Co-owners Artie Burer (left) and Antonio Rodriguez (right) stand outside Águila Coffee’s new brick-and-mortar location at 1215 N. Orange Avenue. (©Jessica Battisti)
Orlando is gaining a new self-proclaimed “third place” this weekend, and it might just be the first of its kind in The City Beautiful—or across all of Central Florida.
Águila, the former long term pop-up at Market on South, is now a stand-alone Mexican café opening its doors Sunday at 1215 N. Orange Avenue in Ivanhoe Village.
Starting as a business idea during the pandemic, Águila was brought to life by co-owners and decade-long friends Antonio Rodriguez, 29, and Artie Burer, 36, acting as creative director and administrator—or as they like to call it, the “brains and the brawn.”
“[We] just couldn’t stop talking about what we wanted to do to better Orlando and the scene and how we wanted to contribute,” Burer says. “We felt like we weren’t doing enough.”
Rodriguez, an Orlando native of Mexican and Puerto Rican heritage, says he wanted the pop-up-turned-shop to be an homage to his mother, who was born in Tampico. The shop will serve “simple yet done-right” drinks with high-quality ingredients sourced from Mexico.
“I didn’t really see many [cafés] that were Mexican and I just feel like Mexico is one of those pillars of cuisine and flavor,” Rodriguez says. “I know that there’s plenty of Mexicans in Orlando, as well as other Latinos in general. There’s obviously a big Asian wave, for obvious reasons, but I just thought that there could be a little dash of some Latin flavor in there.”
Rodriguez says their goal for the space is to be approachable for the average coffee enjoyer and to “not take things too seriously.”
“If a roaster comes out and they start saying that there’s all this super exotic beans or gastronomy stuff, I would be like, ‘I’m sorry, that sounds great but not our vibe,’” Rodriguez says. “That’s not to take away from the people who do it; I know that it’s got kind of a negative connotation. I like those places but I don’t want to be that place. We’re just two guys, we had this idea, we shook hands at a bar and we said we were going to do this, but we were going to do it right. So hopefully this is a nice kind of nucleus to kind of bring some community together.”
The space itself feels the opposite of intimidating—walking in feels like stepping into someone’s casita, from the eclectic decor to bright hues of Mexican blues and yellows and a courtyard view of Lake Ivanhoe.
Águila’s interior. (©Jessica Battisti)
Like Rodriguez, Águila is both Mexican and Floridian—from Florida postcards, license plates and citrus-themed wall art, to traditional chimayo rugs, Mexican feather art and tiles and the terracotta breeze block island centerpiece. His family lineage is scattered throughout the shop, from his mother’s name—Margarita—in large letters and art representative of Rodriguez and his sister, to the hanging stained glass installation made by his uncle.
Even their logo embodies the cafe’s spirit: The Order of the Aztec Eagle, the highest order awarded to foreigners for services to the Mexican nation or humanity.
Sourcing authentic Mexican ingredients was a priority for the duo, from their coffee beans from Chiapas (retrieved with the help of Maitland’s KOS Coffee owner Russ Bruguiere), to the use of piloncillo and Mexican vanilla in their syrups.
Their drinks menu includes the Mexican Mocha—spiced with guajillo and cayenne pepper and served hot or iced—to the guava matcha latte and traditional agua de jamaica—or hibiscus tea.
Rodriguez confirmed they are also intending on serving pan dulce—primarily chocolate and vanilla conchas—with the help of Azúcar, a long-term friend and small business who they collaborated with at Market on South. And good news for vegan patrons—she’s perfected a vegan concha recipe that will likely make an appearance in their pastry case.
Burer and Rodriguez says to encourage a sense of community and entrepreneurship, they will open up their space to hosting other small businesses—from food to retail—as they’ve learned over the past few months how difficult it is to open a brick-and-mortar small business.
“I almost want it to feel obtainable, because the people who can open businesses are in a different tax bracket than we are—at least the ones that can easily do it—and we’re not those guys,” Rodriguez says.
The duo also wants to challenge the connotations around what it means to be a “Mexican establishment,” highlighting the sheer influence of Mexican culture on the United States.
“There’s nothing separating us except for the U.S. border,” Burer says. “So to see all those influences and then actually bring them together and present them to people, it’s kind of a duty and a right to be like, ‘you know, you’re an American so you need to know about this stuff’ because we’re also heavily influenced by it,” Burer says.
Rodriguez adds, “I think when I’ve spoken about the business a lot, like people just kind of [suggest] we need tacos. There can be a Mexican establishment that doesn’t serve tacos and burritos. That’s a real thing in Mexico, and it can be a real thing here.”
For Rodriguez, being a first generation Latino business owner in today’s social and political climate has come with a sense of power.
“I’m part of this community and I know plenty of people—and I don’t knock them for it—that felt uncomfortable, and they maybe felt like they wanted to go somewhere safe or something like that,” Rodriguez says. “But in a kind of unaggressive way, just showing, man, I’m a nice neighbor and part of this community—it means a lot for me to have this business and have all types of people appreciate it.”
For more information, follow Águila on Instagram at @aguilaorl.
