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Page 8 FRIDAY, August 16, 2013
The IndependentBUSINESS PROFILE
BARRHAVEN INDEPENDENT
Chocolate chip cookies never tasted so good!
By Bev McRae
The first thing you
notice when you step
into the Nestlé® Tollhouse® Café in Barrhaven is that it smells
like your mom’s kitchen
when she was baking
chocolate chip cookies
– likely the famous Toll
House® chocolate chip
cookies.
The original chocolate chip cookie was
accidentally created in
1930 at the Toll House
Inn in Whitman, Massachusetts when the
owner, Ruth Graves
Wakefield ran out of
baker’s chocolate while
making cookies and
substituted
chopped
up semi-sweet chocolate morsels. The cookies were an instant hit
and Nestlé bought the
recipe.
Those famous Toll
House® chocolate chip
cookies – and a menu
full of fresh-baked desserts, ice cream, frozen
yogurt, cookie cakes,
coffee, smoothies and
fountain drinks – are
a staple at the new
Nestlé® Toll House®
Cafe by Chip® at 3350
Fallowfield Rd. Nestlé®
Toll House® Café franchises serve more than
60 million customers all
over North America, but
the Barrhaven location
is the first franchise in
Ottawa.
“We bring customers
a world of desserts and
high quality products
at competitive prices,”
said owner Amin AbdulFattah. “You really have
to taste our desserts to
appreciate the quality.”
All desserts are made
fresh every day in the
bakery, from Nestlé
products. There are 50
to 60 different desserts
available, from classic
chocolate chip cookies,
oatmeal raisin cookies,
20 kinds of brownies,
seven layer bars, cookie
cakes, cupcakes and frozen desserts.
“We have 30 flavors of
ice cream and we switch
between them every
day so that eight flavors are on display, like
black cherry, New York
cheesecake, pistachio,
bubble gum, espresso,
mud pie, chocolate chip
cookie dough, pralines
and cream,” said AbdulFattah. “We will introduce some new flavors
at the Grand Opening.”
A one scoop cone
costs just $2.19 in a
waffle cone made on
site, but many customers prefer to make their
own ice cream desserts,
said the Toll House Café
owner.
“Customers can mix
ice cream with cookies
to make an ice cream
sandwich,” he said.
“You dream it and we
can make it. You could
have a chocolate chip
cookie on one side, a
peanut butter cookie on
the other and chocolate
ice cream in the middle,
for instance.”
All the ice cream is
made with Canadian
milk, said Abdul-Fattah,
and the café buys local
whenever possible.
“Obviously, we can’t
buy pineapple from local growers, but we can
buy it from Farm Boy,”
he laughed.
The Nestlé® Toll
House® Café also has 60
flavors of frozen yogurt
available, with eight at
a time on display. The
confection is frozen solid, not soft and customers can make their own
sundaes from a variety
of toppings, including
nine kinds of fresh fruit.
Abdul-Fattah points
out that the café’s milkshakes are made with
real ice cream.
“You
can
specify which kind of ice
cream,” he said.
The café also offers smoothies – very
berry, pina colada or
tropical sunset made
from mango, coconut,
pineapple and fresh banana – and frappes like
the Turtle frappe made
with chopped pecans,
caramel sauce and Nesquick® chocolate syrup.
Of course, a big seller
is the cookie cake with
whatever words you
want on it for whatever
occasion.
“The cookie cakes
come in six sizes and
shapes
like
circles,
squares or hearts,” said
Abdul-Fattah. “The big
sheet cookie cake serves
40 people. If you want
a chocolate chip cookie
cake, we can decorate
it however you want in
an hour, but it you want
one of our five other flavors – macademia, peanut butter, triple chocolate, oatmeal or sugar
cookie – please call a
few days ahead of time.”
The café has catered
a few events serving
coffee and cookie cakes,
The Nestlé® Tollhouse® Café By Chip® on Fallowfield Rd. in Barrhaven has been serving a menu full of freshly baked desserts
and ice cream since April, but will soon hold a Grand Opening celebration. Left to right, Meagan Peixoto, Emily Serre, Dalia
Saad and owner Amin Abdul-Fattah have a special offer for Barrhaven Independent readers.
Bev McRae Photo
and is a popular destination for birthday parties.
“Birthday parties include a cookie decorating activity,” said AbdulFattah. “The kids choose
whatever cookies they
want to decorate and a
senior decorator shows
them how to decorate
the cookies with icing
and sprinkles. The kids
love it.”
The mini birthday
party package includes
three cookies per person in the flavor of
choice or one cookie
cake slice, a variety of
different colored icings
and toppings, a custom
designed Cookie Cake, a
commemorative Cookie
Quencher and Chef Hat
for the birthday person
and Toll House® boxes
to take home uneaten
cookies. Popular party
add-ons include decorate-your-own ice cream
sundaes,
fountain
drinks, invitations, balloons, t-shirts and commemorative photos.
The café is busiest
early in the morning as
commuters pick up coffee (Nescafé Columbian,
of course), a latte, a cappuccino, or an espresso;
after lunch and dinner
for desserts; and after
school on weekdays.
“Soon we will add
croissant
sandwiches
for breakfast and lunch
and next month we will
extend our hours,” said
Abdul-Fattah.
Barrhaven’s
Toll
House Café hopes to become very involved with
the community, said
Abdul-Fattah.
“Barrhaven is a good
community, very familyoriented,”
he
said.
“We’ve donated cookies to the day care centre and given money to
the ringette association,
and we will likely sponsor some minor sports
teams. We also offer two
aspects of fundraising.
Organizations can sell
our cookie cakes and
share in a percentage of
the profits or an organization can hold a ‘ChipIn’ Night where the or-
ganization distributes
coupons for customers
to bring to the café and
shares in the profits.”
The Toll House Café
has a very special offer for Barrhaven Independent readers.
“If you bring a copy
of this newspaper to the
café, we will give you a
15 per cent discount,”
said Abdul-Fattah.
The Nestlé® Tollhouse® Café By Chip®
is located at 3350 Fallowfield Rd. in Barrhaven. The café is open
seven days a week from
10 a.m. to 8 p.m. Phone
(613) 440-NTHC(6842)
or visit the website at
www.Nestlécafe.com.