The town of Beaver offers a selection of family-owned restaurants or cafes that may go unnoticed to people outside the community. Located here, Cafe Kolache offers fresh-baked kolaches filled with fruit, meat and vegetables in addition to bakery items and speciality drinks. Kolaches are a slightly-sweetened yeast dough, containing the filling options mentioned previously.

This cafe prides themselves on representing the Czechoslovakian immigrants that brought their kolache recipe to Galveston, Texas. The owner, Kristi Harper, spent 11 years in the Texas area working in corporate business. There, she came to appreciate the kolache-style food. After returning to Beaver County, she and her husband,opened up Cafe Kolache in 2003.

The cafe contains “The Gathering Room” that can be reserved for meetings or small businesses. This room can be reserved for hours at a time and the large table inside can be used to hold meetings, eat or set up items from businesses. The cafe offers eight tables in the main room and more in the gathering place when the room isn’t reserved.

They feature dishes like chicken fajita and jalapeño kolaches, spinach and feta kolaches, bruschettas, salads and bakery items.

Overall, the kolaches arrived at the table warm and the salad was fresh. The chicken fajita and jalapeno recipe contained chicken, cheese and jalapenos in kolache bread. The recipe was a perfect blend of pungent spice, tender grilled chicken and cheese.

As for the spinach and feta recipe, it didn’t compare to the previous dish. It only contained the two ingredients in the name, leaving the consumer looking for more. Even though this was one of their vegetarian options, it could use something else to add more flavor.

Their bruschetta recipe featured their kolache breading, cheeses and series of vegetables and spices. As another vegetarian option, it had a bolder, better taste than the spinach and feta kolache.
Their salad contained cheese and tomatoes. It wasn’t any different than any other salad that could be ordered elsewhere.

All in all, this cafe offers kolache dishes that aren’t offered many places elsewhere. It’s definitely worth a visit to try this Czech-style food.

Also located on the main street of Beaver was Witch Flavor, the branch ice cream shop from Penn State’s creamery. This ice cream shop opened in 2011 and features ice cream directly from Berkey Creamery in State College, Pennsylvania.

The entire theme of the shop is based on witches, playing into the fact that they don’t know which flavor they will receive from State College, hence the name, “Witch Flavor.” Inside, they only have one table and one bench for customers to sit at.

They offer 16 flavors of ice cream that change weekly. The owners of the shop drive to Berkey Creamery every week to pick up new flavors to sell in their store.

On March 4, they didn’t offer any chocolate-based ice creams aside from chocolate itself. The majority of the flavors involved a vanilla base or a base specific to the flavor. Their options ranged from “Popcorn!” to “Grasshopper Pie.” The candy bar ice cream tasted similar to a Snickers bar. It was a nougat ice cream with a caramel swirl, peanuts and fudge chunks. The peanuts in the recipe outweighed the fudge chunks and overpowered the ice cream flavor. On the other hand, the rocky mountain raspberry ice cream had a white chocolate base with raspberry swirl and chocolate-covered almond pieces. This type had a better balance of flavors.

This shop was in a convenient location for Beaver residents, but out of the way for people who live elsewhere. The ice cream was good, but not spectacular. Because of this, it wouldn’t be worth the drive if you live farther than 10 minutes from Beaver.

Overall, while they had a plethora of flavors, it didn’t taste any different than a regular ice cream shop.