You know who drinks a lot of coffee? People at work. A 2011 coffee industry survey said 65 percent of workers drink coffee on the job, a number which is probably higher 15 years on, with a younger, coffee-savvy workforce in place and services like DoorDash and Uber Eats now busily delivering lattes and drip coffees to job sites everywhere. In that same report, 40 percent of workers said they wouldn’t make it through a typical workday without coffee.
If you’re reading this, or have read the first two installments of this series seeking Houston’s best coffee, you probably can’t make it through a typical workday without coffee, either. Maybe, like me, you’ve made a work bestie to share all that coffee with, someone you’ve bonded with over the craft shops’ signature drinks or the stuff poured straight from the pot in the company breakroom. And maybe, if you’re lucky like me, that person has gone from work bestie to cherished friend, someone you know and trust because they know and trust you – and, you both know and trust coffee.
For me, that person is Nayeli Plata, a lifelong coffee drinker (and I do mean lifelong) who is so dedicated to the good stuff she even has a blueprint for the dream coffee shop she’d build right alongside some Pinterest plans for her dream glam room. Nayeli and I have worked together at a couple of law firms now (our day jobs) and when we met five years ago, one of the first of many things we found we had in common was our devotion to coffee. A 30-year age difference might have suggested coffee wasall we had in common, so before we both realized how interesting, hilarious and badass each other was, coffee was a starting point. She’d bring a hot coffee (black, the way we both take it) in the morning, then I’d buy us iced coffee after lunch for more cafecito and chisme.
Nayeli grew up in Galveston, where I was born and have lots of family, many of whom she knew before she and I ever met. She went to school with some of my cousins and one was actually her fifth-grade teacher. Small world! Like me, she married her high school sweetheart (hers is Jon, mine is Tish). Like me, she also has an adorable niece she dotes over (her is Juliette, mine is Annemarie, both impossibly cute) and, like me, she is a huge music nerd who turned me onto Spanish rock and pop, loves karaoke and can sing practically any song played at the piano bar.
Nayeli Plata Credit: Jesse Sendejas, Jr.
As we shared more coffees, she shared more of her story, the real-life stuff that’s cross-generational and goes beyond the surfacy co-worker chit-chat. When we met, Nayeli and Jon were leaving behind some things they’d felt suppressed their freedoms and they were eager to get on with all life had to offer. They were pretty punk rock in that way and now they’re the only two people in my large friends’ circle who have actually seen live all the punk bands my kids play in. Tish and I have buddied up with them to do lots of stuff and it’s been a privilege watching them both grow and brave new, exciting adventures.
We work at different law offices these days. She’s at the place where they push and you win and I’m elsewhere, so we agreed to a bastardized version of coffee badging, the social work trend in which remote workers get together for a cup of coffee before heading back to their respective job sites. We met at Café Ion in Midtown’s Ion District to chat and she chose iced vanilla lattes for us both. We got into her coffee origin story, which involves her parents, some very nice folks my wife and I have also met for coffee.
“So, my origin story with coffee goes back so far that it’s before I even have any recollection of having a memory, but my parents, obviously, drank coffee every day, still do, like morning and
afternoon and night, sometimes. I’ve never remembered not having coffee in my life,” she said, noting they would share their coffees and pan dulce with her when she was just a little. “I know, probably not great on my parents, but I would get the café con leche, which is mostly milk, but still some coffee in there.
“I mean, my little niece, she loves coffee, too and if we ever go to a coffee shop, I let her try my coffee and then, at some point, she almost takes over my drink, like it’s no longer my drink anymore.”
“So, it’s a family thing?” I asked. “It’s just been passed down the line?”
“Mm-hmm,” she said and took a long sip of her latte. “But yeah, I just can’t live without it.”
L-R: Sugar Bean’s Caramel Macchiato and Sticky Bun latte Credit: Jesse Sendejas, Jr.
Nayeli is no coffee snob. She’s happy with an iced Dunkalatte or the French toast latte from La La Land. Being a skydiving, judo and fitness buff, she’ll go for a Starbuck’s protein latte, if it’s handy. But, I pressed her for her top three coffee spots and learned the emotions attached to her favorites are as key as what’s being served.
“So, my three are going to start with Sugar Bean in Evia Village in Galveston,” she said. “From them, I usually do the sticky bun latte. Overall, you’re going to see that my favorites have some cinnamon. That one’s my favorite. They actually had a non-coffee drink that was a green apple smoothie that I really enjoyed but they discontinued that. So, I was very upset when that happened.”
