Virginia’s Cafe & Market
About
Virginia’s Cafe & Market is a Portuguese-inspired coffee shop and specialty food marketplace in Reading. It grew out of Jake Chaves’s long-held wish to create a cafe that shares a piece of his family’s story, and it serves coffee and pastries rooted in the traditional Portuguese baking he grew up with. Jake and his wife, Alison, are the couple behind the cafe, which they describe as a dream in the making.
Jake’s grandparents were born and raised in the Azores, and his grandmothers, his Vavós, taught him to bake the classic treats. The cafe is named for his great-grandmother, Virginia Simas, born in São Miguel in 1922, who moved to Cambridge in 1958 and led the Saint Anthony Parish kitchen for church feasts well into her 90s. She was known for her Portuguese sweet bread, massa sovada, and Jake learned her recipe baking beside her.
What to Know
- Pastry pre-orders are accepted.
- Virginia Simas, known in the family as Vozinha, died in 2018, and the cafe carries her name.
- As a child, Jake watched her bake loaves of massa that were sold at a Portuguese store in Cambridge.
- The cafe is a member of the Reading-North Reading Chamber of Commerce.
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