Happy Belly

A rich slice of Caramel Oreo Pie.  A piled high Reuben.  A big Breakfast Burrito.  If these are the kinds of things that make you happy. then you need to visit Happy Belly.

Located in Gloucester Mass, Happy Belly is a cute, comfortable counter service cafe and bakery serving breakfast and lunch, shakes and smoothies, and outrageously good sweet treats, all made in house, all from scratch.

Melissa Hays - Pastry Chef, Happy Belly: "We bake everything.  Everything that you see in the cases is produced by the bakery."

Rhiannon Nowak - Executive Chef & GM, Happy Belly: "We offer as much as we possibly can from scratch and we offer the widest variety of things we can."

Rhiannon Nowak runs the kitchen.  Melissa Hays runs the bakery.  And since everything they make is supposed to fill you up and make you feel good, the name of this place makes perfect sense.

Rhiannon Nowak - Executive Chef & GM, Happy Belly: "It's what we're trying to do and what we try to succeed at every single day, that when you leave, you have a happy belly."

The menu at Happy Belly focuses on items that are fresh and full of flavor, from just about anywhere in the world.

Rhiannon Nowak - Executive Chef & GM, Happy Belly: "We try and touch on a number of cuisines.  We try and not pigeonhole ourselves into one category.  So we try and really cover all of our bases so there's something for everyone."

And we'll get to all that food in a minute.  But let's treat ourselves to dessert first, because the stuff coming out of the bakery doesn't just make customers happy, it makes them down right dizzy with delight.

Melissa Hays - Pastry Chef, Happy Belly: "I want them to feel overwhelmed.

Melissa bakes the kinds of treats that bring back childhood memories.  It's not fancy, but it is fantastic.

Melissa Hays - Pastry Chef, Happy Belly: "We stick with very traditional things.  Lots of fun nostalgic things people can really identify with."

Take for example, the Giant HoHo.

Melissa Hays - Pastry Chef, Happy Belly: "I loved like the Hostess HoHo's when I was a kid so I just had the idea of doing a great big one which is essentially just a Swiss Roll.  So you make a very thin layer of chocolate cake, you fill it with whipped cream, you roll it up in plastic wrap, you let it set, and then you cover it with ganache.  So that's essentially the HoHo.  It's like being a kid again, and literally everybody that has it says that, they're like 'eating this makes me feel like I'm a kid again.'"

The bakery options are always changing, from Pop Tarts, to cookies, to Old Fashioned Donuts.

But one thing that will probably never come off the menu is the dense, delicious, devilishly decadent Oreo Caramel Pie.

Melissa Hays - Pastry Chef, Happy Belly: "The Oreo Caramel Pie sells more than any other thing in the bakery. It's an Oreo cookie crust that uses whole Oreos and butter to form the crust, the first layer is homemade caramel, and then the second layer is ganache, so it's incredibly rich, incredibly decadent, we top it with Oreo cookie crumbs, and it's really beautiful when you slice it because you even see the layers of caramel and ganache, and it's hugely popular."

Happy Belly opens early, because customers can't wait to start their day with a fresh cappuccino and a bite to eat, like this Smoked Salmon sandwich topped with hardboiled egg, or the Breakfast Burrito stuffed with sausage, sweet potato, avocado, scrambled eggs, black beans, cilantro, and garlic aioli.

Rhiannon Nowak - Executive Chef & GM, Happy Belly: "You're gonna get the soft creamy richness of the avocado combined with the texture of the black bean which is lightly seasoned.  We do skin on roasted sweet potatoes, you're gonna get that texture.  You're gonna get egg, and you're gonna get the back kick from the cilantro and the garlic aioli.  It's absolutely fantastic."

At lunch, sandwiches rule, especially the made from scratch Reuben.

Rhiannon Nowak - Executive Chef & GM, Happy Belly: "The Reuben starts with our homemade sauerkraut and our homemade corned beef.  We make an adobo 1000 Island, served with gruyere, and it's served on our homemade rye.  So you're gonna have the sweet and spicy from the adobo 1000 Island, you're gonna have the richness of the corned beef which has been roasted for 15 hours on a low oven, all sort of culminating in the true Reuben flavor with a twist."

For some Asian flavor, order the Bahn Mi with shredded pork and lots of veggies on fresh baked ciabatta.  And for a little south in your mouth, check out the Crispy Chicken Sandwich with melted provolone and something called ‘bacon dust’.

Rhiannon Nowak - Executive Chef & GM, Happy Belly: "Bacon dust is pulverized perfectly cooked bacon and it just ends up being a really pleasant experience when you have the crispiness of the sandwich, the softness of the bacon dust, and then the cheesy melty marvelousness of some provolone."

So at this point, it's pretty clear your belly will be happy here.  But at Happy Belly, they want the rest of you to be happy too.  So the space itself is comfortable and inviting, and customers are encouraged to just hang out and be happy.

Rhiannon Nowak - Executive Chef & GM, Happy Belly: "The underlying tone of all of the comments that we get is we love the vibe.  It's at once warm and inviting with little cubbies of seating areas and then you have great open people watching areas that you can sit at as well.  We have chairs in the bakery so you can watch the bakers bake in the morning, and then we have just varied and fun things.  I think part of putting happy in your name is that you have to extend that feeling to absolutely every aspect that you're encasing people in, and you want to make sure that when they leave they've had the best and happiest experience they can have."