Cafe Plaza Venezuela, the new dining addition to Mason Street, is in the middle of the block, next to the much bigger and fancier Ward's House of Prime, but Leomaris Montes wants us to know you can find a restaurant like hers on any corner in Caracas. The food is basic and homemade, the prices are affordable and the service is fast.
Montes owns Cafe Plaza Venezuela with her husband, Hugo Martinez. The couple emigrated from their native Caracas, the capital of Venezuela, in 1995 to give their children a better future, and they opened their new restaurant June 9. It is in a space at 530 E. Mason St. formerly occupied by The Panini Company and Brunch on Mason.
Featuring food made from scratch, counter service and seating for 75 at booths and tables, Cafe Plaza Venezuela offers breakfast and lunch specialties from that country as well as such North American standards as yogurt parfaits ($3.49), ham and cheese sandwiches ($4.99) and Caesar salads ($4.50). All menu items are available for carry out.
Hugo Martinez was a computer programer in Caracas before the family moved to the U.S. They chose to live in Chicago because Montes had a sister living there, and speaking little English, Martinez took a job parking cars.
He worked his way up the corporate ladder to become a division manager for Ampco System Parking in Chicago before being transferred to Milwaukee four years ago to run the company's operations here. Ampco manages parking garages and valet parking services.
A yearning for the Venezuelan breakfast specialty cachitos while living in Chicago led the married couple into the restaurant business. Cachitos are bread rolls stuffed with bacon and ham.
Montes and Martinez began baking cachitos for their family, and soon other members of the Venezuelan immigrant community in Chicago urged the couple to sell them. A small cottage industry developed, with the husband and wife supplying stores and offering home delivery on Saturday mornings. They even rented a kitchen to bake the rolls.
"People would be waiting for us on Saturday mornings to deliver their cachitos for breakfast," Martinez recently said while eating a late lunch at Cafe Plaza Venezuela.
He and his wife briefly ran a 20-seat Venezuelan restaurant in Chicago before moving here, and they are thrilled with their new Downtown dining venture. "This is a dream come true," Montes said.
The couple get to Cafe Plaza Venezuela between 3:30 and 4 every morning to cook together. About 8 a.m., Martinez puts on a white shirt and tie and heads to his nearby office to run Ampco System Parking.
The restaurant opens at 7 a.m. Monday through Friday and at 8 on Saturday. Cachitos ($2.50) are baked daily, and the cafe also offers tortilla espanola ($4.25) for breakfast. Think baked omelet with various filling options.
Lunch offerings include arepas and pepitos. Made with corn meal flour, arepas are pocket sandwiches stuffed with everything from sauteed eggplant, zucchini, onions and tomatoes ($4.99) to shredded flank steak, black beans, fried sweet plantains and mozzarella cheese ($5.99).
Sold as street food in Caracas, pepitos are the Venezuelan equivalent of sub sandwiches. For $6.99, Cafe Plaza Venezuela offers chicken and flank steak options that are added to the basic ingredients of lettuce, shoestring potatoes (for crunch), ketchup, mustard, mayo and a tangy green sauce.
Montes points out that Venezuelan food is not spicy. She also sells empanadas ($2.25), fried sweet plantains with or without cheese ($3.25 and $3.75), a Venezuelan flan called quesillo ($3.50), a variety of South American fruit juices and fruit shakes ($1.99 to $3.95), and two sizes of papelon con limon ($1.99 and $2.50), a drink made with unrefined brown cane sugar and lime juice.
"We didn't go to cooking school," Montes says. "We make the most common things you see in Venezuela. We learned from our mothers."
Cafe Plaza Venezuela closes at 2:30 p.m. Monday through Friday so that Montes and Martinez can be with their four children, who range in age from 6 to 18. However, the restaurant stays open until 5 p.m. on Saturdays.
"Saturday is family day," Montes says. "Our kids are here, and we are seeing larger groups, families coming in."
Damien has been around so long, he was at Summerfest the night George Carlin was arrested for speaking the seven dirty words you can't say on TV. He was also at the Uptown Theatre the night Bruce Springsteen's first Milwaukee concert was interrupted for three hours by a bomb scare. Damien was reviewing the concert for the Milwaukee Journal. He wrote for the Journal and Journal Sentinel for 37 years, the last 29 as theater critic.
During those years, Damien served two terms on the board of the American Theatre Critics Association, a term on the board of the association's foundation, and he studied the Latinization of American culture in a University of Southern California fellowship program. Damien also hosted his own arts radio program, "Milwaukee Presents with Damien Jaques," on WHAD for eight years.
Travel, books and, not surprisingly, theater top the list of Damien's interests. A news junkie, he is particularly plugged into politics and international affairs, but he also closely follows the Brewers, Packers and Marquette baskeball. Damien lives downtown, within easy walking distance of most of the theaters he attends.
