Dulceria serves beautiful Chilean desserts in Harlem
"We want to bring Chile to New York," says Daniel Minzer, co-owner of Dulceria, a Chilean bakery that calls Harlem home. "One of the things I love about New York is that you can eat foods from every country in the world here and it's changing all the time. Certain Chilean foods are at New York's culinary level and deserve to be showcased here."
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That roster of must-try treats includes alfajores, traditional sweet cookies made with dulce de leche, milhojas (also known as thousand layer cakes) and lemon meringue cakes.
Interestingly enough, although traditional Chilean bread and empanadas are also part of the menu, Minzer is adamant about the stark difference between his country of origin's sweet and savory offerings.
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"I love Chilean food, it's home to me, but I'm the first one to admit that the savory dishes are not very sophisticated," he says. "They're delicious and feature great ingredients but they're simple and don't require much preparation. With pastries, it's different. They're all very lavish."
Minzer opened Dulceria back in December of 2019 with co-owner and former romantic partner Marco Matheu. Although they launched the space just a few months before the pandemic, the two were able to manage through the worst of it given the business model they had settled upon to begin with. The shop is about 700 square feet, a rather small space that mostly lends itself to takeout orders.
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"We never thought of it as a sit-down space," says Minzer. "So we didn't have to change much and we were flexible enough to stay open throughout the pandemic."
The store owner also credits Harlem for the success of Dulceria. "Not a lot of people in Harlem left the city during the pandemic," he says. "They were working from home and, when they were taking a break, they would come to us."
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Add to it all that the fact that, according to Minzer, folks from the neighborhood are hungry for diverse culinary offerings and you've got yourself the ideal area for a bakery trying to establish the gastronomic importance of desserts from another nation.
So acute is the partners' devotion to both Chile and Harlem that Minzer and Matheu have even opened Enoteca Harlem, a Chilean and Spanish wine bar nearby.
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"I would always go back to Chile, eat this amazing stuff and would ask myself, why can't I get this in New York?," reminisces Minzer. Now, he clearly can—and so can all of us.
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