Inventive coffee selections, sweet and savory offerings planned at new State College cafe

A French classical background and innovative outlook will combine at a new cafe opening soon in downtown State College. Crust & Crumb is expected to open at the end of the month with Penn State alumna Amber Winkler at the helm.

Winkler’s road to opening the artisan-inspired cafe was a long one. After graduating, she worked as an engineer for more than 15 years, before moving to Pittsburgh to pursue her culinary dreams.

“Culinary was always a passion of mine and a creative outlet, so I decided to go on a culinary adventure, move to Pittsburgh and start working in the culinary scene,” she said.

She worked in management at Pittsburgh restaurants before attending culinary school to obtain her pastry certification and an associate degree focusing on French cuisine.

“I worked my way across, for the last five to six years, the restaurant industry and had the opportunity to work with a lot of phenomenal chefs in the area while I lived in Pittsburgh, and learned as much as I could while working on my degree and getting practical experience.”

Winkler’s initial goal was to open a cafe or restaurant in her hometown of Dubois, but when things didn’t work out when she began her search for a suitable property in July 2019, she turned her sights on State College.

“For six months, I really struggled to find a culinary location that was really going to fit the vision of what I wanted to do. After six months of working on a business plan and trying to open up a full-scale restaurant, everything kind of fell through,” she said. “I extended my search outside of Dubois and, because I was a Penn State graduate and love State College in general ... I expanded my search and found this little cafe in State College.”

The location at 115 E. Beaver Ave., which Winkler and her husband happened upon in February, is intended to be a small, artisan-style cafe, where there’s always something new and exciting to offer, with menu items that are a testament to the blend of Winkler’s French classical background and desire to innovate.

“The whole concept behind this is to really have a quaint and inviting cafe that focuses on making small-batch pastries and baked goods from scratch,” she said.

The cafe embraces the “artisanal ways of doing things,” Winkler said.

“Instead of pre-ordering and offering things perhaps from other locations that are making mass-produced baked goods, we really wanted to have a cafe that had a great cup of coffee paired with an equally great pastry, baked good or deli-style sandwich. We’re really not focusing 100% on one or the other. We really want to have a cafe that offers both,” she said.

Unique items slated for the final menu include giant cupcakes that are closer to the size of a typical muffin. The includes one that’s a take on strawberry shortcake, with a pureed strawberry buttercream frosting, olive oil cake and a shortbread crumble topping. Pastries will include tarts, croissants, croissant variations and pain au chocolat.

She plans to be open from 7:30 a.m.-4 p.m. Monday through Saturday, in attempt to capture the downtown morning crowd.

“We recognized there are a lot of businesses in the area that don’t open until later, so we felt it was a good fit to be up and running in the early morning so people can get their signature coffee and their pastries,” Winkler said.

But the offerings aren’t only sweet. Savory breakfast sandwiches include a gourmet bagel sandwich with house-made blended cream cheeses, such as a horseradish dill cream cheese and an asiago sun-dried tomato cream cheese, and stacked with tomato, arugula, slab bacon, ham and fried egg.

The lunch crowd can expect gourmet deli sandwiches.

As for the coffee, Winkler has more inventive options up her sleeve, including a banana bread latte and a cocoa matcha.

A small selection of gluten-free, vegetarian and vegan options are planned, but at this time, Winkler said she’s still gauging the demand for those items. However, once the cafe is open, she anticipates adding seasonal salads to the lunch menu, as well as developing vegan desserts such as a blueberry vegan galette.

Winkler hopes to open the week of Aug. 23, with the finalized opening date to be posted on Crust & Crumb’s Facebook and Instagram pages.

This story was originally published August 9, 2020 at 11:56 AM.