First things first. Café Santosha is located somewhere likely among the unlikely: It’s in the back of a health food store located in a large shopping center. There are a few elements—mainly decorative and geographical—that could possibly improve the environment, but these may not be realistic; these would suggest the opposite of what Santosha implies in Sanskrit: contentment. Short of moving the café totally outdoors into a temperate climate among lush greens, surrounded by statues of the Buddha near a water feature that may or may not include lotus petals floating in a pond, the café does, as its name suggests, evoke contentment.
Run by Sarah Collins, 33, Café Santosha embodies the idea that meals should be put together thoughtfully, sustainably and with love. Your food is made to order, from scratch, every day.
The vibe, much like Collins herself, is earthy and warm. Elements of the outdoor world have been brought inside in the form of potted plants such as agave and palms adorning the reclaimed black walnut counter, eco-friendly design materials in neutral tones, and her own photographs of food and nature. Mason jars are available for self-service water (at no cost) along with coffee and boxes of herbal tea plucked right from the shelves of the store. You self-bus your utensils, plates and cloth napkins into bins discreetly tucked away on low-lying shelves. You order at the counter and pay up front, which requires you to pass through the store again and inevitably purchase some kind of item that you can feel good about consuming.
The presentation is both homey and beautiful. At the counter, the irresistible daily grain is always quinoa-based “because everyone is just obsessed with quinoa,” she says. The day I visited, that “superfood” was tossed with tomatoes, corn, cilantro and scallions, plus crushed blue corn chips all tied together with mole vinaigrette and presented in a large metal bowl.
There’s also a sweet of the day, such as an apple cinnamon biscuit—sort of a free-form scone—made with spelt flour and a minimum of sugar. Three of Collins’ regular employees—a flash of young women in jeans and loose top-knot buns—are packed into a space no bigger than a New York City kitchen and move effortlessly without bumping into each other.
Café Santosha is one of those places where, if you’re into inventive, flavorful fare loaded with healthy ingredients, it’s hard to decide but nearly impossible to choose poorly. I unknowingly settled on a bestseller: the Indian Breakfast Bowl. Its ingredients, roughly in order, include: kale and baby spinach, roasted Yukon gold potatoes, curried scrambled eggs (or tofu), two different kinds of chutneys and fried black mustard seeds.
I could eat it every day and find something new to love about its heady mix of sweet and heat. Afterward, when Collins came out to talk with me, she immediately reminded me of the James Beard Award-winning vegetarian cookbook author and photographer Heidi Swanson (Super Natural Every Day: Well-Loved Recipes from My Natural Foods Kitchen), with her artfully swept-up pile of blonde hair and deceptively effortless approach to whole foods. Who knew we had our own Heidi Swanson here in the Lehigh Valley?
Collins’ parents, Lloyd and Dianne Burg, opened Healthy Alternatives in 1994, when she was 12, and she became a vegetarian shortly thereafter. (She now identifies as “primarily
vegetarian—it’s easier and quicker.”) Healthy Alternatives is chockablock with rows and rows of supplements and vitamins—arguably more than any supermarket in the region. There are requisite gluten-free and vegan items you’d ex-pect from a health food store, along with organic veggies, bulk items such as grains and nuts, and everything in between. I saw a popular organic food brand offering bone broth, the nutritional elixir du jour, which I’ve never spied in Wegmans. “I have the best pantry here,” she says. Dianne is a nurse, certified nutritionist and homeopath and she and her husband have always owned their own businesses. Collins says her parents do “a million little things behind the scenes” and are a presence in the store; so are her children, Finn, 4, and Emmett, 18 months.
Collins left their home in Quakertown for college at the Pratt Institute in Brooklyn to study art education, with minors in photography and painting. But she always worked at the store. “I’m an only child, and have always been really close with my parents,” she explains. After graduation, it felt really natural to return and she says her parents had always wanted to expand.
Shortly thereafter, the café was born on a hot plate in the back of the store where Collins served soup for five years before expanding to their current space—two months before Finn was born. Soup is revered for its comforting qualities, but I still had to ask: Why soup? It was born out of necessity.
