Reading Room Cafe brings back tea time to Cos Cob
GREENWICH — Less than a week before Reading Room Café’s opening, co-owners Paul Mellon and Junjira Sreepilas were excitedly waiting to get the OK to open their new Cos Cob business to the public.
“Everything is ready to roll,” Mellon said on March 25. “The town is now just putting signatures and stamps on paperwork. It’s the final stretch.”
Their optimism proved prophetic: The cafe officially opened Monday.
Mellon and Sreepilas met when they helped open Le Pain Quotidien’s Greenwich Avenue location in 2009.
Mellon has experience in restaurant management and as a chef, including as actor Richard Gere’s private chef, while Sreepilas has experience as a restaurant’s general manager and used to work at the Drawing Room Cafe, the former restaurant in the space that now houses The Reading Room Cafe.
“There is a niche for a type of boutique coffee shop,” Mellon said. “Everything right now is grab and go. Even the more popular ones, like Starbucks, used to have more seating and it used to be more loungy.”
The Reading Room Café is at 5 Suburban Ave., which used to be one of The Drawing Room locations. The Drawing Room, a boutique, café and art gallery, closed in 2022. Make-Modern, a crafting studio, took over The Drawing Room’s other location at 220 E. Putnam Ave. a year ago.
Mellon and Sreepilas signed the lease for the café in July and took over the space in August. Mellon said they spent a lot of time ensuring that the building was up to the town’s current building code regulations.
“I think the hardest part when you’re in a space that had
such longevity is that when the town went to reopen that type of space, a lot of the things that were in code (once) now need to (match current) code . ... There were tons of things that we had to update,” Mellon said. “Even halfway through when we thought we were ready, we found out from other departments that there were more things that needed to happen. Like, get the jackhammer back out. Open up the floor and the walls again and update the plumbing. Everything is updated.”
Mellon said both he and Sreepilas have personally overseen every aspect of the building to make it their own, from the style of the space to the functionality of the kitchen and barista station.
“We’ve walked through and everywhere our guests or even just our staff is going to go has been modified by us to meet our needs,” Mellon said.
When it comes to The Reading Room Café menu, Sreepilas said they are offering cappuccinos, lattes and mochaccinos. For food, she said they are going to sell pastries, sandwiches, omelettes, quiches and salads.
Sreepilas said a big part of their menu will focus on “tea time” and offer mini sandwiches, scones and mini pastries. Tea time “was very popular” at the Drawing Room Café when she used to work there.
“One of the main things that we talked about — about The Drawing Room — (is) what they were known for was the English afternoon tea, which was the finger sandwiches, the scones, all of the accompaniments . ... We thought the best way to honor the previous location would be to carry that over,” Mellon said. “Put our own twist on it, obviously, our own recipes and style, but that would be the offering that if somebody was a fan of The Drawing Room, that probably is the most popular thing they offered. We will still have that.”
The Reading Room Café will also include a store that will sell books, cards, school supplies and more. Mellon said the store area is not finished yet because they “wanted to make sure the café was 100 percent” completed.
The Reading Room Café is within walking distance of Cos Cob School and the Cos Cob Library, where there is a lot of foot traffic. The two owners “felt like there is a nice little community” in that area of town, Mellon said.
“I saw a lot of people walking with their kids, their dogs,” Sreepilas said.
Mellon said he is excited to see people’s reactions to how they have updated the site.
“For me, it will be the validation of all the work by seeing the expression on people’s faces when they come in and see the space, especially if they were here for The Drawing Room,” he said.