Café Piña: Hospitality, warmth, friendship and fantastic food

Tasting the mac and cheese was a defining moment for Chef Claudia Juarez.

It clarified her vision as a chef; bringing people to their knees with the flavor of something so simple as macaroni and cheese.

She was attending an art workshop at the Santa Monica Art Institute in California. They were having an open house with family invited to sample the students’ different culinary creations but beforehand, the chef made macaroni and cheese for the students.

“That was the best macaroni and cheese I’ve ever had in my life,” Claudia said. “It was so fantastic. To this day, I still think of and dream of it.”

Food — good food made with love — cuts through the senses to make its home in our hearts. There it waits until something, a smell, a taste, a familiar place, opens that memory path to carry us back to that first delicious experience.

Knowing this heart connection, Claudia pours everything she has into each dish she makes. She is bringing that love for food to the community with a new restaurant, Café Piña, coming early next year in The Rivercentre.

She’s wanted to open a restaurant since she was a child growing up in California where her love for cooking began early.

She always wanted to be in the kitchen helping to prepare meals. “I remember coming off the school bus and begging to watch the Food Network,” Claudia said. “Here I am watching Rachel Ray with my notepad writing down a recipe for a smoothy.”

It was then a matter of convincing her mom to allow nine-year-old Claudia to use the blender.

Claudia laughs at those moments but other than a very brief consideration of joining the Marine Corps her senior year in high school, her path has always been culinary.

After graduating high school, she immediately went to Le Cordon Bleu in Pasadena, Calif. She fought her way into a male-dominated kitchen at 18 and immediately knew she was at the crossing point of her passion and potential. She excelled.

After graduating from culinary, she replied to a blind ad and ended up landing a job with Wolfgang Puck’s catering company through a blind ad. Soon after arriving, she found herself cutting out salmon patties in a familiar shape.

“I’m in the walk-in cutting out the salmon and realized the cookie cutter kinda looks like the Oscar guy,” Claudia said.

She stepped out of the walk-in and saw a tray of chocolates in the shape of the iconic trophy going by and her thoughts were confirmed.

The experience with Wolfgang Puck Catering had her creating and learning about her art while working with huge events like The Academy Awards, the GRAMMYs, and The Stagecoach Festival.

It was an amazing experience, but the rigors of California traffic and a calling to be with her family eventually drew her back to Indiana. Her parents had moved to Southern Indiana when Claudia was 14. She had stayed in Indiana for a few years before moving back to California to finish her senior year of high school there.

After arriving in Jasper where her parents, José and Alicia Juarez, lived, Claudia saw an ad for a job cooking at Headquarters. She went in for the interview and soon after being hired, demonstrated the skills she had developed in California.

“I remember my first day they gave me a list of stuff to do like dice carrots and celery for the soup and making tuna or something,” Claudia said.

She surprised Headquarters owner Andy Fritch by finishing up the menial list in about half an hour. He saw her potential and slowly began to let her do things like creating the Thursday special and weekend specials. “They became very popular,” she said.

From there she become a staple in the restaurant where she would come up with specials and hold celebrations around different holidays or special events. She also handled catering and has started hosting cooking classes, something she plans on continuing with Café Piña.

I’ve done some pretty crazy and fun stuff,” Claudia said. “That has done a lot for me and helped me, like, grow with the community around here and getting to know everybody that I know here.”

“I’ll always be thankful for Headquarters and Andy giving me that opportunity,” she added.

The confidence and roots that grew from Headquarter allowed her to begin considering her dream. She was taking steps to bring Café Piña alive in early 2020 when Covid hit.

Setting aside her dream, she continued working at Headquarters. They struggled during the shutdown and became creative with the menu putting out different specials.

“There were four or five of us that worked the whole time we were closed,” she explained adding she was coming up with a new special each week. “And we were selling out each week.”

Then they put on HQ Fest, a small festival in place of the canceled Strassenfest. “I underestimated how popular it would be,” Claudia admitted. “We sold out the first day.”

They had to put in an emergency food order to keep going.

But when the state reopened things, the adrenaline from constantly hustling at Headquarters with a finely tuned team of friends slowly faded away as things got back to normal.

For Claudia, the experience solidified her resolve to move forward with dreams of owning her own restaurant. “One day, I was like, ‘if I can do that, I can open a restaurant,'” she said. “I decided I just needed to make it happen.”

Café Piña is still under construction at The Rivercentre but her oven is installed and Claudia can’t wait to get in front of it to start cooking.

“It’s going to be a breakfast, brunch, lunch kind of place,” Claudia explained.

The cafe will feature a seasonally revolving menu of recipes tweaked or specially created by Claudia. She plans on bringing things in from the local markets to see what cool foods she can incorporate into the menu for weekly specials.

Plus, breakfast will be available anytime Café Pina is open.

“Who doesn’t love breakfast,” Claudia said.

The menu will have dairy-free and gluten-free options for those with special diet restrictions. She will also have a coffee bar serving up various coffee drinks, chai teas, herbal teas, and matcha tea as well as fresh doughnuts and croissants.

A full drink menu will also be available featuring special cocktails based on her family. “I asked my cousins to give me drink ideas,” Claudia explained. “The drink menu is inspired by them.”

The cafe will sit with a view of the river, mill, and grasslands behind the Rivercentre with some outdoor seating.

Claudia can’t wait to open.

“I love hosting. I love seeing people happy and enjoying good food and just having a good time,” she explained.

She wants Café Piña to be a fun place people go to have a great meal and a good time.

Piña is pineapple in Spanish and the fruit symbolizes hospitality, warmth, and friendship. She wants Cafè Piña to combine those attributes with her fantastic food to create memories that live in her customers’ hearts.

You can follow Café Piña on Facebook and Instagram.