How passion for the kitchen led the pair of friends to fall in love with special coffees
Coffee shop, beauty salon, art gallery, motorcycle workshop and so much more, the studio Dama that houses the HM Food Café owned by the friends, Hesli Carvalho, which is the H and Murilo Nogueira, which is the M. Gastronomy Fans, which always prepared meals at family celebrations and at meetings with friends.
Hesli is graduated in IT and Murilo in architecture. Before the special coffee, they got involved with the gastronomy, they were catering for events of third parties. The food was so good that the demand grew beyond what was envisioned. Until it was necessary to look for an address to install a kitchen. A friend offered the space where they installed now. And from the food to the specialty coffees, the passion soon appeared.
Dama studio had already been set up as a multipurpose space when they were invited to occupy the front part of the coffee shop. “It turned out that coffee was gaining a body, a much larger proportion”, says Murilo.
(Hesli and Murilo, the partners of HM Food Café)
Entering into the specialty coffees segment
Upon entering once for all in the specialty coffees world, Hesli had the opportunity to recall his childhood, since his father worked on a coffee farm in Nepomuceno, in the south of Minas Gerais.
With his uncles working as agronomists as well, Hesli was surrounded by coffee, but the duo’s knowledge of specialty coffees was little.
As they always wanted to serve quality products at HM, they began to study about specialty coffees. They took a barista course with Gina Machado, studied on their own and discovered the work of roast master Juliana Ganan. In fact, they were one of her first clients.
Then, they discovered the work of Felipe Croce, from F.A.F (Fazenda Ambiental Fortaleza), the small producers and went to visit some producing regions, such as Serra do Caparaó, in Minas Gerais, on the border with the State of Espírito Santo.
Nowadays, they have served the espresso taken from a Nuova Simonelli Competizione, in addition to offering filtered coffee, and also using Clever and Aeropress coffee preparation methods, they have been working with coffee micro-lots from Bica or FAF.
(The cafeteria is located in the beautiful Studio Dama, in the neighborhood of Pinheiros)
When it comes to making special coffee choices, they always take into account the person’s relationship with coffee, such as production, who produces, etc. “Many of our products have this issue, we want to pass our DNA to the coffee we serve”, says Murilo. “We surround ourselves with partners who share this concern with us. We have suppliers of natural fermentation breads that also have this concern, and this generates such nifty interaction. The result is a coffee of excellent quality”, he says.
The importance of customers to the coffee evolution
They enthusiastically told us how important is the public to HM Food Café: “We have a group of 7 to 8 clients, who work in the same company and come here almost every day for two years. They eat somewhere else, have a more substantial meal, and then come here every day for coffee, and they’ve been drinking our different coffees. One of them already buys coffee powder to make in its house, part of the group orders filtered coffee and another part orders the espresso. Most of them have stopped putting sugar in their coffee. In these two years they have become subject of our studies, because they come often, and we can follow the evolution well, that is nice, we did not enter abruptly in the market”.
(Customer opinion is vital to HM Food Café!)
HM’s menu and brunch
On the HM Food Café’s menu there is a part for drinks, served all day. The same care they have with the coffee they have with the tea. Working in partnership with the Tee Gschwendner, a tea shop, they want to bust the myth that you cannot drink coffee and tea at the same occasion, and that tea is a therapeutic drink to drink when you are sick. Sweets are almost all made in the house, the ones that are not, are made with some partners who have developed the recipe together. They are sweets with lower sugar content, just to make the harmonization with the coffee. There is Brazilian cheese bread and the today’s special, which is changed from season to season and always comes with salad servings at will. “Now we are in the winter, but with this heat we will have to anticipate the summer dishes, they are lighter dishes: ceviches and more fresh food”.
On Saturdays and in the last Sundays of the month, they make a special brunch, which has an a la carte menu all based on eggs: in the sweets the options are the black rice porridge, the yellow fruit salad and the banana pancake and nuts. On the grilled options are avocado and prosciutto. Then there are three dishes to share: shakshuka (rustic tomato sauce with peppers, boiled eggs in the sauce and curds), a Greek dish (homemade hummus, tomato and cucumber salad, curd and scrambled eggs) and the HM’s potato, their version of rosti potatoes. Besides that, they serve coffees and cappuccinos in the morning with breads of natural fermentation: “A more real food that brings people together”, Murilo told us.
(The cafeteria started being a restaurant for catering, over time, the special coffee took hold!)
The philosophy of HM Food Café and the concern with small producers
Currently, coffee at HM Food is treated with the same care and respect that the food receives. Murilo says: “It is a social and cultural experience, we see everything as one item. When you are having a special coffee here, you are fancying the grain that the farmer has gathered in hand. You are helping him, so that he can improve his and his family’s conditions, creating the possibility for him to remain in the countryside and to be beneficial for them”.
Hesli comments on the philosophy he learned in one of his travels, which he takes to HM Food Café as well as to his life: “There is a philosophy of tea that I discovered when I went to Darjeeling in India, which I think applies to the coffee, which says that when you are having tea, you are taking the time: the time the leaf took to grow, the time a person manually separated it until it reaches you. It is all the respect and appreciation of that moment, and the same happens with the coffee: it is not only because it is an item of everyday life, that one does not have to give importance”.
(The beautiful interior of HM Food Café, a place that serves one of the best cafes in the city of São Paulo!)
The concern about product quality in all its processes, the care in listening to the suggestions of the customers and putting them into practice in the coffee shop, as well as a coffee and excellent quality food, has made HM Food Café become one of the best coffee shops in the city of São Paulo!
HM Food Café
Address: R. Ferreira de Araújo, 1056 – Pinheiros, São Paulo – SP, 05428-002
Opening Hours: Monday to Friday: from 10:00 a.m. to 6:00 p.m.
Saturdays: 10:00 a.m. to 4:00 p.m.
Closed on Sundays
Phone: +55 (11) 3034-5319
