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Over the course of 23 years in three locations, very little has changed with the menu or the atmosphere of Country Rose Café, which is the way owners Sharon and Tim Baker like it. There is a sense that everyone who comes in has a favorite dish and knows it will be prepared to the same taste and standard every time they order it.
“It’s all about the customers,” Sharon said. “The satisfaction of seeing them happy, that’s the reward. So you’ve got to keep your product very good and very consistent.”
Sharon began her career in restauranting at 16 with a job at Denny’s. She eventually moved to the Dingaling Café, owned by Tommy and Laura Gonzalez, which was then located at the Hollister Airport.
“I watched everything they did,” she said. “And they sold the business, I had to introduce the new owners to everybody in town and show them how to do everything. I thought, ‘What am I doing this for? I could do it for myself.’”
Urged on by her regular customers and with Tim’s support, she opened Country Rose in 2002. Tim was driving a truck at the time, helping to supplement their income, but eventually went to work at the café full-time as a cook. His only previous experience was from the family barbecues, but he picked up the skills quickly.
“They were all our own recipes,” Tim said. “I’d basically tell the line cooks what to prepare, and they’d teach me how to cook it.”
The first café was a tiny place next to the Chevron station near Highway 25. After a brief stay, they moved to College and Fourth Street, now Vivi’s Sweet Tomato Pizza. They stayed there for nine years before moving to the current location on San Benito Street, which had once been Brothers Market, a drive-in grocery store.
The seeming hugeness of the menu belies another historic fact about the location: the kitchen itself is relatively small and was built inside what was once a separate building, the Liberty Stables. “We have to cook things like the ribeye on a flat top,” Tim said, “because we don’t have enough room to have a barbecue grill.”
The café’s name was inspired by a dish pattern Sharon favored, Desert Rose, but she thought to herself, “We can’t name it that, because we’re country, so Country Rose sounded good.” She said her loyal customers, who followed her to the new business, approved the choice.
According to Tim, the seven-page menu started with basics like bacon or sausage and eggs, with other dishes tested as specials and added if they “took off.”
The most popular item on the menu, according to Sharon, is the chicken-fried steak with eggs, topped with a creamy white pepper gravy and served with a choice of potatoes and bread. It’s followed closely by the Potato Pile from the Scrambles menu, which has a little bit of everything: bacon, sausage, home fries, onions, bell peppers and scrambled eggs, topped with cheddar cheese, sour cream and avocado.
The Mexicali menu is filled with breakfast burritos, heavy on chorizo, avocado and Ortega chilis. The Specialties menu packs in plenty of meat options, including ribeye and half-pound hamburger steaks, sausage, grilled chicken and even calamari, pounded to tenderness by the kitchen crew.
There are vegetarian options as well, including an Eggs Benedict with spinach, onions, and bell peppers, topped with hollandaise sauce and served with potatoes. And the salads menu showcases all of the café’s meat options in a variety of Cobb options, including ribeye, chicken and turkey, along with chicken caesar and taco salads.
Sandwiches are the star of the lunch menu, with nine burger choices, hot sandwiches like linguica, crispy chicken, grilled ham and cheese and the de rigueur BLT, which appears on the cold sandwich menu along with a loaded version with avocado and a turkey clubhouse.
Regular Veronica Martinez favors the tuna sandwich, which she accompanies with a cup of Country Rose’s homemade chili.
“For me,” she said, “it’s just a regular sandwich, so close to homemade. And I just love the chili. In reality, this is one of my favorite meals. And it just keeps me bringing us back to a location where we feel at home.”
That homestyle feel extends to the decor, much of which has been donated by the regulars; items which Sharon modestly refers to as “things they didn’t want in their house anymore.”
But there are nods to the café’s deeper roots on the walls, with one section filled with images of the rodeo, another dedicated to aviation—a throwback to the Dingaling Café—and a display highlighting local first responders and military personnel near a table frequented on Tuesdays by breakfasting veterans.
That meeting place feel is something the Bakers thrive on.
