Some restaurants are built around a signature dish; others are built around a feeling.
For the last six months, guests have wandered into Bricks European Café for thoughtfully crafted sandwiches, velvety espresso beverages and house-baked pastries.
However, for husband-and-wife owners Petr Erdei and Catie Adams, those daytime offerings were never a final destination, but rather the opening chapter to a larger, more immersive vision: a European-inspired gathering place where the pace softens as daylight fades, wine glasses replace coffee mugs and a concise, shareable menu transforms dinner from a meal into an evening.
Now, the experience they’ve envisioned since day one is falling into place, one plate at a time.
Bricks European Café launches dinner service
There was no formal announcement when dinner arrived — no countdown or flashy promotion. Instead, the couple unlocked their doors as the evening crowd began filtering onto Canal Street, letting the café’s next chapter unfold organically just weeks ago.
They had quietly tested the concept months earlier with a one-night “Raw Bar & Bubbles” event, where fewer than 20 guests traded iced lattes and croissant sandwiches for tableside service, draft prosecco and freshly shucked IROC oysters.
“They managed it in the kitchen really well — the preparation — and we figured out, layout-wise, what worked great and that we easily could have done more,” Adams said, replacing the café’s plush sofas with dinner tables to accommodate upward of 30 guests.
“So, once that happened, we realized, OK, this is doable,” she continued.
Though dinner was initially slated to launch in January, the couple chose to first settle into business, fine-tuning their operations and letting the expansion happen when the timing felt right.
“I think, as per usual, when you’re opening a business, you just expect things to go a certain way, and we learned that we needed to sort of reassess,” Adams said.
“We would get so busy …. And I was so happy with the lunches, because we did something like 4,000 sandwiches,” from January to April, Erdei added, flying through roughly 60 pounds of turkey each week.
“So, I was just like, ‘I can take time for this; I don’t have to rush. I have to do it right,'” he continued. “And that’s the main thing, you know? I want to do things right.”
What’s on the dinner menu at Bricks European Café?
The owners initially eased into evenings with a concise menu of just five thoughtfully composed small plates.
Last week, however, they expanded the concept with a more robust dinner menu that embraces the same quality-over-quantity philosophy while offering guests greater flexibility — whether stopping by for a glass of wine and a few shared bites or settling in for a multicourse meal tailored to your appetite.
“Sometimes having restrictions is a good thing; it keeps you in your lane,” Adams said of the 1,000-square-foot cafe.
“… It’s easy to get excited and run away with every idea that you have … . So, I think having a smaller space, even if we did start to run away with ideas, it brings us back down, like ‘this is what you have to work with, so you better make it count.’”
The café’s new menu features several shareable cold plates, from hand-cut beef carpaccio to fresh burrata with grated pecorino and shrimp salad prepared with a lemon basil vinaigrette, as well as a rotating, scratch-made soup of the day — available in a cup or bowl — and several familiar salads.
Entrée-style features, more often than not a starch, will rotate, the couple noted — a reflection of both the changing seasons and Erdei’s creative instincts.
Most recently, the café featured three variations of pappardelle pasta — a creamy basil pesto ($24), traditional beef Bolognese ($26) and shrimp and sausage ($26), with each al dente ribbon coated in a savory house garlic butter sauce.
Alongside a hand-selected menu of predominantly European red and white wines available all day, rounding out the evening offerings is a slice of citrus olive oil cake, prepared with an airy stracciatella cream ($8) and a ramekin of silky crème brûlée, topped with Erdei’s hand-whipped cream.
For the couple, the evening service represents more than an expansion of hours.
“You know when you go into a place, have a glass of wine, a nice meal and it just feels good? It’s a space you want to be in; it’s social and pleasant,” Adams said.
“… That’s sort of where this whole European café (concept) derived from. And lunch is great, but it’s a different ambiance — a different vibe,” she continued. “So I think the evening — that hanging out and socializing — is something that we want to experience as much as we want our customers to experience.”
Bricks European Café is open from 9 a.m. – 4 p.m. Monday – Thursday and 9 a.m. – 8 p.m. for its dinner service on Friday and Saturday. For information, call 386-402-4710 or visit brickseuropeancafe.com.
— Helena Perray is the food and dining reporter for The Daytona Beach News-Journal. Follow her on Instagram, and support local journalism by subscribing.
This article originally appeared on The Daytona Beach News-Journal: Canal Street café launches intimate, European-inspired dinners
Reporting by Helena Perray, Daytona Beach News-Journal / The Daytona Beach News-Journal
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By Helena Perray, Daytona Beach News-Journal | USA TODAY Network
