White Dog does good
By Suzi Nash
PGN Contributor
© 2007 Suzi Nash

THE WHITE DOG CAFE Photos: Suzi Nash

If you feel like you are walking into the home of an old friend when you walk into the White Dog Cafe, 3420 Samson St., that’s because you are. The restaurant started as a muffin and coffee shop in the home of owner Judy Wicks.

“I started out with just the small space, and it was definitely an intimate affair,” she said. “The dishwasher consisted of a three-bowl sink right in the dining room. You’d finish your meal and hand your dishes to the dishwasher who would hand wash them right there. If you needed to use the restroom, you had to go into our apartment upstairs and push past the kids playing games in the living room. When we decided to start serving hot foods, we didn’t have the money to put a heating duct inside the house for a stove, so we set up a grill in the backyard and used our patio furniture for sit-down seating.

“To get customers, my kids, who were 2 and 4 at the time, and I would run around Penn’s campus and hand out homemade flyers. Then we’d run home and look out the window to see if anyone was coming. At the end of the night, the waiters would put the money under my pillow because we didn’t have a safe yet and that was the most secure place to put it. It was like the tooth fairy struck each night.”

As the saying goes, “You’ve come a long way, baby.” The White Dog will be 25 years old in January and, my, how it’s grown. The enterprise now encompasses four row houses (three for the cafe and one for the Black Cat, a retail shop), employs a staff of 100 and can seat 200 people. No more lawn chairs.

If you’ve heard of Wicks, you know that she is a force of and a force for nature: She and the café were going green before most people had even heard of global warming and sustainable farming. An important part of what makes the White Dog so special is its commitment to the community. This is a place where you can go not only to have a delicious, naturally grown, award-winning meal, but to gather, learn and share. The calendar of events would be impressive for any community group, never mind a working restaurant. For instance, Breakfast Talks, where for $15 you can fill your stomach and your head with information, are held at 8 a.m. on myriad subjects, from sustainable farming to prison reform to gay families.

Storytelling nights are real stories by real people. Recent examples are “Stories of Hope from Africa,” where Irma Turtle, the founder of a humanitarian organization operating in Niger, Mali and Ethiopia, shared stories of creative partnerships with tribal peoples creating mobile medical clinics, animal health initiatives and handicraft cooperatives and “Tale of a Vermont Shepherdess,” where a champion of sustainable farming, Linda Faillace, spoke about the months of harassment and surveillance she experienced from USDA agents after they seized her flock of 140 organically raised sheep, identifying them as an imminent danger to the American people. There have been poetry nights with local youth and Table Talks with noted lecturers from around the globe.

December brings an energy audit workshop, where Wicks will once again open her house, this time so that home-performance auditor Hap Haven can demonstrate how to make sure your home is energy efficient. The White Dog is also hosting a community service day with Philadabundance, an organization working to end hunger in the Delaware Valley. Volunteers will gather at the White Dog, which will provide a free lunch for volunteers. And a great way to start the new year is to join White Dog for their annual New Year’s Day Pajama Brunch. After a night of partying, keep your pj’s on and slip over to the café for an à la cart brunch. Or if you’ve been out all night, go home, get comfortable and come back for mimosas.

Wicks’ activism started over 30 years ago. “I’ve always been concerned about the world around us. From the time of the Vietnam War, I felt that we’d been duped by our government. We were told that the war was a necessary engagement to fight communism and we ended up in a quagmire.”

In 1986, when President Reagan was advocating going into Nicaragua, Wicks traveled to the Central American country to speak to people who were affected by U.S. policies. It was then that she started the “Table for Six Billion, Please!” project, which formed sister relationships with restaurants in countries where there is poor dialogue with the U.S.

“I realized that any problems that I wanted to address, I could do it through the restaurant and that’s when we started Table Talks and other programs,” Wicks said. “We later branched out and started what is now the White Dog Community Enterprises, which sponsors the Buy Fresh/Buy Local Campaign.”

Wicks has also led the way in advocating for more cruelty-free restaurants in the city. When she first learned about industrial farming conditions for pigs — keeping them in crates where they can’t turn around, artificial insemination and separating piglets at birth — Wicks pulled everything pork from the White Dog menu. Eventually, she found a source that raised free-range pigs and carried out humane slaughter, and then she learned about the importance of grass-fed beef. Cows in corporate farms, though natural herbivores, are fed ground-up animal parts.

