Growing up in Arizona, Martha Valenzuela remembers her mother who returned to Mexico. She would often come back with a yellow box of plastic-wrapped De La Rosa Mazapan peanut-flavored sweets. At every birthday party and family celebration, she remembers the meal Tres Leches cake, a moist sponge cake that is drizzled with the traditional combination of condensed milk, condensed milk and cream.
She associates these flavors with times of celebration and reunion. And now, those memories inspire the menu at Deseo Coffee Shack, their tiny but carefully thought-out shop on McDowell Road near downtown Phoenix.
Housed in an old casita, the building offers a lot of its own history and exposed brick charm, as it was once part of a farm that has long been replaced by a shopping center. But the real nostalgia is on the menu, with latte specialties like the Canelita, inspired by cinnamon-flavored biscuits, and the Abuelita Mocha, a tribute to the hot chocolate mix Valenzuela grew up with.
Valenzuela was far from the first to serve Mexican-inspired coffees on Metro Phoenix. The scene has grown slowly over the past decade, and Phoenix is now home to a diverse selection of cafes that serve drinks inspired by Mexican recipes and cuisine.
Some cafes celebrate the bright colors and flavors of Mexico, while others take a decidedly more modern approach. For almost all cafe owners, their creativity is driven by a passion to celebrate heritage and culture.
A brief history of the Mexican coffee shops in Phoenix
In 2014, José “ET” Rivera began tossing drinks from a coffee cart that was set up on his porch. As its Tres Leches flavored drinks grew in popularity, Rivera started Tres Leches Cafe and finally settled on Van Buren Street a few years later in 2018.
Around the same time, in 2016, Jorge Ignacio Torres opened Futuro, an ultra-modern coffee shop in downtown Phoenix.
A year later, Azukar, a family run coffee shop in South Phoenix, began welcoming customers.
On Grand Avenue, GG Peralta and her parents Francisco and Azul opened the El Charro Hipster Cafe in 2018, a café and restaurant that aims to bring a piece of Mexico City to Phoenix.
In 2019, La Bohemia, which started as a pop-up, joined the party on McDowell Road with a modern and bright cafe inspired by Mexican art and culture. In the same year, Valenzuela Deseo Coffee Shack opened.
Celebrate traditional Mexican flavors in a new way
For Phoenix cafe owners, their journey to selling Mexican coffee drinks began differently. For Tres Leches Cafe owner Rivera, drinks came first and influenced the rest of the cafe.
“All of my drinks are Mexican, so I thought I’d make this the theme of my entire cafe,” he says.
His café on Van Buren Street has three main rooms, each with a different theme. One room is designed to feel like Rivera’s grandmother’s house, he says, complete with pictures of his family between comfy seating areas. The middle room is bright with a floor-to-ceiling mural saying “Girls only want a pan”.
The third room is painted all black and celebrates Chicano culture, says Rivera. If the café is hosting events, this room is where the DJs line up. The differences allow everyone to feel welcome, he says.
“Each room has its own atmosphere and the café comes alive,” he says.
A modern take on childhood classics
Futuro in the Roosevelt Row arts district in downtown Phoenix embodies the third wave coffee aesthetic. The plain space is almost entirely white, from the walls to the counters and furniture. Clear lines and minimalist decor define the space.
The drinks menu started with strong, unsweetened coffee, says Torres, very simple. Then customers asked for sweeter drinks.
“I didn’t want to make honey lattes, I wanted to do something pure and honest for us that represented our culture,” says Torres.
So he designed a menu, entirely in his native Spanish, and set about educating his customers.
“We pay homage to our culture with everything we present,” says Torres. “We are inspired by my family, culture, history and that makes me more passionate.”
Futuro’s menu includes the lechera, made from espresso, sweetened condensed milk, and piloncillo, a type of pressed raw cane sugar popular in Mexico. He serves a Cafe de Olla with cinnamon, anise and citrus as well as fresh juices inspired by Aguas Frescas.
The challenge at Futuro is to connect the drinks with the ultra-modern space and people’s perceptions, says Torres.
