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Update: Toast Coffeehouse is now officially open in Bay Shore. The address is 9 South Park Avenue, at the corner of Gibson Street. Click here to follow Toast Bay Shore on Facebook.
Original post: This is huge news for early risers and bleary eyed brunch warriors alike: After 15 months, Toast Coffeehouse is about to open in Bay Shore.
Long Island’s third Toast location is expected to open Friday on Gibson Street — just west of Maple Avenue — in what used to be Hemisphere.
“I had expectations of opening in Bay Shore earlier, but the building had sat empty for awhile and we had to upgrade to … current requirements, permits, easements from the town,” explained Toast’s founder and owner, Terence Scarlatos.
“But it allowed me to invest and apply some more creativity to the interior space,” he continued. “It’s really thought-out. We went over every inch of detail inside with a fine-tooth comb.”
The theme in Bay Shore is vintage carnival.
“We were trying to think about times in American history where there were no TV’s or cellphones or social media,” Scarlatos said. “We wanted to create a space that feels like you walked into, say, the 1940s.”
The new Toast has vintage carousel menagerie animals and real, decades-old knock down punks from Coney Island. There are posters up for a flea circus, the strong man and the bearded lady.
Near the bathrooms is a huge, Coney Island-inspired mural painted by local artist Amanda Reilly.
But it’s not too in-your-face, Scarlatos says.
It’s all about setting a tone.
The existing locations are exceptionally popular. It’s not atypical for people to wait up to 45 minutes midweek. Weekend waits will often top 90 minutes, though staffers suggest people use the nowait app so diners can do something else until their table is ready.
The first Toast Coffeehouse opened in Port Jefferson in 2002. The Patchogue location opened in 2015.
The menu will be about the same as the other Toast Coffeehouses — with some exceptions — though the Bay Shore location will be the only one with a full liquor license.
“So we’ll be making some cocktails; we’re working on a brunch punch right now for our specials menu,” Scarlatos said. “We’ll do the mudslides and we’re inventing something new with espresso.”
Here’s some quick menu items:
Chocolate chip cookie dough pancakes
Rice Krispies-crusted French toast with strawberry Nutella
Chicken apple sausage omelettes with roasted red peppers and smoked gouda cheese
In prior interviews, Scarlatos, a Ronkonkoma native and St. Anthony’s High School graduate, said he had romanticized about coffeehouses ever since spending time on the West Coast in the 1990s.
“I traveled for about nine years, I moved to Seattle and then down the coast to Oregon, California, working in restaurants as a cook,” he said. “One of the greatest things about these different places was the coffeehouses, where you could go and have breakfast and meet up with people.”
Scarlatos said he thought the crowds would taper off in Patchogue after the initial buzz of Toast’s opening.
“But it just kept getting busier and busier,” he said.
He’s about to bring the buzz to Bay Shore.
Here’s what Toast looked like in October, during the buildout:
A peek inside Toast Coffeehouse coming soon to downtown Bay Shore
