Ch’ava, a new cafe specializing in handcrafted coffee drinks and sandwiches, bustles with casual humor even on a gray, rainy Thursday morning. One customer points a thumb at his companion and jokes to the barista: “He’s trying to deprogram the Starbucks out of me and reprogram in the Ch’ava.” Another customer stares at the symmetrical design in the foam of his freshly made latte and says he’d like to hang it on his wall. Co-owner Eddie Hwang, in a t-shirt and baseball cap, makes small talk amongst the customers. (“How’s that crossword puzzle going?”)
But despite the relaxed vibe, Ch’ava takes its food and drink seriously. Ingredients are local and sustainable whenever possible. Coffee comes from Intelligentsia, bread comes from Red Hen, muffins come from M&A Bakery a few blocks away, and Hwang’s sister’s cookie company bakes the chocolate chip cookies.
At 11am, cue the lunch menu: I try the roasted chicken sandwich with garlic confit puree ($6.99). This dish could appear on a fancier table—just remove the bread and you’ve got a main dish at a sit-down restaurant. That’s no accident, thanks to Hwang’s culinary school training and experience gained in Chicago’s upscale restaurant scene. But here, the juicy chicken and creamy garlic confit combine beautifully with the crisp focaccia at one-third the price and without the pretension.
The frisee and apple salad ($6.49) mixes sweet apples, fresh greens and smoky bacon pieces and is accompanied by homemade goat cheese rounds seasoned with lemon and parsley. I also sampled the mushroom ragout sandwich ($7.99), topped with chopped red onion, frisee and a drizzle of red wine vinegar.
“That’s a risky sandwich,” Hwang says. “A woman came in and said it was too mushroomy. But it’s also one of more popular sandwiches.”
For those with more mainstream palates, Hwang offers trusty standbys, including a roast beef sandwich.
Still, he says, every menu item is a premeditated balancing act of tastes and textures.
“There’s a reason for everything in every sandwich,” he says.
Soups, among Hwang’s favorite creations to make, vary seasonally and feature vegetarian or vegan options. As for coffee, baristas have been trained extensively, discarding a lot of milk and coffee until they perfected each drink.
The only syrups used are vanilla and chocolate, and they’re both made in-house. Regular coffee runs $1.75-$2.25, but there’s a whole menu of single-origin beans at higher prices for ultra-aficionados (including a $10 cup, Hacienda La Esmeralda, known in the coffee-loving community as “the face of God in a cup”). Teas come from Intelligentsia, and baristas can tell you whether they’re best on the first brew or whether the flavor mellows just right after the third refill.
Even the decor was designed with rigor. Co-owner Rich Park found a list of the country’s top design schools, ordered all the textbooks from their 101 classes, and spent two months reading them before designing the cafe’s sunny interior. The citrus color scheme and clean lines suggest a locale that’s more polished than this Uptown intersection facing a late-night country western bar. But Hwang says Uptown is home, and he wouldn’t have it any other way. He hopes the neighborhood residents will form the backbone of his customer base.
His first attempt at reeling in the neighbors was a mixed success, Hwang admits. It sounded like a good idea—they’d have a “soft opening”, a preview day before officially opening to the public. They’d invite the many nice locals who walked by throughout Ch’ava’s yearlong construction process, offering best wishes as Hwang and Park sat on the curb waiting for contractors and smoking through packs of cigarettes. Hwang and Park sent out 300 mini-pouches of coffee to local business owners and immediate neighbors with an invitation: For one day only, everything’s free.
Hwang says they’d stocked up on supplies and felt jittery with anticipation, but when doors opened: silence. Nada. No one showed. Finally a college kid walked in and ordered a coffee. “Here you go,” Hwang said. “It’s free. Everything’s free today.” Five minutes before they started serving lunch, the kid was back—with 50 compatriots from class. The popular blog Uptown Update also announced the free day, and before long Hwang and his staff were swamped. Hwang says: “From that moment on, my head was down. I felt like a line cook. I felt like I was cooking at Chili’s on a Saturday night. I’d look up and see people we initially invited, walking by outside, pointing and seeing it was too packed to come in.”
Hwang says that although they filled about 1,000 orders that day, Ch’ava really shines at a less frenetic pace. Customers can come in for a sandwich, stay for coffee and wi-fi, and kick back. Hwang says: “It’s all freshly made, everything’s to order. The bread is all good and local. And we make the best cup of coffee in town.”
Ch’ava Café4656 N. Clark St., Chicago
773.942.6763;
chavacafe.com