I told Nayeli maybe we could convince Sugar Bean to return it to the menu with her glowing review. The shop at 11 Evia Main in Galveston is very laid back, decorated in soothing pastels, and will always be a favorite of hers– green apple smoothie or not – because of some big life events that occurred there.
“Not necessarily at the coffee place but they do have a really nice lake view and like a gazebo in the lake, if you will. I did get engaged there, so it obviously has to be on the top,” she said. “That was special but it was also the place where we had our first date, so it was kind of like a full circle moment.”
“Then, I have Coco’s in the Heights, which we both enjoy,” she said, and I confirmed, having tried many coffees from the donut shop and coffee bar at 2026 W. 34th. “From them, I think my favorite would be the hot Mexican mocha – which, cinnamon again! I love that they have the little marranito with it.”
Coco’s serves more than coffee, donuts and food, it also serves one of Houston’s hottest communities with interesting programming – book clubs, craft nights, salsa and bacahata dance nights and even floral workshops, which Nayeli may have recently nabbed some ideas from for her own Galentine’s party with some special girlfriends.
Future coffee shop owners, Nayeli and DaVinci Credit: Nayeli Plata
“It’s super convenient, it has a drive-through, which is nice to have on your way in to work. And they’re pretty consistent, too. I feel like I’ve never had a bad coffee there,” she said.
Someone who started drinking coffee as a toddler might have a hard time choosing just three top coffees. As honorable mentions, Nayeli enjoys Cariño Coffee , 708 Hogan, the coffee shop which goes full bar as Rabbit’s Got the Gun in the afternoon, and Las Perras Café, 3401 Harrisburg, the Segundo Barrio specialty café that is Latina-owned. As a proud Mexican and feminist, the sense of liberation there is as important to her as the delicious, unique drinks (try the “Mamoncita” – an Evergreen matcha with milk, topped with vanilla crème anglaise brulee).
I asked Nayeli about her own Latina-owned coffee shop idea, which allowed her to discuss one of her favorite subjects, her 11-year old Schnauzer, DaVinci.
“DaVinci’s Coffee Shop. If I was ever to own a coffee shop, that would be the name, of course, because it can’t be anything else but DaVinci,” she said of her baby. “I guess people would imagine DaVinci as the artist but I think of DaVinci as the Schnauzer, so it would have pictures, like the Mona Lisa, for example, but it would have DaVinci’s face on it. And there would be not just DaVinci’s famous paintings but the classics that we know from anybody like Picasso but with DaVinci’s or Schnauzers’ faces on them. There’s going to be a specific portrait of DaVinci with a top hat and a monocle, wearing a suit. And then, there will be coffee there too.
“I don’t think I’ve thought that far ahead,” she said of a signature drink at DaVinci’s. “You know, I drink a lot of coffee but I’m not great at making it, so I still have to figure out a good recipe.”
Campesino’s café con leche (hot) and horchata iced latte Credit: Jesse Sendejas, Jr.
“Campesino,” she said of her final choice. Nayeli has recently spent a lot of time in Mexico City, where she was born before becoming a Houstonian with good taste in coffee (and friends). When you go to CDMX, she recommends stopping by Dr. Simi’s museum, where the cafeteria serves a cappuccino with the Mexican retailing icon’s face on it, or maybe Sanborns, a Mexican chain of stores where you can buy enchiladas, tattoo balm, TVs, kitchen appliances and coffee, all in one visit.
She’s very attuned to the struggles immigrants face acclimating to life in the States and always hopes our neighbors are aware of how we all benefit from the diverse richness and gifts immigrants bring to our shared experience.
“I think, if I’m not mistaken, it is kind of pro-immigrants, trying to do their part in general,” she said of Montrose’s Campesino Coffee House, 2602 Waugh, a spacious café which boasts, by its own account, “a Latino-centric menu and sensibilities.”
“From them, it would be the horchata latte,” she said. “They had a location in downtown. I’m not sure why, but it closed. And this one’s a full circle moment with you, because I used to bring you coffee all the time from that place.”
Reuters says coffee-drinking co-workers have helped drive this country’s coffee obsession to 500 million cups a day. As we’ve sipped away at our portion of a half-billion daily cups, we’ve talked about all sorts of things. Nayeli and Jon have grown into family friends. We’ve been to each others’ family outings, have traveled together, been to concerts, sat in the backyard with beers, shared many excellent meals and drank lots of margaritas and martinis (espresso martinis, of course) together. We’ve all reminded each other that people of wildly different ages can find what it takes to become real friends, if they give themselves the chance. Sometimes, those friendships start at work and a lot of times they start with coffee.
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