With a Mix of Salvadoran and Italian Influences, A New Specialty Coffee Shop Heads to East Dallas

It’s been incredible to see so many new coffee shops pop up in Dallas this summer. From Wayward Coffee Co. and White Rhino Coffee in Bishop Arts to the second outpost of La La Land Kind Cafe landing on Oak Lawn, there are several new to pick up a well executed latte or pastry. The latest: a new specialty coffee shop called El Porton Coffee, coming to East Dallas’ Casa Linda Plaza this summer.

With their virtual coffee beans shop currently in full swing ahead of their brick-and-mortar opening, we caught up with co-owner Bruno Bianchi to learn more about the El Porton.

What inspired you and your wife [Isabel Amaya] to open El Porton Coffee?

Our dream of opening a coffee shop started along time ago when we were dating. The idea was influenced by the coffee culture of El Salvador. But it was by living abroad in Italy, during our first year of marriage, that we began to mold our dream into our vision of creating a unique coffee shop that could incorporate both coffee cultures, Salvadorian and Italian.

Do either of you have backgrounds in coffee?

We personally know coffee producers and were raised around the coffee industry in El Salvador. Yet, we continue to strive to learn and immerse ourselves even more into the industry through trainings and certifications under the Specialty Coffee Association (SCA) fundamentals.

My wife completed her barista certification in Italy and is also a professional chef with experience in the food industry. With her background and my background in business and marketing, we are confident that we can deliver the service and quality we aim for our customers.

Where does El Porton source its beans from?

We are sourcing our coffee from partnerships, some directly with coffee farmers and some through coffee providers that have the same philosophy of direct relationship, transparency, quality and supporting environmental and social practices.

What brought you to Dallas?

At the time our vision of opening a coffee shop started to take form, we were still living in Italy. We strongly considered Milan, as the specialty coffee industry was still being introduced in the European market. But, after much research and learning more in-depth about the specialty coffee industry is when we saw the potential of the United States market, which attracted us to look outside of Europe.

Dallas has been a city dear to our hearts for several years now and one that we have frequented often while visiting friends. Dallas is not only a growing city and great city to live in, but what attracted us to move here even more is the current growth of the specialty coffee industry, the pride in food crafting and livestock industry, as well as the large Latin community bringing us back to our roots.

What are you adding to the Dallas coffee scene?

Specialty coffee can feel a little overwhelming sometimes, with the different terminologies and methods of brewing that come into play, but that is one of the ways we want to help our customers. Our vision is to provide the full experience to our customers by helping them understand the entire process. This is one of the reasons we named our coffee shop El Porton “the gate” — we want to be the gateway that connects the customers to the producers while bringing a new level of understanding about the coffee industry.

In addition, our specialty coffee will bring strong and complex flavors which can be better enjoyed with the food it is paired with. We will use our food and coffee industry backgrounds to help our customers pair the two crafts and better highlight the flavor notes of our specialty coffee.

Speaking of food, what kind of food pairings will you have?

We will be partnering with local shops to offer quality food and pastries hand selected to pair perfectly with our specialty coffee. We will be highlighting some of our partners through our social media.

Do you have an opening date set?

Although our physical store hasn’t opened yet, our website is now live! We are offering a few varieties of our special coffee beans. Customers can purchase whole ground bags at any time by visiting our website elportoncoffee.com

We will be opening our physical store soon and we will continue to update our customers on opening date through our social media channels.

To stay up-to-date on El Porton’s opening, follow the shop on Instagram (@elportoncoffee) and Facebook.