Chefs craft grab-and-go goodies inside Cooper City gas station
In the bright corner of a Cooper City gas station, chef Nunzio Fuschillo piles ribbons of oven-fresh roast beef into a sourdough ciabatta roll while chef Patty Lopez pulls a tray of guava cheesecake rolls fromthe oven and fills a mug of Italian espresso.
If cooking at a two-star Michelin restaurant in Italy’s Tuscany region has taught the husbandand-wife duo anything, it’s that quality is better if every dish is made fromscratch. Even at a
Marathon convenience store.
“We don’t need much,” says Lopez, who opened Effe Café with Fuschillo in late September. “We can run this café anywhere there’s a kitchen. That’s whywe picked a gas station.”
They describe Effe Café, at 10295 Stirling Road, as a sixmonth pop-up, an experimental shop where Lopez, 36, tinkers daily with fresh pastries – a s’mores brownie was unveiled lastweek – while Fuschillo, 35, pumps out a rotating menu of grab-and-go comfort food. On
Wednesday, Sicilian-style pepperoni pie, made fromscratch, sat on Effe’s countertop for lunch. Depending on sales, he may make it a permanent menu fixture.
Chef-quality experiences at humble gas-and-gos are nothing new in South Florida. Los Bocados, a fast-casual taqueria inside a Parkland Chevron, serves a three taco plate of guajillo chicken, spicy citrus pork and carne asada from Anthony Hoff and Robby Bushman, former chefs at Boca
Raton City Fish Market. Arguably the most luxurious is El Carajo, a Spanish tapas eatery in Miami featuring 2,000 wines, crab stuffed crepes and paella in the cozy, brick-covered back room of a Mobil station.
At Effe, the ambiance is bodega-chic, with chairless wooden tables and exquisite views of the lottery scratch-offs. Belinda Carlisle’s “Heaven Is a Place on Earth” plays every 15 minutes over the loudspeaker. But it’s the food, not the venue, that Fuschillo and Lopez care about.
“People aren’t going to find $3 gas-station pizza as good as this,” Lopez says. “You don’t expect fresh sourdough when you walk into a convenience store. You don’t expect homemade roast beef if you’re looking for a hot dog. That’s the crowd we’re trying to win over.”
It’s a far cry fromthe customers they used to serve. Pre-pandemic, Lopez and Fuschillo held steady gigs at Michael Beltran’s Italian seafood spot Nave in Coconut Grove. But finedining restaurants under statewide shutdowns had no need for a pastry chef or chef de cuisine, forcing Lopez and Fuschillo to improvise. When they toured the gas station and heard the monthly rent – $1,500 – they signed a lease in June.
“When theworld stopped for everyone, it gave us an opportunity,” Fuschillo says. The couple lives twomiles away in Hollywood with their children, Lola and Lucas. “Whenwe first get here therewas a little plancha, an oven and a prep area and Iwas like, ‘We can make thiswork.’ You can do anything with a good oven.”
Born in Naples, Fuschillo met Lopez in summer 2009 in the hilly Tuscan town of Montemerano, Italy, where the two worked at the twostar Michelin restaurant Caino. Hialeah-raised Lopez, a fresh graduate from New York’s Institute of Culinary Education, applied for pastry chef on a long-shot. “Iwas this goofy American who had nine months of culinary training. But Iwas the only pastry chef who applied so I got lucky,” she says.
Afterworking at Caino, they married and moved to South Florida in 2013, finding chef jobs at Valentino
Cucina Italiana in Fort Lauderdale, Michael Mina’s Bourbon Steak in Aventura and the late Bocce Bar in Midtown Miami.
“Trust us, we’re used to working in tinier kitchens than this,” says Lopez, spreading homemade hummus, tomatoes and green onions on sourdough toast. Fuschillo, standing inches away, shaves roast beef on a deli slicer. Fuschillo’s Angus roast beef ($7 for wrap, $7.50 for sandwich) is marinated for 24 hours in brown sugar, yellow mustard, salt and pepper, seared on the plancha, then roasted in the oven. The sandwich’s toppings – mayonnaise, pickles – are also made by Fuschillo.
Other breakfast dishes include egg burritos ($6, with eggs, chorizo, potatoes and mozzarella), smoothies ($4) and house-made hamand-spinach quiche ($3.50). Lunches ($5-$7.50) include Patty’s Chicken Salad, a turkey BLT and a Buddha Bowl (brown rice with choice of three vegetables with housemade dressing). New pastries are unveiled every few days, but so far include pain au chocolat and almond cake.
Most times, their menu items are a guessing game, striking a balance between comfort food and speed. “Some people don’t want to wait,” Lopez says. “Some people just want to buy gas. That whywe try to grab their attention by saying ‘good morning’ and making these colorful treats.”
Effe Café, inside a Marathon gas station at 10295 Stirling Road, in Cooper City, is open 6:30 a.m.-3:30 p.m. Monday through Saturday. Follow the café on Instagram.