The to-go bags from Txa Txa Club in Logan Square are stamped with a red diagram of two feet doing a simple cha-cha. But the journey that business and life partners Liz Bendure and Daniel Parker have undergone to take their supper club of the same name to its current iteration as a quirky café has been more of an intricate tango.
It started when they met in 2016 at Lula Cafe, where Bendure worked as a server and Parker ran the bar program. “It was my primer to Chicago’s culture, art, and food scene,” Parker says. “It taught me what I wanted a place to feel like in terms of how people communicate, rub off on each other, share ideas, and spark each other’s creative pursuits.”
In 2020, the couple started holding pop-ups at places like Lula and the Charleston, offering $20 plates, their food pulling in Mediterranean and Southeast Asian influences. The next summer, they began hosting supper clubs for 15 to 25 people in their backyard. “We served things we wanted to learn about, ingredients we wanted to explore, and techniques we wanted to practice,” Bendure says. That meant dishes like handmade pastas and Spanish ajo blanco soup. They moved into catering and holding dinners in local galleries before opening the café, at 3268 West Fullerton Avenue, in March.
The couple still offer the supper clubs at spaces throughout the city, like SkyArt West, but the café is their base now. The name they chose for both, pronounced “cha cha,” comes from txoko, the Basque word for a gastronomic society that meets regularly to eat and drink.
The seasonal fare at the café taps the Mediterranean and Southeast Asian influences that have become Txa Txa’s signature. The food and drink menus are available all day (the café is open 8 a.m. to 9 p.m., Tuesday to Sunday), which means you can try the couple’s signature dishes — like a breakfast sandwich with pork sausage and umeboshi aïoli, a corn cake with espresso cream, and cold noodles with XO sauce and herbs — whenever the mood strikes. Their beverage offerings include coffee, wines by the glass, and funky cocktails with ingredients like clam juice and coconut vinegar.
That eclectic approach extends to the café itself, which features items the duo have “made, found, stumbled upon, and intentionally sourced,” says Bendure, who oversees the business side, while Parker heads up the food program. “The lights above each table are 1980s Brutalist vintage sourced from a Danish dealer. We also found a stool in the alley that we fell in love with.”
They pay it forward on the pop-up front by inviting in guest chefs (like Chanita Chayaluk, whose Thai spot, Taan, is slated to open soon in Humboldt Park) for monthlong residencies to serve Sunday dinners. “We wouldn’t be where we are today had others not opened their spaces for us,” says Parker. “I think it’s important to offer that to other people. It also keeps it fun, fresh, and dynamic for the neighborhood.”