Before the store started getting a reliable source of local organic produce, they’d sometimes receive items that weren’t perfect, such as zucchini. “We just didn’t want to waste anything,” she says. Although she’s not taking photographs and painting every day, her prana (life force) runs through the dishes. “I have to make time for my art, but I still feel creative every day. I’m lucky. It seems very natural with my art degree,” she says.
Seasonal offerings surface in specials and soups. The core menu includes sandwiches: Choose among tuna, chicken, turkey, smoked or baked tofu, regular, vegan and soy cheeses, along with house-made mayos, spreads and veggies between sprouted grain bread, for example. Still, things are subject to change based on availability and, I suspect, inspiration.
Collins is very much a flow-oriented person; when I visited, she was about to change the seasonal selections to spring offerings. She was contemplating a bánh mì salad and what she might debut for a popular feature whose selections regularly rotate—a re-imagined bruschetta plate called “Toast: 3 Ways” (think mint, peas, ricotta; roasted radishes with butter and salt, carrots pickled with purple basil). “I never know exactly what I’m going to do until I sit down and put it together,” she says.
The customers are as varied as they come, too. The café’s location across the street from Air Products makes it a prime lunch spot, but Collins says their customers come from all proverbial walks of life. “We have lots of blue-collar guys who really want a hearty, healthy meal,” she says.
Café Santosha focuses primarily on vegetarian and vegan fare, but not exclusively so. Many items are available with tofu, eggs or grilled chicken, all of which are humanely sourced and organic. The place prioritizes local and seasonal ingredients but there are allowances; tomatoes will be on your salad in the winter. The store (and therefore Collins) sources most notably from Salvaterra’s Gardens, just a few miles away in Alburtis. Collins also finds inspiration from her own backyard. “Growing up, my parents always gardened, and I’ll often bring in fresh flowers in the summer and eggs from my chickens,” she says. “My food is so good because of what I am using,” says Collins.
There’s a refrigerated case stocking all sorts of delectable items, including the Healthy Alternatives salad, chock full of good stuff such as spring mix, carrots, red cabbage, cucumbers, tomatoes, olives, raw walnuts and chickpeas, tossed in the house balsamic vinaigrette. The grain salad of the day and the ever-popular soups can be found there, too. People go crazy for the coconut milk rice pudding, which is both vegan and gluten free—“that goes fast,” she says.
There are even random specialty items, such as the “ginger elixir” I spied in a Ball jar topped with a cute swath of fabric. Turns out, her dad loves the Remedy, a cocktail at Bolete, and she made this for him so he could create his own. A sucker for ginger, I purchased a jar of this ginger, lemon and agave concoction and have been infusing a tablespoon or so in my water in the morning, with plans to add it to home-brewed herbal iced tea or lemonade infusions—if the jar lasts that long.
These kinds of unique items are little prizes for regular customers. But there are also practical matters: getting dinner on the table. To help accomplish that without resorting to less than savory selections, you can pick up sandwiches, salads and full-blown dinners to go. Collins says no one else offers what she’s calling “organic dinners.” You might find an Asian turkey meatball dish with brown rice, maple hoisin sauce and red miso, or, if you are lucky, some of the Mean Green Miso soup, a popular spring offering. It’s a happy bit of potluck sometimes, and the crowd rolls with it. “People have been eating my food for so long, they will try anything, even if it’s something they haven’t had before, like rutabaga,” she says.
The dishes may rotate, but the feeling you get when you eat Collins’ food is like being hugged from the inside. Collins was undoubtedly inspired by yoga; she says she was practicing regularly at Shine in Perkasie before she had children and started running the cafe. In yoga, the word reflects its meaning, “contentment,” but it goes beyond that—it’s about honoring the present moment and being content where you are. “After you have a really good meal, you have that feeling of contentment, it’s so satisfying. That’s what I wanted to convey here,” she says.
It’s a twisty walk through a friendly stockroom on the way to the bathroom. Just outside its door, you’ll encounter a wall covered in inspiring quotes, from Yogi Bhajan to Gandhi to Groucho Marx (hey—you have to be smart to be funny), along with many maxims with no attribution whatsoever. The messages—just like the food—at Café Santosha are clear, uplifting and constantly bring a smile to your face.
