This Ottawa café sends a passionate love letter to Colombian coffee

Yahoo

4 days ago

Bacata Colombian Coffee
684 Bronson Ave., Unit A, instagram.com/bacatacoffee
Open: Tuesday to Thursday 9 a.m. to 7 p.m., Friday to Saturday 9 a.m. to 8 p.m., Sunday 9 a.m. to 6 p.m., closed Monday
Prices: Coffees, teas and beverages $3.80 to $9.50, sweet and savoury waffles $8.65 to $14.40
Access: Steps to front door
As proud as Diego and Aleja Bobadilla are of their homeland, Colombia, they felt that to have better lives with more safety and opportunities, they would have to leave.
'Bogota is sometimes difficult. There are a lot of social problems,' Diego, 27, says regarding Colombia's sprawling capital city of almost eight million people.
'The main problem is security… You cannot live there without thinking which corner you could be robbed.'
For a good three years, the two siblings worked on their plan to start life anew abroad.
Because they already worked in their family's bread and pastry business, staying in the food industry seemed natural. When Aleja, who is three years older than Diego, was visiting Barcelona, she was struck by the city's many high-end coffee shops and felt she could open one of her own — somewhere. Diego agreed, and he took a year of classes to become a barista and a coffee roaster.
In June 2024, the siblings landed in Ottawa, where their half-sister and her family already lived. A half-year later, in early January 2025, the Bobadillas opened Bacata Colombian Coffee, a cozy cafe with a small back patio, on Bronson Avenue south of the Queensway.
While Ottawa has plenty of coffee purveyors, Bacata is unique, Diego says, because it extols the virtues of artisanally grown, hand-picked, fair-trade coffee from Colombia. The closest thing to Bacata is in Montreal, he says.
Coffee cultivation in Colombia dates back to the 1700s. Growing conditions there are ideal, thanks to the country's weather and mountainous geography. Bacata gets its Arabica coffee beans from a single, family-owned farm, Diego says.
'Our coffee is not cheap, but it is one of the best coffees,' he says.
For java connoisseurs, Bacata serves cups of unadulterated medium-roast premium coffee made either with a French press, a siphon coffee brewing system, or as v60 Dripper or Chemex pour-overs ($7.50 to $9). 'All of them give you incredible cups and are pretty different,' says Diego.
These specialty coffees are prepared table-side and served with explanations about the brewing process and tasting notes about the resulting drinks.
'We always try to make customers part of the preparation,' Diego says.
But if coffee pure and simple isn't for you, the Bobadillas make all the usual espresso-based drinks, cold drinks including a coffee milkshake ($9.50) and even a concoction that Diego has dubbed a Colombian Passion Coffee ($9.50).
Diego says he invented the drink after three months' work to pass his coffee studies in Bogota. Inspired by the passionfruit and chocolate cakes made in Colombia, he combined passionfruit puree and melted dark chocolate with panela (unrefined Colombian cane sugar) and coffee.
At Bacata, which also serves house-made waffles both sweet and savoury, the Bobadillas pour the drink's four components at a guest's table into an ice-filled cup and top it with whipped cream, all the while sharing their warm feelings and pride for the homeland they left.
After the Bobadillas arrived in Ottawa, they lived with their half-sister in Barrhaven. More recently, they moved to Chinatown to be closer to their coffee shop. But no matter how established they become in Ottawa, Bacata will be their love letter to the homeland they left behind.
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