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Linda and Steve Henley, a Berrien Springs couple, opened Pasofino's coffee, sandwich and bakery shops in Cassopolis and Niles during the recession. "Every news story, we're basically the people they're talking about, I guess," Steve said. (Daily Star Photo/JOHN EBY)
By JOHN EBY
Niles Daily Star
If you’re in the market for “Chinese comfort food,” check out two places with the Spanish horse breed name.
Linda, the cardiac care nurse, and Steve Henley, the downsized engineer, who own Pasofino’s in Cassopolis and and a second in Niles (904 East Main St. in the former Subway location), opening today, met online.
In their version of East meets West, they converged from west of Rockford, Ill., and Pennsylvania, where he grew up.
Linda, a native of the island of Taiwan who is the youngest of six children, came to the United States 19 years ago in 1991 and is now a citizen.
“I like my life to be very simple,” she says, to which her husband adds, “She’s one of the smartest people I know, but she does yell at me because she thinks I make things too complicated. When we remodeled, we went through that discussion about 20 times.”
“Keep it simple,” she reiterates, attributing the possibility of serving soup in an edible bread bowl as one of Steve’s “fancy ideas. The thing we really, really want for this coffee shop is way too high end for people who live around here.”
Between the two halves of this couple, you could localize almost every economic story since the global economy melted down in the fall of 2008.
Pasofino’s opened in Cassopolis in May 2009 at the height of the “Great Recession.”
It’s a combination bakery, coffee shop and sandwich shop in the former Arby’s down the State Street hill from the 1899 courthouse in Cassopolis.
The field engineer drove by it for months going to an account in Coldwater.
During January they expected to add a second location in the former Niles Subway.
Steve, who begins baking bread (including communion loaves for about four churches) in the wee hours, seems to know an awful lot about the food service industry for someone who worked in the battered recreational vehicle (RV) industry around Elkhart, Goshen and Middlebury, Ind.
Linda, who taught herself English after starting nursing school, works at the new Saint Joseph Hospital in South Bend, when not cooking dishes she has been making since she was a young girl.
They married three years ago and live 22 minutes away in Berrien Springs with her two children from an 18-year marriage. Steve also has a child.
Linda’s first impression of Cassopolis was that it was “in the middle of nowhere.”
Steve also scouted a location in Middlebury, Ind., almost on the corner of 13 and 20, across from the new high school, where he had been an engineer until last August.
“Every news story, we’re basically the people they’re talking about, I guess,” Steve said.
While a prolonged recession might seem an odd time to be launching businesses, as Steve pointed out Jan. 14, “Commercial property is at an all-time low, so it’s kind of a good time to buy in, too.”
The couple have two other employees “so far and one of them is very good. She’s going to be my working manager. There will be more in the summertime” — especially if his fancy idea to open a third one in late summer comes to fruition.
“Probably in South Bend, near (the University of) Notre Dame,” Steve said.
“When I was an undergrad at Ohio State I lied my way into a pastry chef’s job from 2 in the morning until 10 in the morning,” Steve said. “They said, ‘Have you ever done this before?’ Oh yeah, all the time. I learned how to do things because they give you a recipe to follow. I worked alone so anything I screwed up went in the trash. Then I managed a deli for a while in a convention center. Between high school and college I worked in a high-end steak place and kind of did everything, so I guess I have quite a bit of restaurant background.”
Their coffee shop might have been called The Naked Bean or The Naked Cup in another location, but “Cass is a conservative community,” Steve said. “I had P’s in my head for some reason because of the panera bread. Portobello. Portofino. Pasofino’s just came into my head. The country people who come in say, ‘It’s a horse.’ No big deal. The city people, tourists, say, ‘Oh, it’s a fancy name,’ so we kind of attract everybody. It’s just a name. A lot of people ask if that’s our last name. And I’m no relation to Don Henley, unfortunately. I was going to go see (the Eagles) a few years ago until I found out tickets were $175.”
Linda worked in a Chinese restaurant when she first came to the United States. She said their food is from northern China, where area buffets largely feature southeast cuisine.
“When we were remodeling, before we opened, everyone said they wanted a Chinese restaurant in here,” Steve said.
“We didn’t want to go that route because it seems to me people don’t want good Chinese food; they want the cheap $5 buffet,” he said. “We do deli sandwiches, we do wraps which pick from things all over the world. We do Cuban pork, Jamaican jerk, Argentinian tequila lime chicken. They’ve gotten a really good response.”
Pasofino’s also offers noodles, fry bread, cheesy sloppy joes and barbecue sauce made with two kinds of bourbon. His bakery turns out doughnuts, breads and cakes.
Linda is a vegetarian, which Pasofino’s menu reflects.
“We actually do both meat and vegetarian extremely well,” Steve said. “My second-favorite sandwich here is vegetarian. She’s a phenomenal cook.”
Winter hours are Tuesday through Saturday, 7 a.m. to 5 p.m. Pasofino’s closes Mondays.
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