Can't-miss offerings include flaky empanadas with chile-braised pork rinds and mazapán-topped lattes
Kooben Café Mexicano
Walking through Kooben Café’s double glass doors brings a quick realization that change is afoot in Hanahan. While you could easily fill a few hours perusing the shelves of their flagship El Molino supermarkets or pick up some esoteric Mexican beers, fresh cheese, and marinated pork for the grill at their La Tapatía tienda on Yeamans Hall Road, owners Jaime Tinoco and Pamela Sierra have broken the local mold in the space next door. Challenging the thinking that authentic Mexican food lives only within the hot exhaust of roadside trucks, they offer a refined sensibility at their community brunch spot, just off Remount Road. After all, “kooben,” which comes from the Mayan word for kitchen or hearth, extends to the virtues of togetherness and familial bonding.
Framed by an inviting space indicative of upscale neighborhoods within Mexico City, the café pulses with energy, its high ceilings adorned with wicker pendant lights casting a warm glow over shiny wooden tables and rattan chairs. A pastry case brims with concha breads and sweets, while the back bar, lined with high-top seats, invites patrons to linger over lattes rimmed with mazapán crumbles, traditional spiced coffees, and freshly juiced beets and carrots. The atmosphere is cozy, and the tables are laden with heavy platters of regional specialties in which the kitchen excels.
These are not the street-style botanas y antojitos of the North Area’s industrial borderlands. The menu feels largely approachable, even for gringos with a cursory understanding of Mexican cuisine. Enmoladas offer tender shredded chicken wrapped in fresh corn tortillas and bathed in Oaxacan mole sauce. Three-egg omelettes come stuffed with the irresistible, achiote-tinged pulled pork of the Yucatan, cochinita pibil. There is green pozole (a hominy and chicken stew), crunchy fried beef balls called “croquetas,” and empanadas swaddling chile-braised pork rinds in shatteringly crisp pastry dough. For my money, Kooben serves one of the best bowls of menudo in town, brimming with tender stewed tripe.
If you’re a more of a continental eater, try the acai bowls, steak and eggs, or even tall stacks of pancakes and French toast. You can top the latter with cajeta, a syrupy sweet dulce de leche made from condensed goat milk. There’s also ice cream in the same flavor, or indulge in a side of fresh chocolate-covered strawberries presented in a pool of cream and pistachios.
1268 Yeamans Hall Rd., Hanahan
(843) 225-2081
Daily, 7 a.m.-4 p.m.
