On a Roll, Cuban Food Truck Owners to Open Cafe

After rolling all over Los Angeles in their popular Cuban food truck, the owners of  are putting down roots by opening a 24-hour restaurant with the same name next month in Sherman Oaks.

“I originally wanted to start a chain of Cuban Starbucks, serving coffee, espresso, pastries and sandwiches,” founder and co-owner Gabriel Martinez told Sherman Oaks Patch at the site of the new restaurant, 15053 Ventura Blvd. The cafe, which is still under construction, is to open March 7.

Martinez hadn't always planned on a career as a restaurateur. He said he went back to Miami after his father died and was intrigued by the many places you could get Cuban coffee and authentic cuisine after 2 a.m. That made him realize what was missing in Los Angeles, and although he had a background in film and television he had lost momentum after his father’s death. He said he needed a big change in his life and wanted to create something unique. That’s when the idea for Café Con Leche was born.

Martinez said when he started looking at real estate and all the regulations required for a new restaurant, he knew he wasn’t ready to be tied down to a permanent location. Although rare in Miami, food trucks were popular in Los Angeles, so he made plans to start up his Café Con Leche on wheels.

Last year, he partnered with his longtime friends, Francisco Tosta-mönch (aka Frankie), a retired Miami chef-restaurateur, and actor Steven Bauer, best known for playing Manolo in the 1983 movie Scarface.

“People have been coming to me with Cuban restaurant proposals for 20 years but Gabriel was the first person who actually had a business plan," Bauer said.

Tosta-mönch said he had no idea what it was going to be like working out of a truck after years in the restaurant business, but every day was like an adventure and many new recipes, he said, were developed through trial and error.

“One day we ran out of bread and we had a line of 60 people who had already paid," said the chef. "I decided to flatten and grill some plantains to use in the place of the bread with meat, cheese and a special sauce I developed using Mojo [a Cuban sauce]. This turned out to be a huge hit but we didn’t have a name for it. Now we call it the Ya Tu Sabes, which means 'you know what it is' in Spanish.  We tweeted about it as a secret menu item and it’s now one of our most popular dishes.”

Martinez said that social networking has been the key to success for the Cuban food truck. Not only does Martinez tweet about the "secret" dishes, restaurant news and truck locations, but so do his followers, whom he numbers at 1,681.

“The truck idea was genius. Instead of being stuck in one location—living and dying by your clientele, what you have is the ability to be all over the city. [Customers] hitchhike onto the truck by seeing us and following us online,” Bauer said.

Martinez said that after six months his partners' investment in the food truck has been so successful that he's proceeding with his original plan of opening a restaurant. He said the new cafe will hold 25 to 30 diners on seats made from conga drums that will be movable for dance parties with Bauer’s band, Underground Junction, and the custom wall design will come together in the next week.

Bauer said he plans to be at the cafe as much as possible while juggling his busy acting and musical career. He is known on Twitter and Facebook for surprising people by serving sandwiches out of the food truck—and one of the top-selling sandwiches is called the "Manolo."

“I have a couple of new movies coming out," Bauer said. "The Hit Man Diaries-CharlieValentine with Tom Berenger. ... Then I’m starring with Tatum O’Neal in Sweet Lorraine, where I play a New Jersey mayor," he said.

Tosta-mönch’s menu features Cuban sandwiches, empanadas, arepas, salads, homemade pastries, breakfast items and, of course, coffee.

Martinez said the restaurant will have many specialty drinks you won't find anywhere in Los Angeles.

“I was so lucky to find four Cuban brothers to help me cook in the restaurant. It’s hard to teach non-Cubans the flavors of authentic cuisine,” said Tosta-mönch, who has been working day and night for the last six months cooking all the food on the truck.

 “The whole idea of the  restaurant, the truck and the food, is 'abundance,' and it’s evolving,” Martinez said.