“We had to face the stereotype of aesthetics and there is a colored person behind it,” he says. “Yes, it’s a beautiful room, but it’s not pretentious. It’s clean. It’s not fancy coffee, it’s clean, and it’s modern.”
Buzz-worthy:Here are 7 new cafes and coffee shops to try on the Phoenix Subway
Most of Futuro’s customers are city dwellers who live or work in downtown Phoenix, Torres says. But one of his favorite pastimes is when young customers bring older generations with them to show them how Mexican culture is celebrated.
“When young people bring their parents with them, it’s a nice transition for me,” he says.
He sees the nostalgia for ingredients like Mazapan and Cajeta flood people and suddenly the modern space feels more inviting, he says.
“It’s nostalgic and feels honest,” says Torres. “For me it is of the utmost importance to put our culture on a pedestal.”
Mexican-American culture in a mug
Aesthetically, Deseo Coffee Shack is somewhere between the bright colors of Tres Leches and the ultra-modern and elegant atmosphere of Futuro. Valenzuela says she tried to combine her love of Mexican history with her upbringing in the United States
“I’m really proud of where I’m from and it’s important to hold on to our culture,” she says. “But I tried to modernize it and not be the same cheesy Mexican culture.”
In the tiny shop, a mural of Pedro Infante, a 1940s Mexican film star and singer, takes up an entire wall. Light serape ceilings rest on the armrests of the bar stools.
But Valenzuela stayed true to its mission to merge the two cultures. Before opening her coffee shop, she traveled through Mexico City and Puebla to visit cafes, and also went to Portland and Seattle to study the latest in American coffee culture.
“We’re not here to reinvent the coffee wheel,” says Valenzuela. “We just wanted to offer something that the community could be proud of.”
Does Phoenix have a Mexican coffee moment?
Coffee shops celebrating Mexican flavors are becoming increasingly popular in Phoenix. According to the 2019 US Census, 42.6% of people counted in the Phoenix metropolis identified themselves as Hispanic or Latino, compared with 18.5% nationwide, but other communities are also embracing the Mexican coffee trend.
As more Mexican coffee shops open across the valley, Torres says he’s cautiously optimistic about small business growth, despite hoping Mexican coffee beverages will not be appropriated.
“Phoenix is big enough, so the more the better,” he says. “It is important to me that it is not only used profitably.”
Valenzuela is happy about the growth. More cafes selling beverages inspired by Mexican recipes mean more people are familiar and looking for items that she sells, she says. Plus, as a Hispanic business owner, it’s important to her to show others that they can too.
“For communities with many Hispanic Americans, it’s good to see an example that people can follow,” she says.
Rivera says he thinks the concept of Tres Leches as a taste and dessert is now well known and loved outside of Mexican culture. He attributes this familiarity to helping customers and convincing them to try other drinks.
“There are so many Mexican restaurants in Phoenix and Arizona and the drinks are inspired by popular Mexican desserts,” says Rivera. “That gives people a different approach to coffee.”
When customers tell him stories about how his drinks bring back memories of childhood visits to his grandparents, Rivera makes him proud. Other customers tell him that they have never eaten horchata or churro, and while he finds that shocking, Rivera says he’s excited to share his culture with a wider audience.
“It’s fun to see new people and get them across, all of the elements create something exciting,” he says.
For Valenzuela, Mexican coffee shops are about celebrating culture and uniting the past and the future.
“As a culture, we’ve always drunk coffee,” says Valenzuela. “Now people are taking it and accepting it even if they don’t know it.”
Mexican cafes to try in Phoenix
I want Coffee Shack: 2330 E. McDowell Road, Phoenix. 602-275-3155, deseoacoffeeshack.com.
Café Tres Leches: 1714 W. Van Buren Street, Phoenix. 602-368-1804, treslechesaz.com.
Future: 909 N First Street, Phoenix. 602-730-3227, palabraphx.com.
Reach the reporter at [email protected]. Follow her on Twitter at @tirionmorris, on Facebook at Tirion Rose and on Instagram at tirionrose.
Support local journalism by subscribing to azcentral.com today.
Comments are closed.