Inside the brand new Anticonquista Cafe location in Chicago’s Pilsen neighborhood. Photograph by Lauren Reese, courtesy of Anticonquista Cafe.

Central America-connected roasting firm Anticonquista Café opened its first brick-and-mortar espresso store in Chicago this month, following 5 years of cell and pop-up operations.

The brand new Pilsen neighborhood cafe goals to liberate the native scene from monochromatic espresso experiences and cookie-cutter chains by providing vivid bursts of shade and tradition. The brand new location additionally expands the corporate’s efforts to focus on the tough work of farmers and farmworkers in bringing espresso to the World North. 

Prospects getting into the store will see a large quetzal hen mural by native artist Czr Prz on the intense blue again wall. Vinyl textual content in each English and Spanish accompanying the mural explains the Mayan legend and significance of Guatemala’s nationwide hen, whose purple and inexperienced colours proceed all through the store’s partitions.

Photograph by Lauren Reese, courtesy of Anticonquista Cafe.

“Whereas Chicago is thought for its summers, it solely has a few 23% probability of being sunny on any given day of the 12 months, so our winters could be fairly brutal,” Anticonquista Café Co-Founder Lauren Reese instructed Day by day Espresso Information. “We wished to fight this with the intense sense of colours present in [co-founder Elmer Fajardo Pacheco]’s hometown in Guatemala.”

Cutouts within the brick wall reverse the bar are paying homage to historic Mayan structure nonetheless standing in Guatemala and Honduras. Anticonquista turned to native builders and artisans in transforming the store, creating customized oak window stations for distant employees, whereas giant group tables and particular person seating present choices. 

Breads and bagels from Chicago’s Dorothy’s Bakery are piled excessive with native produce, house-made cream cheese and toppings similar to a Salvadoran-style curtido cabbage slaw.

Photograph by Lauren Reese, courtesy of Anticonquista Cafe.

Extra dishes created in collaboration with Chef Lucas DePerry embrace a vegan ceviche comprised of combined mushrooms, hearts of palm, avocado, mango and pickled onions. The jocote en miel parfait is a full-fat yogurt topped with home granola, toasted pepitas, mango and a drizzle of cardamom panela syrup made with cardamom grown on the Pacheco household farm.

“The menu idea was to deal with the fruit timber that develop in my espresso farm — mango, passionfruit, oranges, limes, güisquil, avocado to call a couple of — and greens that my household grows in our gardens because the spotlight components,” Pacheco instructed Day by day Espresso Information. “We’re not importing vegatables and fruits from the farms but. We hope within the close to future we will start experimenting with freeze drying some fruits that we develop on my farm.”

For coffees, the corporate’s authentic Arc 800 roaster now sits within the new cafe for small-batch roasts and upcoming month-to-month roasting workshops that might be accessible in English and Spanish.

Photograph by Lauren Reese, courtesy of Anticonquista Cafe.

Anticonquista sources the brunt of inexperienced coffees straight from Pacheco’s household farm in Guatemala and its neighbors close to the Honduras/Guatemala border. A Diedrich IR-12 machine helps manufacturing roasting in West City, the place Anticonquista made capability upgrades in 2023. 

“We knew this transition was going to be essential earlier than we may ever open up a restaurant brick-and-mortar,” mentioned Reese. “Could 2024 is once we obtained our wholesale licensing to start wholesale operations, which is a giant objective for us for 2025.”

On the Pilsen store, a 2-group Victoria Arduino Eagle One espresso machine paired with a Mazzer Kony S grinder powers espresso drinks, whereas batch brews come by way of a Bunn GVH-3 grinder and Fetco CBS-52H-15 brewer.

One key menu merchandise is the Café de Olla, which is made with a Breville induction burner behind the counter. The espresso firm additionally maintains its personal system of 10-gallon chrome steel pots for ready-to-drink chilly brew, which is offered by the glass or in returnable glass bottles.

On the household farm in Guatemala, cardamom manufacturing has turn into a major focus, with exports to the U.S. deliberate for this 12 months. On the similar time, the farm has confronted quite a few production-related challenges because of excessive climate situations. 

“When visiting this previous December, my mother instructed me it had been a relentless month of rain from November into December,” mentioned Pacheco. “This has been arduous on us, as a few of our lower-elevation farms might be in the course of harvest, inflicting the espresso cherries to over-absorb water and fall to the bottom and is a giant loss for us.”

Transparently addressing such realities to clients within the U.S. stays a big objective of Anticonquista Café, which celebrates the fantastic thing about espresso whereas additionally recognizing the tough realities of its manufacturing.

In Pilsen, the store will quickly host the month-to-month bilingual e book membership Cafe ConTextos, roasting workshops run by Pacheco, and Taller de Café, a free, hands-on inexperienced espresso sorting workshop that provides perspective into labor.

“After being a cell enterprise for 5 years, we’re actually excited to have a everlasting residence and to essentially develop our roots into the soil,” mentioned Pacheco. “It’s been difficult as a cell enterprise, particularly throughout the peak years of COVID, to host the occasions which are core to our mission of bringing espresso farmers to the forefront of the espresso business. The store will give us that secure house to have robust conversations that we expect have been lacking on this business.”

Anticonquista Café is situated at 952 W 18th St. in Chicago. Feedback? Questions? Information to share? Contact DCN’s editors right here. For all the most recent espresso business information, subscribe to the DCN publication.

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