June 2, 2008
By: Ken Alan
kalan@aroundphilly.com
The Du Jour concept is a developmental and expanding one; the lifestyle café, set inside a contemporary environment, is a wonderful alternative to the fast-food grind with its dine-in/carry-out service. Think of it as Starbucks with salmon.
This Haverford Square gourmet market has been a popular draw for the Main Line set – families and professionals, local students and older adults – look, there’s my cousin Lisa and her kids (she’s the typical soccer mom), all relaxing in a setting that does indeed bring to mind that ubiquitous coffee chain, though frankly, I think that Du Jour’s java (Illy brand) is much better than the stuff pumped out by Seattle.
Of course, you can’t get sit-down brunch, lunch or dinner at Starbucks. And while you can order meals at other casual, not-so-fast food spots like Cosi or Panera, the end results can hardly be described as high-quality home meal replacement, let alone peak-fresh ones.
Du Jour isn’t your typical chain-i-fied café concept as its owner, Marty Grims, and his pedigree illustrate with impressive results.
Grims has quite a few fine dining operations under his command.
He has shore outposts on Long Beach Island which include Daddy O, a boutique hotel and restaurant, and The Plantation, and in South Jersey, he runs The Inlet at Somers Point. Grims’s Philly venue, The Moshulu, is more than just eye-popping nauticals and deck-top glitz. On board, his staff has run this clipper ship with AAA four-diamond aplomb through its storied years. Serious stuff, for sure, though the ship’s Bongo Bar has been known to rock out on many a summer’s night.
With Du Jour, Grims has proven that this niche (gourmet café/market) can be capitalized upon in a town such as Haverford, paving the way for future development. Look for a second Du Jour inside the Symphony House (Broad and Spruce streets in Center City) this summer.
The Haverford Square space is inviting; its sun-splotched logo sums up the eye-opening experience Grims and his managing partner, Maureen Ferguson, wish to impart.
The café features a real marketplace vibe. The kitchen is open and aisles are chock full of gourmet take-home items while the real decoration lies within those shiny display cases where a colorful mélange of prepared food beckons.
I’ve been to Du Jour scads of times for lunch, enjoying their Thai pasta salad, their daily soups, brick oven pizzas and especially, cheese-layered flatbreads, which is a menu item that’s hard to come by around these parts.
Costs are gourmet-market applied: paninis run $8.95, Angus burgers are $9.95, and pizzas are $8.95 (small) and $12.95 (large) or thereabouts.
Prices, I find, are a couple bucks more than your typical Atlanta Bread Company order board listings, but the trade-off is nothing that’s pre-packaged, no microwave-d this and frozen that.
Dinnertime is when things get really interesting at Du Jour, where Grims and Ferguson take their casual café and turn it into a serious-styled BYO operation. You’re still in Starbucksian environs, sure, yet you have a full high-end menu from which to choose. There’s apps like Panko crusted crab cake with caper remoulade and grilled lamb tenderloin on crisp flatbread and entrees, which hover around $20, such as wasabi crusted tilapia, pecan-crusted pork tenderloin and medallions of filet mignon.
Come to think of it, much of the plates du jour served at Du Jour are, in actuality, mirror images of what you’ll find at the rest of Grims’s restaurants. The butternut squash soup recipe is the same as the one served during my last visit to Daddy O. Ditto the sesame crusted calamari, those squeeze-y bottle splashes of Vietnamese chili sauce reminiscent of the ones employed and enjoyed at The Inlet. Two months ago I had seared rare yellowfin tuna on board The Moshulu. Now it’s in front of me at Du Jour.
Granted, the setting is different, but the quality and preparation is just the same, and here, I can even get a full platter to take home (plus breads, cooking oils, chocolates, etc) for later.
I remember that Haverford Square nook from years before. A chef by the name of Francis Trzeciak initially opened up a place there called Quisset, then renamed it Provence. The French bistro thing wasn’t quite in so he moved way westward into the country to establish the Birchrunville Store Café (now one of the hardest-to-land tables in the region). Then it became Pear, though that fruit wilted after a year or two. Finally, with Du Jour, success seems to have stuck within this gourmet market concept.
Philly follows soon (Symphony House will have a full liquor license) and Grims promises several more as well in strategic locales throughout this area. Maybe one farther west, say, in my neck of the woods? When I pressed Grims about this last year during an interview, he hadn’t even heard of my town.
“It’s the one with the Cosi which is next to the Subway. In other words, we need a Du Jour desperately.”
Apparently, my neighbors and I will have to get in line. One Du Jour at a time…
Till then, at least there’s (sigh) coffee and brownies at the Starbucks.
