- Credibility:
ROSCOE VILLAGE — Loba Pastry + Coffee’s Roscoe Village location has opened after months of crowdfunding and construction.
Two years ago, owner Valeria Taylor announced she was moving from 3422 N. Lincoln Ave. to a corner storefront at 1800 W. Addison St., near the border of Roscoe Village and Lakeview.
Taylor turned to crowdfunding via small loans from her supporters and ended up raising $36,000 on GoFundMe and $75,000 through Honeycomb Credit.
Last weekend, Taylor quietly opened Loba with limited hours, 9 a.m.-2 p.m. Saturday-Monday. She plans to expand the hours as she gets a better sense of the neighborhood’s — and her own — rhythm, she said.
“I haven’t baked professionally in almost two years, so I’m taking some time to get my groove back,” Taylor said.
Taylor reached out to former employees to see if they were available to come back, she said.
The menu for the new location will showcase customer favorites like pineapple sourdough muffins, canelé-inspired “glazed Robbies” and a sweet spring latte.
“It’s inspired by cherry blossoms, and it has almond extract and honey,” Taylor said. “And last week, I was doing a black milk latte. I think I may have that regularly, it’s made from black sesame milk and oat-based, so it’s good for people that don’t consume dairy.”
Taylor moved from her hometown of Guadalajara, Mexico, to Florida in 2004 and to Chicago in 2010. She realized she missed the sense of community in Mexico, which led her to become a pastry chef and open her own cafe and bakery, she said.
When it came time to choose a name for the business, Taylor remembered a podcast about wolves being reintroduced to Yellowstone National Park. She said she was captivated by one of the female wolves who was “absolutely badass,” a fierce hunter and warrior and the leader of her own pack, which took in stray wolves.
That experience — combined with Taylor’s childhood memories of her grandma in Mexico warning her about wolves in the desert — led her to name the cafe Loba, which is Spanish for female wolf, she said. She opened Loba on Lincoln Avenue in 2016.
You can view Loba Pastry + Coffee’s full menu online.
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