Matines Café sits on a bustling section of Lancaster Avenue just west of downtown Wayne. Seated inside, if you turn your head away from the windows for long enough, it’s easy to forget you’re in Delaware County.
Opening to the public on November 12, Matines Café will serve breakfast and gourmet sandwiches, quiches, tartines, salads, soups, coffees and more in a traditional Parisian style. From the decor to the ambiance, husband-and-wife owners Arthur and Amanda de Bruc have done everything to transport their guests to an older, more refined world.
Falling in Love With Café Culture
When the de Brucs moved to Florida from Paris in 2014, they had no restaurant experience, but after visiting Amanda’s sister in St. Petersburg to help her open a café there, they both fell in love with the concept.
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“When my sister said she was opening a French café, we all thought she was completely crazy because she had no experience either,” Amanda shares. “But she learned. And then we worked with her and we learned from her.”
Amanda’s brother also moved to the U.S. and brought some much-needed experience to the St. Petersburg project from his time working at Fouquet’s. Within 18 months, all three siblings had relocated from France and opened cafés in America. Despite their minimal experience with the food industry in France, they all found success with their restaurants in a relatively short span.
Breaking Into the Industry
Arthur and Amanda opened Café M in Savannah, Georgia in 2015. Just three years later, the eatery was voted the best breakfast in Georgia by People magazine. It was a surprisingly straightforward path to success for the couple, who attribute their backgrounds in Europe to their understanding of what it takes to create the right space.
“It seemed, I think, easy to us because we grew up in Paris going to cafés all the time,” Amanda explains. “If your parents didn’t have time to make breakfast in the morning, you dropped by a bakery or a café and grabbed something. After school, you go hang out in the cool cafés with your friends and all of that. Recreating that here seemed kind of easy because it’s just what we were used to.”
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Amanda’s master’s degree in business and Arthur’s sales background smoothed the business side of things, and they both learned from their employees, who were often more knowledgeable than they were. Recipes came from their parents, French staples and even from Amanda’s siblings.
“If my brother tries out a new recipe or a new sandwich and finds that it’s a big hit, he’ll call us and say, ‘You should try this sandwich. It works really well.’ So we’re also kind of nicely competing with each other, like a sibling rivalry,” Amanda says.
In Savannah, Arthur and Amanda found everything they had hoped for in America. Yet as their family continued to grow, they began to search for a larger city with the same walkability and “European way of life,” as Arthur saw it.
Moving to the Western Suburbs
In 2021, they settled in Chestnut Hill, then opened Matines Café in 2022 after selling Café M. This time, the learning curve wasn’t as steep. After opening two cafés, one in St. Petersburg and another in Savannah, Amanda and Arthur knew exactly how they wanted things to run.
They hired more staff so they could work more on the managerial side to develop the business aspect that didn’t get as much attention in Savannah. As smoothly as the launch of Matines Café in Chestnut Hill went, the couple knew that it wouldn’t be long before it was time to expand, and Wayne was just far enough away to avoid customer overlap and close enough to be near home.
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Thus, just two years after their successful launch in Philadelphia’s Chestnut Hill, the de Brucs made their way to the Main Line area, purchasing the former GSI Bath Showplace on Lancaster Avenue and transforming it into a Parisian café.
Inside Matines Café
Small tables are scattered about the dining room of Matines Café, while quaint portraits of European scenes hang on white walls above comfy couches that line the interior. A coffee bar filled with pastries stands on one edge of the restaurant while a small shop selling nonalcoholic wines, desiccated mushrooms, fine mustards, salts, jams, European tchotchkes and more sits at the back.
The menu has options for vegans and gluten-free eaters, with some Americanized French classics, like scrambled eggs on a croissant, which Arthur says, “you [wouldn’t] be able to do in France,” as well as Parisian favorites like traditional crepes, quiches and cheese boards.
They’re also bringing in new chef Sophie Bourgogne from France to help elevate and add a bistro flair to the menu.
Despite what you might expect, both in Chestnut Hill and back in Savannah, all of the de Bruc recipes avoid grills. They’ve never had an exhaust in any of their cafés, so the menu is built around recipes that can be made at room temperature or in convection ovens.
Though this might seem out of the ordinary to new customers, it has actually worked in their favor, especially when they first opened Café M.
“When we found the location in Savannah, it was tiny, tiny, tiny. And the oven was actually in the dining room,” Arthur recalls. “We didn’t have room in the kitchen, but also with the smell and the appeal and all that, it actually worked great. Each time I was pulling out a quiche, it was sold out before it was baked.”
Despite the couple’s history in the restaurant space, they’re still nervous ahead of the big day next week.
“We’ve been doing this for 10 years and, each time we open a new place, [we] always feel like it’s the night before a big exam,” Arthur explains.
They aim to create a new communal atmosphere at Matines Café in Wayne, the same as they have in Chestnut Hill. Both Arthur and Amanda find that many of their guests come up to them speaking in French and they hope that, just like in Paris, they’ll find the construction worker sitting next to the lawyer, doctor and garbage man at lunchtime, all conversing and enjoying food together.
“You know, everyone is the same,” Arthur says. “So we really wanted to recreate that vibe around the café. And in Savannah, it was like that every day.”
Matines Café
757 Lancaster Ave, Wayne
Website
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