New coffee shop in St. Paul’s Como Park celebrates owners’ Latin American heritage, legal backgrounds

Soraya Keiser, Pioneer Press
·3 min read

On the corner of Dale St. and Edgar Ave. sits Abogados Café — the only coffee shop in St. Paul’s Como Park neighborhood.

Run by two lawyers from Honduras below their law firm, Abogados Café opened June 14 and now provides a takeout coffee bar and market for those in the neighborhood.

Wife and husband owners Ofelia Ponce and Inti Martínez-Alemán noticed a need for a coffee shop in the area because Martínez-Alemán’s law firm, Ceiba Fôrte, sits right above what is now the café. While working in the office, they would have to drive a ways for coffee, and oftentimes from a chain coffee shop. Ponce has always loved coffee, so she thought starting her own café would be a great idea.

In order to rezone the property, Ponce and Martínez-Alemán had to collect signatures from neighborhood residents. Before even hearing the plans for Abogados Café, neighbors were saying “Oh, a coffee shop would be nice.” There is a coffee shop at nearby Como Park Zoo.

Abogados means lawyers in Spanish, which is an homage to Ponce and Martínez-Alemán’s backgrounds as lawyers. They both grew up in Honduras, attended college in the United States and then returned to Honduras for law school.

After eventually returning to the U.S., Martínez-Alemán attended Mitchell Hamline School of Law. He passed the bar exam in 2016 and soon began the law firm that he still works for today. Ceiba Fôrte focuses on business litigation as well as some civil and employment litigation, primarily for Hispanic business owners.

“Every lawyer who helps Hispanics sort of tends to practice immigration (law), and that’s great you know, like, there’s a lot of need there,” Martínez-Alemán said. “But nobody’s helping them with their businesses or their real estate needs or their landlord tenant needs or their car needs, as if Hispanics only have immigration issues.”

After getting married in 2018, Ponce also attended Mitchel Hamline and got her graduate degree in 2019 for foreign-trained lawyers.

“We want to stay true to who we are to our backgrounds,” Ponce said. Besides both husband and wife practicing law, Martínez-Alemán’s mother and grandfather were both attorneys.

Abogados Café maintains the lawyer theme with a line of specialty coffee drinks named after different legal phrases. Motion Granted, Ex Parte and Sua Sponte, to name a few. The coffee beans are roasted at a local roastery, Roastery 7, and the beans are sourced from only Latin American countries: Mexico, Honduras, Colombia and Peru.

During the morning rush Martínez-Alemán likes to welcome customers and talk with them while they wait in line.

“Those five, six minutes that they’re waiting for their coffee might feel shorter because I’m talking to them,” Martínez-Alemán, “And I get to hear their thoughts and biases and their preferences because coffee is very personal. There’s not one way to do coffee, and so you want to hear about what they’re looking for.”

This personable atmosphere is found not only in the owners, but in the coffee shop itself. From the colorful mural of Antigua’s Santa Catalina Arch to the intricate floor tile, each detail is meant to help customers feel like they are transported to a small town in Latin America.

“Every detail, it’s for people to feel welcomed,” Ponce said. “It’s not like a random selection of things.”

Ponce and Martínez-Alemán hope to expand their space with both indoor and outdoor seating options. They also want to provide educational classes for the community about the many ways to make coffee and the different notes and flavors that make each coffee blend unique. In fact, their coffee is so unique that they already hold the self-proclaimed title of “best decaf in town”.

For more information, visit the café at 1053 Dale St. or at coffeeinlaw.com.

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