Vietnam Meets Venezuela at Cà Phê Con Leche, a New Café and Sandwich Shop

A new Petite-Patrie coffee shop has a pun-tastic name, and a brilliant little backstory. The owners of Cà Phê Con Leche, on Saint-Hubert, just north of Rosemont, are a couple, Kim and Yasmin, with roots in Vietnam and Venezuela. "Both passionate about coffee and good food, they decided to open a coffee and sandwich shop in their image," the new business's website elaborates. "Family recipes, prepared with fresh, local ingredients. It's with love and nostalgia that the couple wants to offer you coffee as their grandparents took it, and dishes and desserts like their parents prepared in their childhood."

The café's cultural mashup, then, includes an array of banh mis (all priced at $4.50) and arepas ($6), salads, desserts, and traditional Vietnamese and Latin American coffee drinks, as well as other beverages. Customers may hear Vietnamese and Spanish spoken behind the counter, Cà Phê Con Leche warns; perhaps even at the same time. The space, at 5912 Saint-Hubert was originally an apartment before it was made over as a neighbourhood café. The family of co-owner Kim Huynh lived there for a time. The Huynh family, in fact, were restaurateurs; they opened Chez Madame Kim on Saint-Denis in the late 1970s. The restaurant closed two decades later. Cà Phê Con Leche writes that "now in 2016, Kim has decided to forge the same path as his mother before him, and, with his wife Yasmin, build a place where they can share the wonders of their respective origins with the people of Montreal, a city they love so much."

Status: Cà Phê Con Leche, 5912 Saint-Hubert, (514) 803-7899. Now open daily as of 8 a.m., until 7 p.m. Monday to Wednesday, 9 p.m. Thursday to Saturday, and 5 p.m. on Sunday.

Photos: Cà Phê Con Leche