
Conchas and flowers hold issues colourful at Café Dulzura.
Fake marigolds shine orange from the counter of Café Dulzura, a smiling cranium watching from the emblem on the wall. “I need it to be Día de los Muertos each day right here,” says Maria Cid, proprietor of the espresso store in Burien’s Boulevard Park neighborhood.
Every desk comes set with recent flowers, every drink imbued with the flavors of Mexico, however greater than something, it’s Cid’s enthusiasm that fills the small house with a lot coloration and spirit. Her love for Mexico Metropolis, the place she was raised, and for Seattle, her hometown for greater than three many years, meet within the fruits of a longtime dream: opening her personal Mexican espresso store.

Cafe Dulzura founder Maria Cid and her daughter, Jasmine.
Flanked by a wealthy blue wall hung with artwork from native Mexican artists, Cid serves yellow- and pink-topped conchas from a pastry case whereas carrying on conversations with the regular stream of shoppers. She compares native yoga studios, distracts an upset toddler so the kid’s mother and father can order, and advises on the Mazapan latte versus the Mexi mocha.

Cid’s hospitality retains smiles on prospects’ faces.
Cid is fast to credit score her neighborhood for the café’s success. As she explains that the constructing was once Moore Espresso Store, she picks up the pan dulce at South Park’s Pasteleria y Panaderia La Best, and brings in beans from Fulcrum Espresso, she describes how the house owners of these companies helped her navigate first-time espresso store possession.
The Fulcrum beans meet Cid’s mom’s horchata recipe and different flavors of Mexico, all designed by Cid, who skipped premade concentrates in favor of trusting her personal palate. Typically, that meant giving up on concepts if she couldn’t make them style like her reminiscences, as occurred with the churro latte concept. Different instances, it means explaining menu objects time and again, as she does with the café de olla and, on the meals facet, the guajolota—the hefty Mexico Metropolis road meals made by nestling a tamal right into a roll for a sandwich that pairs finest with a postprandial nap.

Café Dulzura serves chorizo mollotes and pastries from an area Mexican bakery.
These are the meals she was raised on. “When I’ve them right here, it makes me consider after I was rising up in Mexico,” says Cid, “the little issues that basically made me joyful.” For her prospects from Mexico, she needs them to really feel like they’re at house. For these from elsewhere, merely to really feel welcome.

An unassuming entrance belies the heat inside Café Dulzura.
The small ofrenda, a Día de los Muertos altar she retains year-round, contributes to that, serving to her to share her favourite vacation with prospects. When folks suppose the custom is about celebrating loss of life in a darkish manner, she exhibits off the alternative. “We’re truly celebrating the life that our useless folks reside,” she says, and doing it in an enormous, shiny, colourful manner. In a metropolis identified for lengthy, gloomy days, Cid and Café Dulzura add a grande serving of marigold-orange-tinted hospitality.