After reaching the goal of making her restaurant totally humane and only using meat from animals that are raised with respect for them and the land, she thought she had found her niche: She was the only restaurant in the city that was completely environmentally and animal friendly.

Then it dawned on Wicks that if she was truly concerned about the environment and animal welfare, just having one restaurant supporting those causes wouldn’t make a significant dent in the problem — she would have to bring her competitors on board too.

It was a turning point in her business, and her life. She began working to expand the availability of locally grown food for vendors and consumers: She lent her pig farmer $30,000 to buy a refrigerated truck to serve other restaurants, compiled a directory for restaurants of responsible vendors and opened a local farm stand at Reading Terminal Market.

“We found out that most of the produce stands were importing their goods instead of buying from local farmers,” Wicks said. “We also realized that since we preach about the importance of our pasteurized, humanely raised meats, we should try to make them available for people to find to cook at home. As much as we like to have guests, I can’t expect people to come here every time they want a steak!”

Well, I didn’t go for the steak, but I did stop in for Sunday brunch at the White Dog. We started the meal with a small basket of home-baked breads ($3.95). With scones, muffins, coffeecakes and baguettes, there was something for everyone.

For the main course, my dining companion ordered the creamy roasted red pepper grits and rock shrimp ($9.50). I vaguely recalled that my mother said that I’d had an allergic reaction to rock shrimp when I was a child, so I passed on sampling it until the thought of creamy grits overpowered any sense I had. The grits were smooth and topped with chives and melted cheddar cheese. Fortunately, I was able to enjoy them without any swelling.

For my entrée, I had the organic omelet ($9), a fluffy three-egg omelet stuffed with local asparagus, Oley Valley mushrooms and aged goat cheese with a side of maple-sage sausage and home fries. For an extra $2, it can be ordered with egg whites only, but after the rock shrimp, I threw all caution to the wind. The home fries were a little dry, but the eggs were perfectly done and flavorful.

We also tried the seasonal special, eggs St. Bernard ($12.50), two poached eggs over an English muffin topped with smoked salmon and served with steamed green beans and brandied hollandaise. Although it was an entrée, it made a nice shared side dish and went perfectly with the fresh-squeezed orange juice in the mimosas we ordered ($7).

I also sampled the hot apple cider ($3) made with farm-fresh cider (of course) and mulled on the premises with cinnamon, orange peel, ginger, nutmeg and anise. This was a light, delicious drink, not as tart or heavy as cider can sometimes be. The key might have been the Red Ape cinnamon, harvested in Indonesia, where a portion of the profits are dedicated to protecting the orangutan habitats. If it wasn’t so early in the day, I would have tried the Tuaca toddy ($7), made with vanilla liqueur and mulled cider. But it’s predicted to be a long, cold winter, so there’s plenty of time to go back.

We finished with the vanilla bread pudding ($7.50). A lovely dish with a warm center and crunchy top, it is made with Singing Dog vanilla and served with a side of Hank’s root beer ice cream. Singing Dog comes from Papua, New Guinea, and is grown without pesticides or chemicals. I learned a lot before the noon hour.

Also on the dessert menu was the lime-spiked shellbark goat-cheese cheesecake ($9). Baked in a pine-nut crust with honey and fresh mint syrup, this was as good as it sounds. The pine-nut crust added an interesting twist and the fresh mint lightened everything up.

I couldn’t resist trying the double-crust heirloom apple pie ($8), a delicious offering with a homey aroma that wafted up as you cut into the crust. Made with fresh apples, it was served with a side of butterscotch ice cream. I may have added a pound or two with three desserts, but I think it was worth it to help local farmers. Anything for a cause.

The motto at White Dog is “Doing well by doing good.” It has become a model of the ability to run a business for profit and yet be responsible to the customers, the community, the employees and the earth. Their bottom line is not measured just by money but by the three measures of people, planet and profit. So far it looks like the White Dog is measuring up.

And how, you ask, did they come up with the name?

In 1875, Madame Helena P. Blavatsky, a scholar, teacher, author and spiritualist, lived in the rowhouse now occupied by the White Dog. She founded the Theosophical Society, a worldwide organization dedicated to the promotion of universal brotherhood and advocating for complete freedom of individual search and belief. During her time on Sansom Street, Blavatsky became ill with an infected leg. In a letter dated June 12, 1875, Blavatsky described her recovery, explaining that she dismissed the doctors and surgeons who threatened amputation (“Fancy my leg going to the spirit land before me!”) and had a white dog sleep across her leg by night, curing all in no time.

The White Dog Cafe is still good for what ails you.