Brown, Oceanport, have owned House of Coffee since 1999, and kept it basically the same since taking over.
The coffeehouse – Red Bank’s first — opened in a narrow storefront on Monmouth Street in 1989 and quickly garnered a reputation for serving the area’s best coffee.
House of Coffee soon outgrew the spot, moving in 1992 to its present location — a 3,000-square-foot space at The Galleria — where it had tripled its customer base by the time McHarg and Brown acquired it.
But by 2004, the partners saw signs that the popularity of coffeehouses in general had peaked.
“When Starbucks reported a decline in earnings, that confirmed something we’d been seeing,” McHarg said. “The coffeehouse market has been saturated. There are so many of them — they’re everywhere. In order to survive in Red Bank, you can’t be just another coffeehouse.
“We could see opportunity here and it was still a viable business, but we knew we needed to take it to a different level,” he said. “The changes all demand more than a coffeehouse.”
At the same time as McHarg and Brown were mulling the future of the coffeehouse, Collucci was looking to open a restaurant in town after closing Nové, a high-end Broad Street boutique, in March.
“After 9/11, there was just a major change in our business,” he explained. “But everybody knows I love this town. I didn’t want to leave after Nové. I was thinking about another direction.”
Collucci, who owned a restaurant in North Jersey, saw the potential for a new type of restaurant at the coffeehouse location.
Savanna will introduce tapas to the Red Bank culinary scene, Collucci noted. European in origin, on this side of the Atlantic “tapas has taken on the meaning of small plate, a little of this and that,” he explained.
Available at a fixed price of $8-12, the tapas menu will include an array of foods like tarts, frittatas, small pizzas, gourmet cheeses, meats and seafood available Tuesday through Saturday from 11 a.m. to 3 a.m. Soups, panini, gourmet salads and sandwiches will also be on the lunch menu, and a full dinner menu will be available. The café, which seats 75, is BYOB.
Savanna’s coffeehouse roots will still be evident, if more upscale, McHarg noted.
Coffee beans will still be roasted on the premises (150–300 pounds of beans are roasted per week), but coffee will now be brought to the table in glass French press pots that produce a more robust brew. The upside is that all 20 varieties of coffees will be available, as will other variations like cappuccino, latte and chai, as will desserts baked on premises, including the signature house cheesecake.
The $200,000 renovation has transformed the spare interior into a comfortable Southern café where banquettes, soft lighting and fabric draped from the ceiling encourage lounging.
“I always loved this place. I felt it had an ambiance that couldn’t be re-created,” Collucci said “It has a relaxed feel, a Southern ambiance. Broad Street is very hectic. We want people to be able to come here, to chill out and enjoy it.”
“What we’re trying to create is a niche, a place for people to enjoy the wonderful ambiance but not have to sit down to a three-course dinner,” he continued. “It’s here if they want it, so is ‘coffee and …’ anytime. If it’s late-night, small-plate food you want, that’s fine too.”
“We expect to draw on the theater crowd, and there’s a large contingent of people who work at Red Bank restaurants. When the bars close down at 2 a.m., people will want late-night fare but won’t have to go to the diner,” said Brown.
“If it’s getting late and you’re in the mood for something to eat, you’re coming here,” Brown added. “This will be a place where people can come and talk. It will be a lot cooler; this will be a very sexy place to be.”
“This can be another restaurant row [as in New York City],” added Collucci. “And there is parking, that’s the key. We have parking on this side of town.”