Café Corazón is now in Kansas City’s Crossroads offering Latin American coffee, more

Café Corazón has opened in the Crossroads, specializing in Latin American coffee drinks and yerba mate herbal teas.

“We felt it was important to raise our hand in the coffee and tea space since most of the coffee is grown in Latin America and you should try it in the way it comes,” said Miel Castagna-Herrera, owner with her husband, Curtis Herrera. “We want to give the coffee bean a voice, to understand it comes from people and cultures and we do it a certain way.”

Their Latin American “beyond fair trade” coffee is roasted at Messenger Coffee Co. in the Crossroads, and they import their yerba mate brands from Argentina, Brazil and Paraguay. The couple describe yerba mate as having the “strength of coffee with the health benefits of tea and joy of chocolate.”

“It’s like a ritual, which is how we serve it. A slow process,” Castagna-Herrera said. “Most places will put it in a tea bag in a cup. The proper way is to serve it in a gourd called a mate with a bombilla, which looks like a silver straw with a little strainer at the end. So when you suck on the bombilla the tea is strained out. Then you have a thermos with either hot water, iced water, juice or steamed milk.”

Customers also can add such items as chamomile flowers, hibiscus flowers, orange peel, rose petals, espresso, lavender, honey or mint.

Other menu items include chai tea lattes, house-made horchata, mocha tea lattes, hot chocolate, and Latin sodas, along with Argentinian sweets, empanadas, tamales and pastries.

The new location will have flights of espressos, mochas, lattes and yerba mates — with three choices. It also has a kitchen so the couple plan to soon expand their food offerings with family recipes using such ingredients as Hatch chile peppers and blue corn.

Their first location opened at 1721 Westport Road, on the boundaries of the Westport and West Plaza neighborhoods, in September 2019. The new Crossroads shop, at 110 Southwest Blvd., features local Latin artists, as well as one from Taos, New Mexico.

Castagna-Herrera’s father grew up in the heart of Buenos Aires and immigrated to the U.S. when he was 16, and she grew up in New Mexico.

“We come from a culture full of art and color and vibe so it was very, very important to open in the Crossroads because there is not a lot going on for Latin artists in the Crossroads,” she said.

This story was originally published February 11, 2022 at 2:34 PM.