Paoli Cafe

Update: Paoli Cafe is closed.

In a word: Granoli.

The specs: #01007   
6895 Paoli Rd., Belleville 53508
Details at Yelp, Facebook

Latest Paoli Cafe news and reviews

JM ate the Paoli melt.
Nichole ate the nine bean salad and the kimchi.
The bill was $26, or $13/person, plus tip.
JM gave Paoli Cafe a B+; Nichole gave Paoli Cafe an A- (see our grading rubric).

This restaurant's name is a complete cipher. It could be called Paoli Café or the Paoli Grocery or Paoli Local Foods or Paoli Kitchen. Each of these signs was somewhere on the premises. The good news was that all of them fell betwixt the last and the next restaurants alphabetically (Paoli Bread & Brat, and Paoli Pub). What a fun authority control record it would have.

Maybe because of this identity crisis, the menu, posted above the counter, is wide ranging. They've got everything from vegan to veal, though the emphasis is on the hippie/farmer variety. We mean that in the nicest way possible; everything that was available here was farm fresh--probably because this place seems to be a retail outlet for Ruesegger farms.

Everything was pretty danged good. JM's lemonade came in a jelly jar that was perfect for the locale and the hot sunny day. Nichole's nine bean salad was tasty and wholesome. She also stole the kimchi from JM's Paoli melt, which he wasn't going to eat. Paoli Cafe offers five kinds of kimchi which they referred to as mild, medium, hot, hotter and Korean. Nichole settled for mild, and was quite happy with that choice.

JM's sandwich came on a nutty bread and was prepared with plenty of butter. Nichole found the bread to be among the best she'd had.  The smoked gouda cheese was also very tasty, though the whole sandwich was a little disappointing -- it was hard to keep up on a day with three meals in it.

Nichole picked up some grocery items as we left and of all the places we visited in Paoli on this one day, this is the one we'd be most likely to come back to. Though, if the Schoolhouse Café is open, we'd likely have to flip for it or else visit the grocery again after lunch.