CT restaurant with upscale coffee, eclectic bagels and breakfast sandwiches with local ingredients expanding to new location

Five years after launching the popular Seed Kitchen in Glastonbury , Ari and Todd DiBattista are bringing their eclectic mix of specialty bagels and breakfast sandwiches with locally sourced ingredients to a spot on Berlin’s Chamberlain Highway .

But the couple say that as much as they enjoy serving upscale coffees and coming up with unique menu items, their bigger goal is to expand the community that’s built around them at the Glastonbury location.

“We personally love knowing our cutomers, that’s what makes it for me. I enjoy our community at Seed because of the people who visit us, our customers are everything to us,” Ari DiBattista said Monday after a ribbon-cutting ceremony at their new Seed Central on Berlin’s Chamberlain Highway. “I would never want to not be involved or hand it to somebody else who isn’t involved with the people.”

Adding the second Seed is a bit more for the DiBattistas than ordering extra supplies and hiring more staff: For the first time since the pandemic, they’re able to invite their guests to stay to enjoy their coffees or breakfast items.

In Glastonbury, Seed Kitchen had to switch to takeout-only when the pandemic began, and never went back. The small building on Commerce Street didn’t have much table space to start with, and now all of that room is taken by supplies and extra freezers and refrigeration space, Ari DiBattista said.

The Glastonbury location had been open less than four months when Covid hit and indoor dining ended everywhere.

“Thankfully we have this unique little log cabin in its own yard and a deck, and its own parking lot. So when Covid happed, we were able to pivot and do takeout through the back door,” Ari DiBattista said. “People know it and like it because it’s convenient. If they want to eat with their friends, they sit outside in the yard, or in the winter they’re in their cars or they take it back to the office.”

The daily drive between Glastonbury and their Southington home takes the couple along Chamberlain Highway, and earlier this year they concluded it was the right spot to open a second location — this time with a dine-in option. They picked the site of the former Peking Kitchen along with a second vacant spot alongside it to ensure sufficient space; they knocked out the dividing wall to provide a spacious area for tables, comfortable chairs and a long coffee bar.

“We’re commuters, we travel this route to Glastonbury and we both literally said ‘This is missing something’,” Ari DiBattista said. “Berlin is a smaller town and a different market than Glastonbury, but it’s really good community. What really made us thrive in Glastonbury was the community; we said if we ever do another one it has to be in a supportive community and Berlin was exactly what we were looking for.”

The DiBattistas have each worked in the restaurant business for decades, and met while they were both employed at the former Murphy & Scarletti’s in Farmington. They now have four children and are juggling hectic schedules to maintain two restaurants, but said their shared passion for creating unusual dishes is a big part of what makes it all fun.

“A lot of it is from my wife. She just knows what goes well together. We love to go out to eat and try new things,” Todd DiBattista said.

“We’re foodies,” Ari DiBattista said. “We collaborate together with our team. We have amazing ingredients and once you have the sauces and cream cheeses and other ingredients down, it’s so easy to just figure out how to put it all together.”

The breakfast menu is unique with offerings like the avo loco open-face sandwich including smashed avocado, whipped cream cheese, chopped bacon and Seed’s special sauce; and the avo salmon with smoked salmon, mixed greens, smashed avocado and pickled onions. Lunch sandwiches include the traditional and the innovative, such as a burrata and tomato featuring burrata mozzarella, arugula, garlic mayo, sliced tomatoes, house pesto and balsamic reduction.

They source sausage from East Willow Farm in Columbia, cider from Karabin Farms in Southington, apples from Belltown Hill in Glastonbury, and numerous other ingredients from New England farms. The DiBattistas said they consistently resist changing that even during the past year of food inflation.

“We have a relationship with the farmers, I’m really big on that. It’s hard for me to say that after five years, I’m not going to use your sausage because I can get it cheaper — that’s just short-changing him and our customers,” Todd DiBattista said. “A standard sausage egg and cheese for us is not a huge money-maker while it might be for other bagel places. It’s because we use that sausage and those eggs.”