When you step into Thyme & Plate you are met with delightful aromas and cheerful greetings. Notice the personalized touches: a stack of albums and a turntable near the front entrance, recipes for their own focaccia and olive oil cake on full display in chalk lettering, old-timey Carversville photographs on the wall and cookbooks and potted herbs on the counters. The casual and fun atmosphere belies the attention to detail going on behind the scenes.
Formally trained in classical French cuisine, owner Daniel Gallo has worked alongside award-winning chefs in New York, Los Angeles, Cleveland and Boston. “With the exception of our croissants and brioche, we make everything in-house,” he said in a sit-down interview recently at his sandwich shop and catering space. “We cook with what I call intention and attention. We’re intentional about what we’re doing but our attention to detail is very, very high.”
Daniel refers to his take on traditional dishes such as a roast pork sandwich as familiar but different. “Instead of using loin, we use a Heritage pork shoulder. It’s a three-day process for the pork. Then instead of long hots, we do pickled jalapenos. For the broccoli rabe we do a broccoli rabe pesto. I joke that we work very hard to make food look simple.”
In addition to that approach, Daniel places a lot of value on old-school hospitality based on fond memories growing up in southeastern Delaware County.
“When I was a kid, we’d be at our deli. They knew your family, they knew your order, even if they didn’t remember your name, and that’s kind of what we do here. I feel like that’s such a lost art, making people feel noticed,” he said. “I worked in a lot of restaurants where people felt lucky to get a reservation. Everyone who comes in here is meant to feel like we’re lucky to have them.”
When Daniel attended the Restaurant School of Walnut Hill College in Philadelphia, the class traveled to France at the end of year. It turned out that the high-end restaurants were not what impressed Daniel the most. It was an out of the way bistro with a less fussy approach.
“I had done three or four consecutive lunches at Michelin restaurants with long tasting menus, and I needed something more casual. I had lunch at a bistro in Auxerre and I had just really excellent bread with cultured butter and moules frites. They brought out a pot to the table and I was like, whoa, this is delicious.”
“We cook with what I call intention and attention. We’re intentional about what we’re doing but our attention to detail is very, very high.”
What sparked Daniel to go to cooking school in the first place?
“I was in high school, and my father had had heart surgery. So he was home for a while recovering, and it was right when Food Network started. I remember coming home, and he was getting into the cooking shows because he was stuck on the couch. That was the first time I started to get interested in what a chef could make.”
Later, when Daniel and his wife started going into the city to try out different Italian restaurants, he got a taste of what true hospitality was. “There was one restaurant, it’s not around anymore, called Mezza Luna on 8th and Catherine. What I liked about it was, the food was great, but the owner always made us feel welcome. We were just kids. We’d come in there and they remembered us. They’d spend time at the table, pour us limoncello at the end, even though we were probably spending $100 less than any other table. We left feeling special, like we had a place. I went home and tried to replicate dishes and to this day, I love cooking.”
Daniel aims for the same approach to the sandwich shop and catering events. “Our thing is we want our food to be great, we want our staff to be the nicest, we want every single person we deal with, whether they’re spending their money on a wedding or a breakfast sandwich, we want them to feel like we went out of our way.”
The catering side of Thyme & Plate started four years ago but it was only last spring the sandwich shop opened in the building across from the Carversville Inn on Fleecydale Rd. Daniel sees the location as a good fit. “What I love about this building is it’s so close to who I think we are as a company. People walk in through the post office and are surprised to find us here. Much like our sandwich shop, the building is the right amount of weird, that somehow makes sense.”
Thyme & Plate doesn’t cater only weddings, they also cater smaller dinner parties and do lunch drop-offs for companies. “I always thought there was a middle area that wasn’t explored enough. We’ll do the rehearsal dinners. We’ll do the baby showers. We’ll do a lot of private parties.”
One thing Daniel has learned over the years is that the industry is one hundred percent a team sport, describing his team as “the best in the galaxy.” From his full-timers at the store to his catering staff led by Front of House Manager Linda Koltuv and Chef Bryce Walker, his team is what he is most proud of. “I somehow have surrounded myself with incredibly bright, kind and talented people.”
While the restaurant business offers little work/life balance, having a catering business and sandwich shop allows Daniel and his staff to have time for their families and to have more of a life. For Daniel. That means spending time with his wife and their three boys. The shop is not open at night and they don’t work on Sundays. “My family drives everything. One, that I have a wife who’s supportive enough to say ‘Yes, start a business with no money; we’ll make it’ and then supports all the time I put into it.”
The custom crafted cuisine, warm hospitality and personalized touches at Thyme & Plate all reflect Daniel’s aim to provide a “familiar but different” experience. “If you’re going to succeed or fail you want to do it being yourself. Most of those are my dad’s records,” Dan said, pointing to the stack of albums. “My dad passed years ago. I always knew if I had my own place, I’d play his records. And then it’s like, he’s here with us. Do you know what I mean?”
