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There will be no more “looking forward” to Toast Coffeehouse opening its second Suffolk County location in Patchogue Village. That’s because that day has arrived.
Almost a year since owner Terence Scarlatos signed his lease, the West Coast-style breakfast and lunch spot opened to the public at 8 a.m. this morning, Thursday.
We caught up to Scarlatos inside the restaurant Wednesday night as he and the staff worked to prepare Patchogue’s Toast for its debut on East Main Street.
At that time, he wasn’t even sure if he would be making it home to sleep before the 8 a.m. opening.
“We’re just trying to get all the things prepped and cooked and stocked — and what’s missing?” Scarlatos said. “There’s really a lot more that goes into this than even I was really expecting.”
As for the time it took to open, Scarlatos said building a commercial kitchen and an aesthetically pleasing dining room in a former consignment shop at 46 East Main Street was a big undertaking.
And he wanted to get things right.
“I wanted to create a place that looked like it’s been here for years, and will be here for a long time,” he said. “So I wanted to make sure it was done right. With my first store in Port Jeff we moved into a deli and conformed around it, which over time made it more difficult. So here I really took the time to map out the flow. This really is a game of inches.
At 4,000 square feet, the Patchogue location is twice the size of the Toast in Port Jefferson.
In an interview this summer, Scarlatos, a Ronkonkoma native, said he had romanticized about American 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. Within a couple hours you could find out what was going on that night, what party to go to. It was just something I really took to.” See prior coverage
In 2002 he and his wife, who since stepped back from the business to help with their children, took the concept to Port Jefferson. They started looking for a second spot about three years ago.
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