Many residents have taken the opportunity to pose for photos at a downtown Skokie side lot with suspended colorful umbrellas; now, a restaurant has opened at the site.
Don Julio Cafe, the new restaurant at 7919 North Lincoln Avenue, opened its doors on May 20, according to the owner, Victoria Mejia Rivera. She said the restaurant is named after her late father, Julio, who died in 2022. The restaurant will serve classic American breakfasts and coffee while offering a diverse taste of traditional Guatemalan breakfast, or chapin.
Rivera said the restaurant was named in her father’s honor to replicate the same environment he would have liked. “He loved coffee and being with the family and eating breakfast. He was really happy on the weekends… he always brought a good vibe with him,” said Rivera.
According to Rivera, the restaurant’s logo is another nod to Julio. Rivera said the image of a cartoonish-looking Julio with a mug of steaming hot coffee sporting a red guayabera is unique. “You won’t find it anywhere else because it’s his face,” she said.
The inside of the restaurant has details and decorations in tune with nature. An artificial grass turf with a “Carpe Diem” neon sign over a wooden piano adorns the back end of the dining room, with other nature-themed accents along the wall and windows. Rivera said in the summer she is looking to have the restaurant’s patio open for dining and she would like to invite artists to perform music.
Chapin, a traditional Guatemalan breakfast, consists of sunny side eggs, beans with panela cheese, and fried plantains and sour cream, paired with either a tortilla or “pan de agua,” a roll of bread similar to a French loaf. She said she thinks the restaurant will be able to give local patrons a classic American breakfast like crepes, steak and eggs, while also giving the area something different and flavorful.
With Don Julio’s as the first restaurant venture for Rivera as an owner, the Guatemalan native said she has been working in food before even being fully able to vouch for herself, relying on her mother’s approval for a worker’s permit when she was underage. But even at her first job at McDonald’s, Rivera said she admired the philosophy of providing customers a welcoming experience, holding the door, and maintaining an orderly restaurant.
Rivera would go on to work at Chili’s as a hostess, then Applebee’s as a bartender, returning to Chili’s as a server. “I learned a lot about the culture of serving and looking people in their eyes and asking them about their day,” she said. “It stopped feeling like work because I was working with people, and the staff knew my name and so did the customers.”
Rivera said she also worked other jobs in the trucking business and even drove and owned a semi-truck going to places as far as Pennsylvania or Nebraska, so long as she could be back home for the weekend to spend time with her family and her 11-year-old daughter. She said that when the trucking business started to slow and the cost to maintain her truck was eating away at her income, she decided she was better off selling the truck.
Rivera said the move from the trucking business to owning a restaurant was spontaneous and that she still runs a delivery company to deliver appliances.
“Honestly, I just got up one day and decided to look into setting up shop,” she said. “I’d been speaking to my friends about it for a while. My friend and partner were ready, and I thought, well, why not? This place (7919 Lincoln Ave.) was five minutes from where I live, and that’s all it took, five minutes.”
Rivera said she was also attracted by Annie’s, a pancake house that closed in Skokie, but didn’t see any “For Rent” signs. “I turned the corner, and I found this place with a sign up front, and I looked into it enough to find out there was a place called Euro Echo Cafe, so I figured it wouldn’t be too hard to add some more things to adapt it into a restaurant.”
The restaurant will be open from 7:30 a.m. to 3:30 p.m. seven days a week and serve breakfast, brunch, beer and mimosas, according to Rivera. She said she will be a server/manager for the restaurant, her partner will be the restaurant’s accountant and a friend with a background in cooking at other hotels and restaurants will be doing the cooking. Rivera said the three of them will be the restaurant’s leadership, and she will also have her mom and sister work there every day.
