West Boca finally has its own Maman. The French-style café and bakery that started as a single SoHo counter in 2014 is now serving at 9959 Glades Road, Suite 120, open seven days a week with indoor and outdoor seating, a kids' corner and, unusually for a breakfast spot, a bar.

What is at 9959 Glades Road

According to Maman's own page for the West Boca café, the room follows the brand's familiar look: vintage French furniture, florals everywhere and imported tile. Outside there is patio seating, and inside there is a section set aside for children, shared with a neighboring kids' business. The bar pours beer and wine, and the café advertises a happy hour.

Hours are 7:30 a.m. to 5 p.m. on weekdays and 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. on Saturday and Sunday. The kitchen runs a little shorter, from 8 a.m. to 4 p.m. every day, so a late lunch needs to be ordered before four. You can eat in, pick up or get delivery, and the café phone is 561-235-5132.

For anyone who has been driving to CityPlace for a Maman fix, this matters. Until now the closest café was the West Palm Beach location at 473 S. Rosemary Ave., a long haul up the Turnpike or I-95 from western Boca. The new café sits on Glades Road near State Road 7, in the middle of the neighborhoods that used to make that drive.

The cookie that started it

Maman's company history traces it to October 2014, when founders Elisa Marshall and Benjamin Sormonte opened a small grab-and-go café in SoHo. The name is French for mother, and the menu was built on the food the two grew up with, one family in the south of France and one in North America. The brand's breakout item came in 2017, when its nutty chocolate chip cookie landed on Oprah's Favorite Things list. That cookie is still the reason many people walk in the door.

From that one SoHo shop the company has grown into dozens of cafés across New York, Washington, Toronto, Montreal and South Florida, where it now runs locations from South Beach and Wynwood to Coral Gables, Aventura and West Palm Beach. West Boca is the newest of the Florida group.

Martha Stewart is on the fall menu

The timing is good for a first visit. Maman is running a limited seasonal menu with Martha Stewart, listed on its Martha x Maman page. The pastry case gets a salted caramel chocolate chip cookie with a soft caramel center, a caramel cheesecake sugar bun made from a sugared croissant bun filled with cream cheese mousseline and salted caramel, and an apple cider donut cake brushed with brown butter and rolled in cinnamon sugar.

There is also a cold-brewed Marrakesh mint tea shaken with lemon and served with blackberries and raspberries. Two savory items, a chicken salad club with spiced cranberry chutney and a creamy tomato soup with a three-cheese grilled cheese, are limited to what Maman calls its classic cafés, so ask at the counter whether the West Boca kitchen is making them. A Martha Stewart x Maman holiday gift box with coffee, tea, peppermint hot chocolate, peanut brittle and peppermint bark is sold through the company's shop.

Happy hour, Maman style

The bar is the detail that sets this café apart from most of its daytime neighbors. Maman's happy hour menu, offered at participating cafés from 3 to 6 p.m. on weekdays and 4 to 6 p.m. on weekends, lists $8 cocktails such as a mimosa, a peach Bellini, an elderflower spritz and an espresso martini, plus $8 house wines by the glass, $30 bottles and $7 beers. The West Boca page says its bar has happy hour offerings, though the company's list of participating cafés has not caught up with the new location yet, so confirm the specials on your first visit.

With the café closing at 5 p.m., that leaves a short window. It is best treated as an early aperitif after a school pickup or a long Saturday of errands rather than a night out.

What it means for west Boca

West Boca has no shortage of quick breakfast stops, but far fewer places built for lingering over coffee in a room someone obviously spent time designing. A café with a patio, a corner where children can play and a glass of wine on offer by mid-afternoon fills a gap that families west of the Turnpike have usually solved by driving east. Go on a weekday morning before the crowd figures it out, order the original nutty chocolate chip cookie alongside one of the Martha Stewart pastries, and decide for yourself which one deserves the hype.