Boro Café scones, cookies, salads, sandwiches, quiche and gelato.
Colin Dyckman and his wife, Kendal Reynolds, arrived in Italy just in time for a heat wave.
“Like the natives, we just strolled from gelateria to gelateria,” he recalled.
Spooning the silky frozen confection was a sweet alternative to sipping alcoholic beverages—and the experience was just as relaxing, he maintained.
“It allows people to chilly, literally,” Dyckman said of eating what Italians simply call “ice cream.” “You can’t eat gelato and be angry at the same time; it’s physically impossible.”
Brandywine Hundred residents can see for themselves at Boro Café in Talleyville, which Dyckman opened on July 7.
The menu includes more than gelato, which has more milk than American ice cream. For instance, the café serves scones, cookies, salads, sandwiches and quiche.
But around Labor Day, the café’s lunch and dinner menu should be in full swing to highlight Dyckman’s impressive pedigree.
The call to cook
To be sure, the Delaware County native knows his way around a commercial kitchen. He cooked in restaurants to pay for his tuition at Drexel University, where he studied political science.
Colin Dyckman
“I wanted to join the foreign service, but I took the exam three times and failed it miserably three times,” he said.
He excelled, however, at cooking. So, he earned a degree at The Restaurant School at Walnut Hill College and spent 18 years working in Philadelphia-area restaurants, including the Wayne Hotel with Jean-Francois Taquet and Cuvee Notredame, which specialized in Belgian cuisine.
Dyckman’s wife is a Chadds Ford native who’s worked in the Wilmington area, so the couple moved south.
The chef helped open the short-lived Vault in downtown Wilmington and worked at The Gables in Chadds Ford. He also worked in a Key West establishment.
Not all his work was in restaurants. For 20 years, he had many jobs with Costco, including positions at the King of Prussia, Christiana and Concord stores.
But the pull of the restaurant industry kept tugging at this imagination, and the trip to Italy was the spark.
Focaccia is among the items on the menu at the new Boro Cafe in Talleyville.
Boro’s flavors of Europe
Boro is a teeny tiny municipality in Italy, and Boro Café occupies a nook in The Concord, the new live-work-play community from The Buccini/Pollin Group.
Like those restaurants, Boro also fronts Silverside Road. There are 36 seats inside and 24 on the doublewide sidewalk.
Dyckman hopes the restaurants’ customers will impulsively stop for a sweet dessert or after-dinner drink on their way to their cars. (A liquor license is in the works.)
Meanwhile, breakfast bowls, smoothies and coffees should attract members of the gym on the building’s opposite side.
Dyckman is broadening his breakfast and lunch items, and as the menu expands to include dinner, expect dishes with French, Italian and Swiss flair.
No matter the time of day, don’t forget the main attraction.
Gelato flavors run the gamut, from tomato-basil to salted caramel to pineapple lime. Boro also offers sorbet, including Early Grey, passion fruit and mango.
A cold brew and a scoop of chocolate is a great way to take the heat off—Italian style.
