Naturally good

Editor's note: Behind the Plates is a monthly series featuring area restaurants. It runs the first Wednesday of every month.

Boxers Cafe in Huntingdon is a tavern into green.

The take-out containers are biodegradable and come with utensils made from corn starch. Menus are printed with soy-based ink on recycled paper. Owners Tony and Paula Seguin have even had their vehicles, a Volkswagen Jetta and Chevrolet Suburban, modified to run on leftover oil from the fryers.

They fuel up every Wednesday - that's when the oil in the fryers is changed, because Tuesdays are wing nights.

"When I got into the business and saw all the packaging waste, day after day, it was crazy," Tony Seguin said. "Over time, we just became more and more aware that somebody's got to make these changes."

Food waste is given to local farmers, to feed to breeding animals. The Seguins use organic, local produce when it's available and serve local, grassfed beef in their dishes. They shun Coke and Pepsi, instead offering sodas from Catawissa Bottling Co. in Catawissa, Columbia County, and free-trade certified coffee from Standing Stone Coffee Co., a coffee house and roasting facility in Huntingdon. Many of the beers served are craft beers from microbreweries on the East Coast.

"We shy away from large corporations," Tony Seguin said.

Boxers opened at its present location in 1990, named after the dogs Tony Seguin's family kept as pets while he was growing up. A photo of the boxer they had at the time, Pretzel, hangs on the wall, along with her pedigree.

"We figured it'd make a good sign, and it wouldn't pigeonhole us," Tony Seguin said.

The business began with Tony Seguin and a friend, Pat Kindlin, a State College native. Tony and Paula Seguin, who are also originally from State College, had just started dating, and Paula Seguin started as a waitress but became a partner within a few weeks.

Tony Seguin and Kindlin bought the building from Herb and Theresa Wong, who operated Susie Wong's, one of the first Chinese restaurants in State College.

The Wongs had purchased the business and fixed it up to make it into another Chinese restaurant. Tony Seguin had worked for the Wongs at one of the snack shops they owned in State College.

"There's no way we could have started it without the Wongs," Tony Seguin said. "It was a no-money-down setup, where we were just paying rent at first."

Five years into the venture, Kindlin went on vacation to Florida and decided to stay there, so the Seguins bought him out.

"I really don't know that I imagined being here (almost) 20 years later," Tony Seguin said with a laugh. "Our vision's grown along with the place, with quality food and a variety of beer."

The homemade soup special changes daily; last week, for Fat Tuesday, Paula Seguin made New Orleans chicken and seafood soup, which is a favorite among regulars.

"It's a very creative process," she said. "I use whatever we have on hand. ... We make our own stock, from the chicken bones."

Other favorites include the mushroom soup, and Friday's standing special, which is New England clam chowder.

The food is a family affair; in addition to Paula Seguin's soups, several of the recipes belong to Helen Seguin, Tony Seguin's mother. Boxers serves her potato salad and chili recipes, and she makes the dessert and cheese pies, which come in tomato, sausage or broccoli.

The menu includes a number of vegetarian options, from grilled black bean burgers to the bleu cheese delight, which is sauteed brocoli and bell peppers, grated cabbage and carrots, red onion, provolone, dijon sauce and bleu cheese dressing on pumpernickel bread.

"We try to make interesting sandwiches for people who don't eat meat," Tony Seguin said.

The food is what draws the staff of Dick's Home Care in Huntingdon to Boxers - general manager Jim Young and employee Lindsey Hardie of Huntingdon were having lunch there last week. Hardie was planning to order one of her favorites, a chicken cheese steak, and said the breaded mushrooms are a good choice, too.

"We come here for staff lunches - they choose Boxers because the food's good," Young said.

Huntingdon attorney Charlie Bierbach considers himself a Boxers regular, eating there at least once a week. He rattles off a list of his favorites - the homemade soups, the taco salad with an edible shell, chicken salad, the turkey reuben. He said it doesn't hurt that Boxers is close to his practice, BMZ Law.

"I stop after work to indulge in drinking beer," he said. "The selection of beer is as good as anywhere in the county."

Penn State junior and Huntindgon native Justin Shope said he stops at Boxers once or twice a month, whenever his commute to University Park allows. He's been coming to Boxers for as long as he can remember, usually ordering the Cajun chicken or eye of round sandwich.

"I like the atmosphere a lot," he said. "It's really laid back; it's that small-town, small-restaurant feeling."

Mirror Staff Writer Ashley Gurbal is at 946-7435.