“It’s our legacy,” Tim said. “It’s word of mouth. People hear our name and they say, ‘Oh, yeah. I know that place.’ We’re family-oriented, the food is good, and our customers like us. We are very blessed.”
Breakfast and lunch at Country Rose Café
The Hollister Heat Pile – Named after the local softball team, it is similar to the Potato Pile but swaps the sausage for linguica and adds pepper jack cheese and jalapenos. It’s enormous, served with toast, and could serve as breakfast and lunch together in one meal. For a little more heat, be sure to try the salsa served on the side. It is a throwback to a family recipe from the Dingaling Cafe’s owners, made fresh daily and packed with peppers, cilantro and tomatoes. It is popular enough that customers order extra to take home.
Rancher burger – The half-pound burger comes with pepper jack cheese, bacon, an onion ring, and a house sauce that resembles classic thousand island dressing. “People order our burgers,” Tim said, “and they think it’s going to be just a regular burger. They don’t expect anything as big as ours.” I tried it with the potato salad, a recipe that comes from Sharon’s mother and is absolutely classic, with diced sweet pickles, onions and a hint of mustard. Her mother is also the source for the macaroni salad—very much worth trying, as are the crisp sweet potato fries, an equally irresistible sweet and savory choice.
Ribeye Steak – Served with eggs to order and a choice of potatoes, this tender 12-ounce steak comes lightly seasoned. I opted for the crunchy-crusted hash browns—the potatoes are grated into bite-sized bits that cook to a consistency like perfect pasta, with a buttery richness but without excess oil. (A side order of the house garlic sauce is available on request—highly recommended.) The full cut of the ribeye is also used in the Ribeye Steak Taco Salad, a massive cornucopia of chili, beans, onions, bell peppers, and cheddar cheese served in a house-made tortilla bowl and topped with sour cream, avocado and tomato. “I can’t eat it all,” Tim said, “But I’d order that ribeye every day if I could.”
Meat Lover’s Omelette – “It’s almost like if you order a meat lover’s pizza,” Tim said. “You’re going to get your linguica, you’re going to get your ham, you’re going to get your bacon, you’re going to get your sausage. You know, it has everything.” This is my favorite breakfast item at the cafe, filled with a great selection of meat and encased in a perfectly finished folded egg. Once again, the secret to this dish is to kick things up a notch with the house salsa which gives it a mouthwarming heat.
Patty Melt – The usual formula of Swiss cheese and grilled onions, this is my favorite item on the menu due to the beautifully marbled rye, which sets it apart. A patty melt lives or dies on the quality of that bread, and Country Rose uses the best one for this sandwich that I have ever had. It comes from Better Brands out of Watsonville, and the cafe also uses breads from Watsonville’s Sumano’s Bakery and Performance Bakery in Gilroy. The tangy-sour bread adds depth to the grilled onions and the high-quality patty, making it irresistible to me. It’s an old-fashioned diner kind of treat and, I think, a must-try.
756 San Benito St, Hollister
(831) 635-0252
Open daily from 7 a.m. to 2 p.m.
Recommendations for future Eat, Drink, Savor articles can be emailed to roberteliason@benitolink.com.
BenitoLink thanks our underwriters, Hollister Super and Windmill Market, for helping expand the Eat, Drink, Savor series and for giving our readers the stories that interest them. Hollister Super (two stores in Hollister) and Windmill Market (in San Juan Bautista) support reporting on the inspired and creative people behind the many delicious food and drink products made in San Benito County. All editorial decisions are made by BenitoLink.
The Cowboy Scramble with hash browns. Photo by Robert Eliason. 
Ribeye Steak with scrambled eggs and hash browns. Photo by Robert Eliason. The Meat Lover’s Omelette. Photo by Robert Eliason. The Public Drive-In Market, the current location of Country Rose Café. Courtesy of Country Rose Café The Rancher Burger with potato salad. Photo by Robert Eliason. Patty Melt with onion rings. Photo by Robert Eliason.
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