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EDGEWATER — Two Venezuelans with a shared love for their native food, culture and language have teamed up to open an Edgewater coffee shop with fresh breakfast sandwiches, bagels and home-roasted brews.
Varietale Bagels & Coffee, from co-owners Daniel Soria and Lorena Escalona Duvermond, opened in March at 6206 N. Broadway.
It is Soria’s third Venezuelan cafe in the city — he also runs Typica Diner & Cafe in Tri-Taylor and Typica Cafe in Wicker Park.
Escalona Duvermond met Soria while enjoying food at his cafes, and the two Wicker Park residents became good friends and business partners.
Soria and Escalona Duvermond chose Edgewater for the shop because customers at Typica were asking for a location closer to their homes, they said.
“Lots of people from Venezuela live here. People were always saying, ‘This place is too far,’” Escalona Duvermond said. “We’re trying to do something different here. Daniel knows everything about coffee and feels a lot of pressure to make good coffee.”
In addition to a multitude of bagels, the menu features classic Venezuelan breakfast sandwiches, called cachitos, which are croissants typically filled with ham and cheese.
Customers can also choose to add a variety of other ingredients to their bagel and croissant sandwiches, including eggs, bacon, salmon, sausage, tomato and mozzarella.
“The best part about working here is giving Venezuelan people the food they need, like cachitos,” Escalona Duvermond said. “We’re trying to do something different here. Everything is homemade, and we roast our own coffee.”
Escalona Duvermond and Soria pride themselves on creating all of the food and drinks in house using local, fresh ingredients.
“We are very local,” Soria said. “Whatever is on our menu, we’re trying to make it with local cheeses and other ingredients that are as fresh as possible. The style we use to make everything is Venezuelan, but we’re trying to also adapt to the community we’re in, so there’s a fusion of those concepts.”
The coffee served at the shop comes from Colombia, Costa Rica, Honduras, Guatemala and Brazil, Soria said. The beans are naturally processed, and the beans aren’t blended together, which means each coffee retains its own “specific profile,” Soria said.
Visitors can choose from lattes, drip coffees, Americanos, espresso and much more. Any drink can be flavored with hazelnut, vanilla, caramel, coconut, lavender and chocolate.
One of the most popular drinks at the cafe is the iced coconut latte, which is a cold coffee sweetened with coconut milk. Another fan-favorite is the Iced Nutty Latte, a rich mocha mixed with Nutella and hazelnut, Soria said.
The cafes are staffed with highly trained baristas who compete in national competitions. Soria represented the United States at the international Aeropress competition last year.
Soria learned how to brew coffee when he was 15 and offers educational programs for his staff. The classes are open to anyone who wants to learn how to create quality drinks and food, he said.
“We teach the baristas how to become a part of the coffee community, how they can start working with other baristas, how they can create latte art,” Soria said.
More information about classes in the Edgewater location will be posted on the cafe’s social media throughout the summer, Soria said.
“We are working with high-quality products and highly qualified baristas,” Soria said. “We are teaching people how they can be a part of this. We don’t want to come in and be like, ‘Oh, we have the best chef or whatever.’ We want to help the community to be a part of it.”
Varietale Bagels & Coffee is open 7 a.m.-6 p.m. daily.
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