Cafeteria & Bakery Santa Clara — Restaurant in Sacatepéquez

Santa Clara is a combination of market, souvenir shop, bakery, café, and performance venue for live music, always Guate or Mexican-style. The cafe is pretty good, especially the upstairs/rooftop terrace seating, with lots of shade & rain protection and great service, despite the servers having to run up and down the stairs with everything! The decorative lights at night are fun too. It is inexpensive, and some of the food is excellent, other things merely okay. We were going to remark about the poor quality horchata but over several months we discovered that it is simply very hard to find good Mexican-style horchata anywhere in Antigua. Just enjoy their watered-down version of it, "no pase nada". Try the limonada jamaica instead, it is excellent. The souvenirs are unique and will appeal to hard-rock fans, and anyone who loves rural Arizona curio shops. The market has some great stuff sometimes, which is why we came every week. The capsicum is always top quality and fresh from a local farm. The "chapinitas" plantain chips, in the Q.10 bags, are addictively good and we could not find them anywhere else, not even at La Bodegona. Also a wide variety of hot sauce, which can be hard to find in Antigua too. But the overall grocery selection is limited, and the quality can vary widely, especially of the plantains and bananas—also normal in Guatemala, but it's something you should know if you are a visitor. So if on your first visit the bananas are all over-ripe, "no pase nada," come back in a few days. Also, the live music is wonderful if that's what you're there for, and so are the concert videos they show in the evenings sometimes, but the sound is going to be LOUD. Like, too loud for their speakers to really handle well, although they will fix it if it actually starts popping...

I have been to the bakery twice. The first time I got some baked item I can't remember (it wasn't memorable). This morning I gave it another try and got a chocolate croissant and a cinnamon roll, intending to share them with my husband when we met up at our coworking space. We just did and tried both. The croissant was leaden, doughy, like a dinner roll stuffed with chocolate. It really shouldn't be called a croissant, only its rough shape was reminiscent of a croissant. The cinnamon roll was modestly better, but that isn't saying much. We cut both up and put them out on a plate in the common kitchen for others in the coworking space to nibble; neither of us wanted more than the small taste of each that we took. Each was 10 Q, or...

I LOVE this place! I usually just get stuff from their bakery but stopped in for breakfast today. The staff is super nice. We got the breakfast sandwich with egg, beans and cheese, Q25 was a great price along with a Q10 espresso(even though coffee was actually included, I like an extra kick). They have the most delicious baked goods and chili relleños. I also love the baked good with Swiss chard and gouda(acelga y queso) SO GOOD, and I'm not even vegetarian. Definitely a place to visit...