New Bedford café coming to former Me & Ed's Family Restaurant site

NEW BEDFORD — A new café with two personalities could be open for business as early as this summer at the site of the former Me & Ed's Family Restaurant on Brock Avenue.

The Planning Board unanimously OK'd a special permit for parking reduction at the 30 Brock Ave. site to five spaces earlier this month for the Taber Café.

Owner Bryan C. Moniz said he hopes to have the Taber Café open by this summer after completing a total renovation of the building.

The building has been vacant since Me & Ed's closed in May 2021 after 57 years in business.

The first floor will feature a breakfast-lunch spot, open from 6 a.m. to 2 p.m.

When that restaurant closes at 2 p.m., a lounge in the basement level will open. It will also be serving food from the first-floor kitchen.

There will also be a take-out window, as there had been at Me & Ed's.

Me & Ed's restaurant had been open full time on both floors for many years, as well.

Moniz said, "I hope it becomes what I think it should become, a neighborhood place."

He said there's a need for a breakfast-lunch restaurant in the area. "Go to a breakfast place in Westport and it's too packed, go to the next one and it's too packed. You end up not going to breakfast sometimes."

What's planned for the lounge at Taber Cafe?

The lounge will open at 2 p.m., and will feature specials of the day, like fish and chips on Fridays, as well as bar food staples like hamburgers and chicken wings, he said.

Patrons can stop by the lounge as they wait for their take-out, or eat in, or just watch a little football on TV, Moniz said.

He doesn't want the lounge to stay open until 2 a.m., he said, or cater to parties.

"It's for the people who live around there. That's their little spot to go over for a drink and watch some games."