Their sweet success

A classically trained French pastry chef’s friend tells her she should consider collaborating with a man who roasts his own coffee — that his skills could add something to her restaurant.

Debi Newton replies with an emphatic, “No.”

But then she sees the roaster, and she tastes the coffee.

And, perhaps most importantly, she meets the man, Dub.

She probably didn’t know that Dub honed his craft by heating up beans in a Whirley Pop popcorn popper — a “stainless steel unit with a windup handle” that, in the beginning, “smoked up the whole house.”

And so, when she saw his more modern machine, Debi considered putting it in the window of the restaurant, Dub says, a smile creeping across his face, “just so people could smell it.”

The rest, as they say, is history, a 20-year match made in culinary heaven — like a great pastry and an equally satisfying cup of coffee.

It’s also a “meet cute” that started a journey that has led the baker and the coffee maker to their own little hot spot in Goldsboro where customers are comfortable enough to pull up a chair for a chat and their creations fly off the shelves.

And it’s a dream come true — a tribute to those who taught Debi the way.

A bite of Italian ricotta almond cake sends a woman back in time.

For a moment, she is no longer sitting inside Café Le Doux — the small coffee and pastry shop tucked on the corner of a strip mall off Spence Avenue Dub and Debi opened in August 2022.

She’s a little girl locking eyes with her grandmother.

“When she bit into it, it was so much like her grandmother’s, she had tears coming out of her eyes,” Debi said.

The pastry chef can relate.

For her, with every item she creates for what has become a cult-like following of customers who rave about one of Goldsboro’s newest eateries, she is “transported” to her own grandmother’s kitchen.

“The dough and the breads really transport me,” Debi said. “If it’s soft and that crust is just perfect, you know. And when I know, it takes me back to being a little girl.”

If you ask one of the many loyal patrons who get their caffeine and sweet fix at Café Le Doux day after day, they would tell you there is so much more to the establishment than the house-roasted coffee and handmade pastries that lure everyone from doctors and lawyers to teenagers and members of the military to that strip mall.

The food and drinks are a part of the experience, yes.

But it’s the opportunity to relive coveted memories and to make new ones they say truly sets the café apart.

Debi and Dub still find it hard to believe that what was supposed to be a small, quiet place where they could enjoy their retirement has turned into a phenomenon — that what started as Dub and a single employee working with Debi, who ran an insurance agency, coming in a few hours a day to make some pastries and bread would become a bustling business with nearly a dozen employees.

“Within two months of when we opened the door, everything would be blown out of the pastry cases,” Dub said. “We had no idea. It’s just gotten out of hand.”

“It got to where I was over here every day for three to four hours instead of one hour or two hours. He was selling out. We finally decided it was just wearing me down. I couldn’t do it. I said, ‘I’m retiring,’” Debi added. “That’s how we got in here together earlier because that wasn’t the plan. The plan was to have a sleepy little coffee shop with a few pastries and a few breads. We didn’t know it was going to take off.”

Dub Newton enjoys an espresso inside Cafe Le Doux. PHOTO BY CASEY MOZINGO

A little girl watches her Native American grandmother and great-grandmother in the kitchen.

They are making traditional flatbread.

“As I got older, we started baking,” Debi said. “They would let me in on everything they did.”

Their recipes — from chew bread to butter pecan cookies — are mainstays inside Café Le Doux.

“That’s why I think I got into baking. I had those influences who taught me how to do bread,” Debi said. “They taught me how to cook and bake. They were so good at it.”

So, every single time she and her employees are working with dough, she feels her ancestors beside her.

“I think of them,” Debi said. “And I tell the girls in the back, ‘You better get it right, because they’re up there watching.”

And those connections — how a feeling, taste, or smell forever binds a person to loved ones — are revealed often inside the café.

Like the French couple who marveled at one of Debi’s quiches.

“They said, ‘We haven’t had a quiche that good since we left France,” Debi said. “We are pretty proud of our quiches because they are original. You have people who make them, I call them American quiches. They are so different in texture in taste. I think ours stood out.”

Or the German and Italian families who are in Goldsboro because of military ties and walk into the shop.

“They keep coming and coming because they get to have a little taste of home. When they get a buttery tart or a European pastry, they feel like they’re back home again. That makes me happier than anything,” Debi said. “Just to see their faces, it’s unreal. They smile so much when they taste it. That means we’re doing something right.”

A man with long white hair and a long white beard sits at a small white table.

He sips an espresso and, when a customer enters his café, greets them as an old friend.

“He’s the meet-and-greeter,” Debi said. “And he always says, ‘Goodbye” or “Have a good day.”

But there is nothing disingenuous about the way Dub interacts with those who frequent Café Le Doux.

To him — and his wife — they are more than customers.

“They are our friends now,” Debi said.

So, while they find it amazing that when they opened their doors, they would sell out within a few hours, the popularity of Café Le Doux has never been what drives them.

It’s those connections — and watching tears fall and memories relived — that remind them they are exactly where they are meant to be.

“We have all types. We have doctors, we have lawyers, we have common working people, we have corporate people, we have military. So, we have everybody. That’s the beauty,” Debi said. “You love everybody and you want to embrace everybody who comes in here and give them what they want. I think that’s why the community is accepting of us. And when we get to see their reactions — what this means to them — you know, you get tired and the days get long, but when that happens, you’re like, ‘I could do this all day.’”

And it doesn’t hurt that they get to do it together.

“I could never do this without him,” Debi said, looking up at her husband.

Dub smiles.

“You know, her dad had told her the whole time we were barely surviving and getting killed in the restaurant business, he said, ‘You know, if you had just done the bakery and the coffee, it would have been a lot better and a lot easier,’” he said, letting out a soft chuckle. “Well, here we are. Turns out he was right. And it’s pretty special.”