A Batch of New Bakeries Rises on the Southwest Side

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One of the reasons the married couple Eric Carlson and Maria Alejandra Rivera wanted to open Cadinho Bakery (3843 S. Archer Avenue) in McKinley Park was the lack of coffee shops or bakeries in their neighborhood. Now there are three buzzy new cafés serving noteworthy pastries in that same zip code – and they all opened in the past couple months.

In addition to the Portuguese-inspired Cadinho, there’s Café Consume (3452 S. Western Ave.) and Bridgeport’s Fat Peach Bakery (2907 S. Archer Ave.) – and that’s not even including Grano Panaderia y Café (1845 W. 47th St.) in nearby Back of the Yards, which is run by the owners of a neighboring grocery and liquor store and serves Mexican pastries.

“Someone came in last weekend and said, ‘We’re finishing up the holy trinity,’” Carlson recalls: trying Cadinho, Café Consume, and Fat Peach all in one day.

“Holy trinity” isn’t actually a bad name, since, as with church, you have to visit the bakeries early on a weekend morning in order to enjoy all three – selling out by mid-afternoon is not uncommon, and Fat Peach is currently only open Friday through Sunday, Café Consume Friday through Monday.

“Weekends are incredibly busy,” says Carlson. “People told us these past couple weekends that they drove in from Indiana, Wisconsin, different towns from around Illinois. [There are] Portuguese people seeking us out, a lot of people that have been to Portugal, people that are just bakery aficionados, and the regulars that live in the neighborhood.”

Carlson and Rivera came up with the idea to open a Portuguese-style café while teaching in Portugal a few years ago. Rivera had helped her aunt run “all kinds of bootstrap businesses” in her native Honduras, where she met Carlson, and began experimenting with Portuguese desserts and pastries while in Portugal and once she and Carlson moved back to his native Chicago.

The iconic egg custard tart pastel de nata is Cadinho’s staple, offered plain, dipped in chocolate, garnished with almond, or topped with coconut. But there are also lesser-known Portuguese treats, like bolo de bolacha, a layered espresso cookie cake, in addition to American coffee shop standards like scones and smoothies as well as a passion fruit pie that bridges Rivera’s Honduran background and Portuguese interests. Rivera continues to test out other Portuguese specialties that rotate on and off the menu – more items such as quiche or empanadas are available on weekends in particular.

While Carlson and Rivera identified a lack of cafés in McKinley Park, the neighborhood did recently have a popular bakery called Butter Dough that has made a comeback in the area via Café Consume. Uva Leon, the baker behind Butter Dough, continued to offer his laminated pastries at a few coffee shops even after closing the storefront – and now he has returned to that very space, supplying Café Consume with croissants and morning buns spiced with Mexican cinnamon.

“The neighbors are really excited about [the return of Butter Dough] too,” says Andres Merlos, who opened, designed, and built out Café Consume with his brother Guillermo Merlos. “Knowing Butter Dough and keeping that relationship with them, it was a no-brainer to continue to have fantastic product in McKinley Park.”

Andres has run a vintage store called Consume with his mother for years, and decided to add a café next door to expand his “creative hub.” In addition to a coffee bar with specialty drinks like a bourbon vanilla bean latte, Café Consume has a full kitchen, and Merlos is considering how to take advantage of it as Café Consume gets off the ground. “To have something special like our chicken sandwich with a Butter Dough brioche bun sounds awesome,” Merlos says.

Fat Peach also moved into a space that was once home to a popular bakery: the nearly 50-year-old Bridgeport Bakery. Like Carlson and Rivera, the young couple behind it was inspired by café culture in another country – in this case, Mexico City, according to their Instagram. Their croissants, quiches, and rotating specials such as danishes with guava and cream cheese or blackberry, chocolate, and pecan have drawn lines out the door in their first few weekends.

“It’s really exciting and surprising to have so much going up at the same time,” say Cadinho’s Carlson about the flurry of new cafés – which he and Rivera take as a boon rather than as competition. “The sense of community here is unlike anywhere that I’ve ever lived. [It’s] far and away the friendliest community and the most close-knit community that we’ve been a part of.”

Correction: This story has been updated to reflect the proper relationship between Café Consume and Butter Dough and to correctly refer to Uva Leon as the sole owner of Butter Dough.