By LAURA RULLO
Contributing Writer
Authentic Colombian food has come to Madison Avenue thanks to Diana and Luis Uzhca. Diana is from Colombia and Luis is from Ecuador. The couple opened up the Moliendo Café about a month ago to give the Capital Region an insight into Colombian food. These ingredients are hard to come so, the Uzhca’s travel to Queens to buy the food that they need to prepare their signature Colombian dishes.
Diana Uzhca spent the first part of her life in Colombia and when she moved to the Capital Region she couldn’t find an authentic Colombian restaurant. This inspired her and her husband to open their restaurant. Her husband had worked in the restaurant business previously as the owner of Salsa Latina on Central Avenue. This gave him the experience that he needed to open another restaurant.
The menu offers a range of food selection from appetizers to typical dishes or seafood. For appetizers they have food such as Colombian sausage with corn cake for $5 and fried sweet plantains with cheese for $5. They offer a typical Colombian platter which includes items such as rice, beans, steak, egg, pork rind, Colombian sausage, sweet plantain, and corn cake for $17. The menu is in Spanish and English due to the large amount of Spanish speaking customers. Some of their kitchen staff are Spanish speakers as well.
“I am able to focus on tables more because it is a smaller restaurant,” said Sean Kite, a waiter at Moliendo Café. Kite has been a waiter for about 10 years and has worked at a number of restaurants. He was previously employed at the Saratoga Race Course clubhouse restaurant. Kite says that the thing that makes this place different from anywhere he has worked previously is that he gets to develop a relationship with the customers. He is able to make a connection with the customers because it is a smaller restaurant with little background music. He then has time to talk with them and learn more about their lives.
Kite is fluent in both English and Spanish. This gives him the ability to talk to the customers in the language which they feel most comfortable speaking.
“Coffee is free with a $5 purchase,” said Luis Uzhca, owner of Moliendo café. Uzhca wants customers to recognize that coffee is a signature Colombian item. He offers it free with a $5 purchase because he wants everyone to be able to try the coffee. People are able to purchase the coffee in bulk to make at home.
Uzhca wants people from Colombia to come into her restaurant and feel like they are eating a home cooked meal. She also wants people who have never tried Colombian food to come and embrace it. She got into the restaurant business because of her husband and now she gets to share her knowledge of the food she grew up eating.
The restaurant has a soup of the day. For example the Monday soup will be Colombian beef ribs soup. All these soups cost $11 and they get people to come out to the restaurant on a specific day to get the soup that they like. Soups are served with rice and avocado. They get to know what their customers want and try to provide them with authentic Colombian food.
“I am pleased to see yet another restaurant in the district and by how it further adds to the ward’s international cuisine. I’m excited to welcome this restaurant to the Pine Hills, which will contribute to our continued vibrancy and diversity and the growth of our community,” said Owusu Anane, Albany 10th ward councilman.
C-o-l-o-m-b-i-a