By Kim Kane
Arts & Entertainment Editor
See the complete Bucknellian article HERE.  

If you want to try something new this Parents’ Weekend, visit the Brookpark Station Café. I can safely say this because I recently dined there with my parents and younger sister. The Brookpark Station Café has a delightfully fresh view on dining in Lewisburg—it opened only six weeks ago.

The menu offers salads, soups, sandwiches and wraps, but it also ventures into loaded baked potatoes and even sushi.

The homemade soups are a great way to start the meal. The Café offers fresh onion medley, chicken tortilla, blended tomato and Maryland crab soups. My dining party of four had three of the soups. They were delicious, obviously homemade and served in generous portions.

After the soup, my mom and sister each had a “Texas-sized” baked potato. These large potatoes come loaded with everything from broccoli and cheese to barbecued beef and red peppers. They enjoyed “The Station,” a potato topped with butter, sour cream, bacon, green onions and cheddar cheese. These potatoes are large enough for a meal, but I would recommend having soup to make sure you are full.

A lighter option is the extensive salad selection. The Café serves “designer salads,” including a grilled ahi tuna salad, seared teriyaki tofu salad and Mediterranean shrimp salad. The chef also prepares an assortment of others, ranging from seafood salad to Italian potato salad. If it sounds like too many choices, do not worry—you can have the trio, your choice of three salads, or the sampler, your choice of six salads.

My dad and I were looking for something a little more filling. He loved the “La Cubana,” a turkey sandwich with double-smoked ham, red onions, lettuce, pickles, cheddar cheese and mustard served on freshly-baked ciabatta with potato chips.

I had a chicken fajita wrap. It is advertised as a cold wrap but the chicken is warm from the grill and deliciously seasoned, though not too spicy. The wrap also has lettuce, tomatoes, cheddar cheese, fresh salsa, roasted red peppers and sour cream.

The entrees average about $7.95 and a cup of soup is $3.50. You will definitely want to save room for dessert; there is an assortment of freshly-baked cookies and a variety of cakes. My sister and I split a piece of orange sherbet cake, and this morning I got an e-mail from her asking me to bring a piece home for Thanksgiving.

The atmosphere at Brookpark Station Café is as fresh and enjoyable as the food. The restaurant is housed in a brand-new building located at 2370 Old Turnpike Road, about a five-minute drive from campus, and doubles as a train station with train tracks running right behind the building, giving it charm without corniness.

Inside, the colors are bright but tasteful and beautiful light fixtures complement the high ceilings. There is also a small fireplace in the corner which adds to the café atmosphere.

Perhaps the reason Brookpark Station Café is so family-friendly is because it is a family-operated restaurant. It is owned by Terri and Scott Zimmerer of Lewisburg, and their son Ben is the primary chef. Their other children also help out.

“Ben was after us to buy a property downtown, but we didn’t want to buy something that had already been used,” Terri said.

When a friend who owned the property decided to build the train station, he approached the Zimmerers to add the restaurant.

Just because the building is new does not mean it is without history. The salad counter is the old ice cream counter from Bechtel’s, the restaurant that closed last year after serving Lewisburg for 82 years. There are also booths from Kinney’s Bakery, which was located downtown for 35 years.

Ben attended culinary school and brings a professional flair and passion for food to the menu.

“I design all the recipes,” Ben said. “Most of them come from things I’ve thrown together for myself at home.”

The menu is also influenced by two restaurants from the Dallas area, where the Zimmerers lived for 10 years.

“There was a place called Jason’s Deli that [served] huge baked potatoes, and you could get anything on them,” Terri said. “And Café Max had the salad sampler. We decided to combine these ideas for our place.”

Brookpark Station Café is BYOB and will soon serve dinner entrees.

“We will have some kind of beef, chicken and seafood meals,” Ben said.

The Café also does tailgate parties and off-site catering.

Brookpark Station Café is open from 7 a.m. to 7:30 p.m. For Parents Weekend it will stay open until 9 p.m.