Sometimes you go looking for opportunities, and sometimes they come looking for you.
For Ryan Macey and Josh Romano it was the latter that resulted in their owning and cooking at Cafe Loren in Avalon. Their tale along the way is one of friendship, coincidence and a love of good food.
Both men never thought they would end up running a fine dining restaurant like Cafe Loren. Romano, born in Pittsgrove Township, Salem County, got his first cooking experience as a teenager when his mother drove him to Stewart's in Vineland to flip burgers delivered to your car. Macey, from Bridgeton, signed up for an extracurricular program while at St. Augustine Prep to attend the Academy of Culinary Arts at the Atlantic Cape Community College, where Romano would later attend.
Both of them went to college for something they decided was not right for them: Macey, health care management, Romano, business. And both of them ended up back at the Culinary Academy at the urging of their mothers where they would both study under a chef who would shape their future.
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It was 2013, Romano was in his early 20s and one of his instructors at ACCC was Stephen Serano, owner and chef at Cafe Loren at the time.
"I thought he was really cool, I liked his attitude, I liked his demeanor, he was an excellent cook and chef. So I asked him if he ever took on apprentices and he asked me if I wanted a job," Romano says.
Little did he know that Macey was also studying under Serano a few years ahead of him and had also been offered a job at Cafe Loren. The two would meet when Macey was promoted to the grill and Romano took over his position in the pantry as garde manger preparing salads, cold appetizers and desserts.
"Whenever I had questions about my station," Romano recalls, "because I was so green at working at a restaurant of this caliber, I inherently had to go to Ryan for how do you make this dressing, how should I set up my station, anything like that. And that's a lot of what pulled me towards him as opposed to the other people that worked there because it was a direct line of help without going to the head chef and bother him with a silly question. I could just ask Ryan."
"The kitchen is so small you get to be friends with everyone," adds Macey. "And we were younger when we first started so we would go out and blow off a little steam after work, go out to a bar, go to the beach and have a good time. You just develop friendships that way."
"I took the job with Steve (Serano) here because I liked Steve," Romano remembers. "I had no aspirations of having a restaurant with white tablecloths and reservations. I wanted to open up a sandwich shop that sold lottery tickets."
The first couple seasons they were working together during the summer, working at other restaurants in the winter -- Macey in Philadelphia, Romano in Collingswood -- to refine their craft while remaining friends, hanging out together after work, meeting for trivia nights at a local bar.
"We just kept the friendship going throughout the winter," continues Macey. "I would go over his house sometimes and his wife would make us dinner. When the phone call from Steve (Serano) happened, he said, 'hey we're thinking about selling the restaurant, do you guys want to buy it?' I thought immediately this is way too much for me to handle on my own, because he had partners that handled the front of the house and the business side. And I didn't think at the time I was ready to handle all that. So I called Josh and the two of us talked about it and decided that that was the next move to make. You can't work for somebody forever in this industry."
They worked out a deal with Serano and his partners, Patty and Mark Rutledge, and bought the place the following year in 2017. Macey was 30, Romano was 27.
"It was exciting and terrifying all at the same time," recalls Macey.
The Rutledges would continue to help them on the business side and Serano had taught them the kitchen side with how to put out a consistently high quality product.
"They made this a thousand times easier," says Macey. "Patty would come in for the first couple weeks and help me do the checkouts at the end of the night and explain how to do payroll."
"There was a lot more pressure when you have your butt on the line," continues Romano, who recruited his wife, Lauren, to help out in the front of the house. "Fortunately we were familiar with the four walls that were here and we still had the same regular customers. We just kept doing what he had been doing and then learning what we didn't know we didn't know. But we got through it. The first year was a good year."
The two kept things the same, Romano at the grill, Macey at sauté. They also kept the menu the same, with a few tweaks. What they enjoy most are creating the weekly specials, where they can show off their talents.
"We simply cook food that we want to eat," says Romano. "One of the things that we do that helps us stand out from other places is that we are traditional without becoming outdated. We are still one of the nicer restaurants that have white tablecloths on the tables, our servers still wear white button-ups with ties. It's not that we're reverting to 1980s hospitality, but we really try and run a very hospitable, classy, for lack of a better term, dining experience for our guests."
Most popular is their pan-seared halibut, seasoned only with salt and pepper, with a sweet pea and pancetta risotto, grape tomato chutney and a ginger carrot emulsion.
"That has been on the menu since I started," says Macey. "People like it. A lot of our customers have been coming here for, not just years, but for decades.
Also popular is their Lobster and Shrimp "BLT" Scampi.
"We get fresh lobsters every day, whole live lobsters," explains Romano. "We break them down. It's a traditional scampi sauce, heavy on the garlic, white wine, butter. Comes with fresh linguine that we get from our friend Luca over at Severino Pasta. And we toss it with some tomatoes, applewood smoked bacon, and top it with charred corn and fresh, grated parmigiano reggiano."
And of course the dish named for the place, Veal Loren, is another menu staple customers keep coming back for. Pan-seared veal medallions are served over roasted Yukon gold potatoes, with a garlic cream sauce, shrimp and crab, sautéed asparagus and a port reduction.
The two have a playful competition over the specials each produces that week. Romano's often focus on meats he makes on the grill, Macey with fish, often with a Hawaiian influence as the result of a stint at a Hawaiian restaurant he worked at one winter where he learned Hawaiian and Japanese dishes.
Are they competitive?
"Every day," jokes Macey. "Maybe a little bit. But it's like, look what I can do."
Cafe Loren
2288 Dune Drive, Avalon
609-967-8228; [email protected]
Hours: 5:30 to 9:30 p.m. Wednesday to Sunday
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