A New Hungarian-Polish Cafe Is Opening on Fremont

Hungarian pastries and pierogi Benedict are coming to NE Fremont Street this month. Anchor End Eurocafe & Bakery, a new Hungarian and Polish restaurant, is set to open near Pip’s Original Doughnuts January 23, with a full pastry case, house pickles, and several hard-to-find Hungarian pastries.

Anchor End is the new restaurant from the folks behind Anchor End Pretzel Shoppe, the Vancouver-based food cart serving pretzel sandwiches. Anchor End started in Seattle, when twin sisters and Amanda Lewis and Jessica Rachon (Macrina Bakery, Dahlia Bakery) opened the cart in 2015. Rachon’s husband, Corey Rachon (RockCreek Seafood & Spirits), soon joined the team, as well as baker Craig Carlberg. The twins won Food Network appeared on Guy’s Grocery Games in 2017, winning $16,000, before the truck moved south. Now, the family is opening a 40-seat restaurant, with Jessica Rachon and Carlberg handling the pastries and Corey Rachon handling the savory dishes.

The sisters grew up in a Hungarian-Polish family, which informs much of the restaurant’s menu. Corey Rachon’s grandmother is the mind behind the restaurant’s potato-and-farmer’s-cheese pierogis, which the chef serves two optional ways: with pickled red cabbage and carrot salad, or with a mushroom gravy and pickled mustard seeds. He also has a wide selection of pickle plates, charcuterie, and small plates, including butterbean dip and pretzel nokedli, a Hungarian-style noodle-dumpling like spaetzle. “While I was growing up, we ate family meals together, but we mainly ate a lot of snacks — pickles, crackers, simple soups,” the chef says. “I want to give the same feel with our recipes.”

Beyond the cafe’s breads and pretzels, Jessica Rachon will stock her dessert case with traditional family favorites. “My grandfather — my mom’s dad — is from Hungary, so we have really good traditional pastries that you would see anywhere in Hungary,” she says. For her, that means a version of kremes, a Hungarian dessert with a light, layered cream and pastry, as well as a version of a Rigó Jancsi, a chocolate mousse and sponge cake, covered with a chocolate glaze. The restaurant will also always have a cheesecake, topped with merengue and a rotating house jam — to start, cherry-vanilla or blueberry-clove.

Brunch will follow as the restaurant gets settled, but the chef is pretty set on a pierogi Benedict, which will swap the English muffin for a seared pierogi, topped with hollandaise, a poached egg, and fresh marjoram. Until then, guests will have to settle for apricot dumplings and pretzel-bun egg sandwiches.

• Anchor End [Official]
• Anchor End [Facebook]
• #Twinning: What happened when the owners of Seattle’s Anchor End food truck got a call from the Food Network [Seattle Times]