The Cafe That Wants You to Put Your Phone Down

Ask Dora and Sywane McManus what came first — the space or the menu — and Sywane answers without hesitating. "What came first was really the design. I'm going to be truthful. She is the one that gets all the credit for the decor."

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His own contribution started with an argument about chairs. Sywane worked as an electrician and a plumber before this life, and more recently spent about seven years producing film and television, so he has spent a career being practical about what things cost and how people treat them. He wanted iron chairs, the indestructible kind. Dora refused; she wanted the room to be comfortable and pretty as well as durable. She won. Then he assembled the furniture she chose, stepped back, and looked at what she had seen all along. "Once I put everything together, I was like, wow, babe — this is beautiful. That's how it truly happened."

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That argument, and how it ended, explains most of how Cafe Na'Scent works.

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The name is a promise. Na'Scent — say it "NAY-sent" — means a thing just coming into being, a new beginning, and the McManuses have earned the word. They have run daycare centers for thirty years, both of them heads of their own companies, and before that they were in the restaurant business in Jersey City, a chapter that COVID closed. When they decided to build again, they built in Bayonne, where they live, and they named the place for what it was.

What they built runs deliberately against how most cafes work. Most cafes are grab-and-go by design: order, sit briefly, leave — or sit alone with a laptop and headphones. Na'Scent has long communal tables instead, and Dora's reason is specific. "Some people live a life where they live alone," she says. "When they come here, they meet other people, and that encourages them to continue to come."

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Sywane puts it more bluntly: people don't put their phones down anymore, so the room is arranged to make conversation the default. "Get the phone down and get to really know each other." Even the front door carries the idea — it is not a commercial glass door but the kind you would push open walking into a house. Customers tell them it feels like walking into a living room.

The menu is the part of the story most people don't guess from the street. The McManuses have been vegan for about ten years, and they fast regularly. Their first instinct was to build the whole menu around that lifestyle — and then they thought about their family and friends who eat differently, and decided a cafe for the community shouldn't cater only to its owners. "As you sleep, you come up with new ideas," Sywane says. "We didn't want to just cater to our lifestyle."

So the menu runs both directions, and it runs deep. The vegan side is the real thing, not an afterthought: an oyster-mushroom "chicken" sandwich — crispy seasoned mushrooms fried and stacked on a bun — an Impossible burger, a vegan meatball parm, tofu and plant-based-steak bowls. The other side of the menu answers with a Jersey steak and cheese and a fried-chicken Caesar croissant sandwich. And then there is the wall of shots: some thirty fresh juice shots and blends organized by what ails you — anemia, insomnia, inflammation, immunity, even a hangover shot — next to herbal teas from around the world and a mushroom coffee. It is the kind of genuinely healthy menu most cafes promise and very few actually deliver; BayonnePulse keeps going back for the fresh salads, the sandwiches, the shots, and the matcha. The regulars have their own loyalties. "A lot of them love the Jersey steak and cheese," Dora says, "and definitely the croissant sandwich." One visitor, Jessica Hellinger, offered her review unprompted: the oyster mushrooms are great.

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For the record, the owners' orders: Dora goes for the strawberry and blueberry matchas, the Biscoff latte, and the chicken Caesar croissant. Sywane loves the vegan Caesar salad, the hibiscus tea, and the pistachio latte — which, he notes, his wife makes him pay for.

The week has a rhythm, too. Every weekday carries a theme — seniors have had fifty-cent coffee on Mondays, teachers have had their own day, and first responders, medical workers, and the fire department get discounted drinks on theirs. The themes rotate, so the day's deal is announced on their social pages; checking is part of the fun. The idea, Dora says, is simple: give customers something to look forward to.

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One corner of the cafe belongs to the children — it has its own name, Na'Scent Kids — and it may be the most autobiographical thing in the room. "Being in the daycare business for thirty years — my life is like nothing without children," Dora says. "I had to integrate children some type of way right here." Sywane had the idea for the corner; she made it real. The kids' menu makes it personal — three-dollar frappes named for actual children: Gigi's Chocolate Chip, Gabby's Fruity Pebbles, Akhari's Oreo. Even the dogs are covered. A jog past the storefront gave the couple the idea for free pet cups — whipped cream, vanilla — with any coffee, and a water bowl outside.

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Working together, at work and at home, is a subject they have clearly figured out. The rule is that the aprons stay at the shop; business does not come home. Sywane reaches for basketball to describe the partnership: championship teams are built from two people who both refuse to lose, the way the Lakers paired Kobe and Shaq. "They bumped heads, and they won championships," he says. "I can't do what she can do, and she can't do what I can do. As long as we respect that, you can make things work." Dora lets the analogy run its full course, then offers the shorter version: "He needs me."

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They knew it was working when the neighborhood told them so. One woman, a regular from the earliest days, cried at the counter telling Dora she was moving away and would miss the place. Others came through the door just to say thank you — this stretch of Broadway was quiet, and they were glad something was finally here. One customer recently came in three times in a single day: breakfast, lunch, and back again for a drink.

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Ask about the dream and the answer has already outgrown the room. They talk about Na'Scent as a flagship — "the mother," Dora calls it — with locations in other cities someday. Sywane, who is up early to prep and stays to close because cooking has never felt like work to him, sees it plainly: "I see us growing. I see chains. I already see it from here."

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Cafe Na'Scent — 755 Broadway, Bayonne, NJ 07002. Go for the matcha, stay for the big table. Check their site and socials for the day's theme before you go.

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Words & photos: BayonnePulse · Behind the Counter. If it makes you smirk, smile, or sigh a little — it's BayonnePulse.