Photo by Howard Owens.
There are no microwaved meals at Kade's Scratch Kitchen, 15 Main St., Le Roy.
All meals are made to order. They're not reheated entrees. They're not made in a commercial kitchen in another state.
There isn't even a microwave in the kitchen. The only microwave is behind the dining counter.
"We use it to heat brownies," said co-owner Beth Burger. "That is the only reason we have it."
Burger's partner, John Steward (also her fiancé) describes the cuisine at Kade's as "classic family fare foods" that have been elevated. Every item fits into the "scratch kitchen" concept.
"We dedicated a whole month before we opened into research and development," Steward said. We went through trial periods for the burger alone. There were days when we would literally open up six or seven different burgers, try each one, compare and contrast, and then do another tasting. And same with the french fries. So, you know, I have a lot of this knowledge I carried over from my previous jobs, but we are trying to have an immersive team effort and a collaborative effort with our management team."
What might you find on the menu? Pizza, chicken French, chicken parm, spaghetti and meatballs, linguini and clams, steak frites, and burgers. And for dessert, cookies, cannoli, fudge brownies, cheesecake, and sundaes.
Burger and Steward discussed several food items, the process for selecting quality ingredients, and the development process.
One item that comes in frozen is the french fries, but even there, the team paid attention to the details, trying five different products before settling on the winning candidate.
"We do get the best on the market," Steward said. Our french fries are actually the same french fries that McDonald's uses, minus the preservatives."
For soft-serve ice cream, the couple did thorough research.
"We went and drove everywhere within a 15-mile radius to try the soft serve ice cream, to see what we liked the best," Burger said. "We found it. We were really happy about that, too. Our soft serve is delicious. It's dangerous. If you have an ounce of it, you're like, 'Okay, I'm done.' It's so rich It's actually custard.
The bread is a milk bread, which Burger describes as unique and special. It's baked in-house.
"Our bread is delicious. It's called milk bread - just so light, airy, and buttery," she said.
When you get a sandwich, it's coming on the milk bread and usually with a sauce developed at the restaurant.
"I'm particularly fond of our wicked smart hot sauce," Steward said. "It's really hot, but it's got a very good depth profile in flavors. So now you get the heat, but you don't get, like, the heat of straight capsaicin."
Burger described it as very layered.
"It’s quite pleasant, actually. So even someone who doesn't like, is afraid of spice, it's still likable. It's so flavorful," she said.
There is also a medium hot sauce and a mild sauce available
"We want families to be able to come in here with their kids, because we have our own children, and we want it to be a nice, a family-friendly place, but it's also a place that you can bring a date," Burger said. "We have some really nice wines. We really care about customer service and going the extra mile for our guests."
If you go to Kade's for dinner, you might want to cap off your meal with the cheesecake (your correspondent was provided with a slice).
The team tried out eight or nine house-made cheesecake recipes before hitting the right notes.
"I'll be honest," Burger said. "I was a little bummed about it, because I wanted the classic cheesecake, and they wanted to do their little thing where they just kind of changed the products around, and I was more annoyed that they were right. It's the best I've ever had. Yeah, it's really good."
Burger and John Steward both have extensive backgrounds in the restaurant business. They met when she was a bartender at Farmers Creekside and he was the sous chef. Burger, a lifelong Le Roy resident, was co-owner of Woody's Deli and a bar manager at Batavia Downs. From Creekside, Steward went to Terry Hills as executive chef, then returned to Creekside. COVID hit, and he worked at Sweet Betty's (the same location now occupied by Kade's). He was cook at the Lake House before helping to own a restaurant in Rochester.
That experience helped convince him it was time to reach for his end goal: to own a restaurant.
"It was always the end game," Steward said. "Throughout my career, I've compiled a lot of numbers in my head, data, and I got to the point, after opening up the steak house in Rochester, I looked at Beth, and I was like, 'I don't want to keep doing what I do for others. I want to do it for ourselves.' And so there was a lot of sacrifice leading up to that point, and a lot of missed times, a lot of missed firsts for me with our kids, and I didn't want that any more. Beth was on board immediately. Immediately after we talked about it -- it was funny -- when we talked it, Sweet Betty's literally dropped the news about closing permanently within 24."
Steward and Burger definitely have a mutual admiration society going.
"People (in Le Roy) know Johnny as a cook extremely well, and they don't even understand how good he is on the admin and in the back end," Burger said. "It's ridiculous how intelligent he is. Very, very smart and extremely talented. People have been waiting for him to do this. And so there's that excitement about it."
Steward said Burger's genius is at running the front of the house.
"She adds the layer with the best expertise in the front, and how she can handle talking with guests and training the staff appropriately," Steward said. "We both come from corporate backgrounds, too. So we also understand the importance of training. The importance of the good and the bad of corporate practices. Training is high emphasis for corporate. But then the other practices of corporate is really bad when it comes to the interpersonal, and so we want the best of both worlds."
It's all about balance, Burger said.
"As I was telling him, we want that nice balance where you have all the rules and regulations, but we want them (employees) to still be themselves, to be likable, approachable, kind, entertaining. That's what we're looking for here."
