When Allen residents Leo and Kelly Vargas opened Curuba Café in Allen in 2025, they knew they wanted to spotlight their Colombian heritage, but they also wanted to embrace other cultures as well.
“Our menu is inspired by Colombian flavors—because that is what we love to eat—but we also make it approachable for different cultures that come to the restaurant,” said Kelly Vargas, who handles back-of-house operations. “Our menu has a little bit of American inspiration ... with a little twist of Colombian flavors. I would say it is Latin American fusion.”
On the menu
Customers will find authentic Colombian cuisine including empanadas and bandeja paisa, a traditional platter featuring red beans, rice, steak, pork belly, chorizo, a fried egg, arepita, sweet plantains and guacamole.
Kelly Vargas points to their egg Benedict dishes, which are their top-selling menu category, when explaining how they infuse Colombian flavor into American fare.
“We add guascas—a Colombian herb—to our hollandaise sauce,” Kelly Vargas said. “People love our hollandaise.”
Arepa ranchera, featuring a large arepa—which is a cornbread-based flatbread—two eggs, beans, chorizo, mozzarella, fresh guacamole, breakfast potatoes, pickled onions and choice of sauce, is another popular dish.
Rounding out the top three best-selling menu items are the Caribbean pancakes, a recently added dish featuring caramelized sweet plantains, coconut cream, panela-rum syrup and toasted coconut.
“She’ll make dishes before we have them on the menu,” Leo Vargas said. “She makes something special for guests who come often. She made [Caribbean pancakes] and guests kept asking for it, so we added it to the menu.”
Looking for a libation?
In addition to serving a wide selection of single-origin Colombian coffee drinks, smoothies and its popular Coco Lemonade—which blends lime and coconut—Curuba Café also offers cocktails. Among the most popular are its sangria, mimosa flights and Bloody Marys.
What’s in a name?
When designing the cafe’s aesthetic, the business owners chose to spotlight their Colombian heritage, including creating a large silhouette of Colombia composed of multiple hand-woven baskets the couple made. Other nods to their heritage include yellow butterflies, a central symbol in Colombian author Gabriel García Márquez’s book ‘One Hundred Years of Solitude’.
“We wanted to have a Colombian name to identify with our Colombian heritage, but we didn’t want to use a typical name,” Leo Vargas said. “One day we were talking about our favorite fruits. My favorites are mango and curuba. When Colombians see that name, they know the place is Colombian.”
Quote of note
Leo and Kelly Vargas both agree that work-life balance is their favorite thing about being restaurateurs.
“It is a dream that came true. I can combine what I love most in my life, which is my kids, my husband and cooking for people,” Kelly Vargas said. “I love looking at people’s faces and seeing how they light up when they eat my food. Having a brunch place—where I do what I love in the morning and then I have the time to pick up my kids from school and then be with them—is perfect.”
