I first fell in love with Andes Cafe at the Downtown Houston Farmers Market. They have a stand there on Wednesdays and make the most amazing cachapas (sweet corn pancakes stuffed with cheese). Having studied abroad in Santiago, Chile (where I first began blogging in 2012!), it’s always a treat when I find something Chilean in Houston–wine, empanadas….and Andes Cafe!
After a fun stint at the Sugar & Cloth Color Wall, the brunch crew and I headed down the street (literally like 2 blocks down), and grabbed a table at Andes Cafe. The place filled up quickly after we arrived around 11:30am.
Reading the brunch menu is such an adventure. I didn’t know what most things were, but I was down to try nearly all of them! Each menu item has the country that the dish is from next to it. So you can get Choripan from Argentina, Lomiton from Chile, Lomo Saltado from Peru and more! Honestly, just reading the menu is making me nostalgic to my time abroad. If you don’t have any clue about any of the dishes that I’m talking about, no worries. The menu does a good job of describing everything, and pretty much everything is delicious.
We split an order of cachapas for the table. And then I tried the Sanduce de Miga from Argentina, which was a hardboiled egg sandwich with avocado, lettuce, tomato, mayo (everything in South America has mayo) on thin wheat bread. Others at the table tried Huevos con Tomate from Chile, Tigrillo from Ecuador and Pabellon Crillo from Venezuela. Also the fresh juices were amazing, and ended up being complementary with our meals. Maybe they knew we were newbies to the cafe and wanted to win us over…spolier: they totally did.
