The sun never sets at Café Tropical. It's back

Residents snapped photos of their guava cheese pastelitos and greeted old friends at Café Tropical in Silver Lake on Thursday. It was a sweet reunion for the cafe's patrons, who have been missing the Cuban institution since its sudden closure in November.

At Thursday's soft reopening event, new owners Danny Khorunzhiy, Ed Cornell and Rene Navarrette welcomed customers back to the nearly 50-year-old eatery and served a limited menu, including breakfast sandwiches and coffee.

“The enthusiasm from the community was really cool,” Khorunzhiy said.

Café Tropical will officially reopen to the public on Saturday from 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. Regular opening hours will be Tuesday through Sunday from 7 a.m. to 3 p.m., the owners said.

Tropical has been a fixture on Sunset Boulevard since 1975, when the street that connected Silver Lake to Echo Park was home to many Cuban-American businesses. A family legal dispute contributed to the unexpected closure of the cafe as well as its sister businesses, El Cochinito Restaurant and Bar Bolita.

The cafe was not only a valued coffee shop, but also an unofficial beacon for people in addiction recovery. The meetings took place day and night in a back room.

“I have been visiting the common room here for 15 years,” said Khorunzhiy. “This place really influenced my life.”

When Khorunzhiy heard that Tropical was closing, he hired Navarrette to rally a group of people from the community to save it. Navarrette connected the group with his brother Eddie Navarrette, executive director of the Independent Hospitality Coalition.

“Lately they’ve been trying to save older restaurants that are going out of business here in LA,” Rene Navarrette said. “That was already in our heads.”

Cornell was working at the nearby Quarter Sheets when Khorunzhiy asked him to enter the kitchen at Café Tropical.

“We redesigned the menu but kept a few things that we felt were the most popular and popular,” Cornell said. “We reduced it so we can actually reopen and not self-destruct or ruin anything.”

For the last four weeks or so, the group has been working to prepare the restaurant for reopening, even bringing back some of the former employees, many of whom were no longer receiving salaries following the unexpected closure.

Once Café Tropical returns to full capacity, more items will be added to the menu, giving a better idea of ​​how busy it will be, the new team said. Cornell assured guests they can count on café con leche and at least three tropical staples.

“The guava cheese, the guava pastry and the Cubano sandwich; “Those are three things we said: 'We know we can't open without these,'” Cornell said.

Local writer raised in the cafe

Poet, author and Silver Lake native Yesika Salgado sparked early excitement for a reopening days ago when she posted on her Instagram account that she was nearly moved to tears when she bit into a guava cheese pastelito during a pre-opening visit.

“I've been going to Café Tropical my whole life. “I've lived in Silver Lake since I was born and I can't remember a single memory where Café Tropical wasn't on the corner of Sunset and Parkman,” Salgado said.

Salgado began going to the coffee shop with her mother as a child and continued to do so throughout her teens when she had friends who worked there. As an adult, she said, Café Tropical became her favorite place to work early in her writing career.

“When I started writing more seriously and needed a place to go outside of my house, it was the nearest coffee shop that was within walking distance and welcoming,” she said.

It was at Café Tropical that Salgado wrote her first volume of poetry, “The Luna Poems,” and met her publisher for the first time.

“I worked on the manuscripts there — that was my office,” Salgado said. “I think I’ve just become another piece of furniture in the cafe.”

Like Salgado, some guests at the soft opening were eager to return to their favorite table and settle in with their laptops. Others were looking forward to the return of sobriety meetings, which will begin again next week, Khorunzhiy said.

“So I was introduced to this place through the meeting room. That’s a big reason why we’re doing this,” Khorunzhiy said.

Cornell, Khorunzhiy and Navarrette all recognize that Café Tropical has become the third place for many in the community, and the partners are working hard to ensure the sun doesn't set on Café Tropical.

“It feels good to be part of something that hasn’t been lost,” Navarrette said.