Cafe Duskaia serves up some of Nicaragua's most popular dishes

At Cafe Duskaya, Meiling Moreno is serving up some of Nicaragua's most popular dishes. Here you are, my friend. Right in the heart of the Italian market. I'm embarrassed to say I've never had food from Nicaragua. Really? Yeah, it's my first time. Her most popular dish is the chancho con yuca. Chancho. Yeah, it's pork in Spanish. It's a banana leaf piled high with yuca, pork, slaw, and pico de gallo. She hand-makes tortillas for casillos. Now it's perfect. A popular Nicaraguan street food with cheese, onions, and sour cream. The fritanga is grilled and marinated meat. This is pork. Served with popular sides like rice and beans, fried plantains, and cabbage salad. Would you like to taste? She also makes Nicaraguan tamales. Una catamales, the most popular dishes in Nicaragua. It's corn masa, meat, veggies, and rice wrapped in a banana leaf and boiled for three hours. It's a lot of work, but we want to keep our recipe alive. Cheers! To Cafe Zuzcaya. And with the cafe, Mei Ling is serving up her country's coffee culture. I'm Nicaraguan coffee farmer. She owns a plot on her family's coffee farm. And the coffee she roasts and sells here comes from beans grown by female farmers in Nicaragua. I took the risk to come to USA and sprout the flavor of Nicaragua. How are you, my friends? And I start to work hard. I got like three or four jobs a day. She started doing pop-ups and her coffees were selling out. I was so happy. And I say I will be at the Italian market in six months. There we go. She turned to Philadelphia's Welcoming Center for help. Our model is to help immigrants gain pathways to upward economic opportunity. So entrepreneurship is one of those pathways? What are we gonna make? We wanna make a drink, it's called bombon. Bombon is Spanish for beautiful lollipop. There we go. It's a chocolatey espresso variety mixed with sweetened condensed milk and served hot or cold. The cup is lined with caramel sauce. This is a treat. And the drink is finished with half and half. Ready to enjoy it. She makes a coconut cold brew for those who want caffeination with hydration. I love it. Yeah. It's one of my favorite. Mei Ling is on a mission to teach people about the coffee farm to cup process. The coffee trees, it take like a five year to get the first beans. Wow. And the Northern Nicaragua mountain towns where the beans are grown. The street smell like a coffee because everybody is making coffee. If you wanna drink like a native, order your coffee hot. One more again. With a triple strain process. She makes non-coffee drinks too, like the sunrise with passion fruit and hibiscus flower. Look at those color. And if you're hankering for something sweet. Cinnamon. Her sweet pumpkin is a fall favorite. And that's it.