Restaurant spotlight: Daytona Beach Shores café serves homemade, international cuisine

Zugba Café, known for its coffee, pastries, sandwiches and more, prides itself on quality cuisine, international flair and a charming environment.

The local café opened in Daytona Beach Shores in mid-October, only three months after the owners, husband and wife Mark Dwyer and Marion Tayong, acquired the space. It has since served the community with unbeatable oceanfront views and a thoughtfully curated menu of scratch-made, sweet and savory bites.

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Tayong, the culinary mastermind behind the intimate café, was born in the Philippines where she operated her own catering business — Sugar and Spice — for nearly a decade. Cooking, the restaurateur tells me, began as a hobby — one in which she found immense passion and success.

“She just knows about food — the way food should go together for it to taste great. She puts these things to together and, I don’t even know how to explain it, it just tastes so good. I don’t know how she does it,” Dwyer said of his wife.

“Like she makes this ube cheesecake — ube is a purple yam from the Philippines — and the cheesecake is actually purple, and it is so good. Everyone that comes in and tries it (agrees).”

Dwyer, born in Jamaica and raised in Connecticut, tells me Zugba Café is his first restaurant venture, however his background in construction played a crucial role in the café’s full remodeling — a job in which he willfully took the reins, creating a calming, cozy beachside escape for his customers.

“Our biggest selling point really is the ambiance,” Dwyer said. “Coming here, it’s a stress-free environment. We’ve got the music playing, we’ve got the lounge, and we keep the place spotless.”

A menu for all palates

While some prefer a French pastry, others prefer an Italian dessert. At Zugba Café, customers don’t have to choose. The quaint eatery boasts an eclectic, made-fresh menu of internationally-influenced cuisine — a menu Tayong tells me was created to suit a variety tastes.

“We serve different palates — we have Italian food, Portuguese, Filipino, American — everything. We even have baklava,” Tayong said.

“If I go out with my friends, I want them to enjoy their food, and I want to enjoy my food, too. So, I was like 'what if we serve different kinds of palates and have everyone enjoy whatever they wanted,' you know? Not sticking with just Filipino things or just Italian or just American.”

The duo took inspiration from community requests like classic bagel sandwiches to French pastries and Belgium breakfast offerings, using locals' input to curate a creative menu of mouth-watering homemade recipes and endless flavor combinations for breakfast, lunch or dinner.

“We turned around our menu and listened to the people, and that was the start of everything,” Tayong said.

Zugba Café’s menu highlights

The eatery offers a range of specialty sandwiches including the Zugba Vegan — avocado, cucumber, onion, tomatoes, hummus; the chicken marinara — layered with homemade marinara, made using San Marzano tomatoes; the prosciutto sandwich; and the top-selling turkey sandwich — a vibrant, tangy, yet subtly sweet and spiced layering of hot pepper cranberry jam, oven-roasted turkey and homemade stuffing with bread options including a brioche bun, French baguette, bagels and ciabatta.

“I’m responsible for the turkey … my mom used to make turkey a certain way, it was always oven-roasted, and her stuffing — that’s what did it. So, you have to try our turkey; it’s so good,” Dwyer said with a smile.

“We even had someone come in one day and he had it and came back the next day — well called and said, ‘I want to order that turkey sandwich again’ … he said, ‘It’s as if someone roasted a turkey specially for me.’ … People just love (it), and we don’t use processed turkey — only real turkey. Same thing with our ham.”

After one bite, I knew the sandwich was a new lunchtime staple — one that I, too, returned for the very next day.

Zugba Café also offers a plethora of best-selling bagels — including blueberry, onion, everything and cinnamon — imported from New York, as well as Belgian waffles with an array of add-ons, such as strawberries, powdered sugar, banana, chocolate drizzle and bacon.

For those with a sweet tooth, the local café offers a variety of desserts, with those available during my visit including homemade cheesecake, baklava, tiramisu, Italian cookies, puff pastries and “cruffins,” a delicious, flaky, and chocolate-filled croissant-muffin-crossover that pairs perfectly alongside a morning cappuccino.

The couple described several of the cafe's vegan offerings, like the scratch-made vegan croissants, moist cake, banana blueberry muffins, and occasional vegan ube muffins, and welcomes customers to start their mornings off right with an extensive menu of Italian-imported coffees and other beverages, including the Cubano con leche, matcha latte, macchiato, cappuccino, chai latte, espresso and, in the future, Boba tea.

Looking ahead with Zugba Café

Currently Zugba Café offers dine in and take-out, as well as delivery with DoorDash. Looking ahead, Tayong tells me the café is in the process of acquiring its beer and wine license, and even has plans for a food truck on the side for her barbecue offerings.

Zugba Café is located at 3106 S. Atlantic Ave. in Daytona Beach Shores and replaces what was formerly Vittoria’s Italian Coffee and Pastries. The shop is open 8 a.m. – 8 p.m. Tuesday – Sunday. For information, call 386-776-7957 or visit Daytonabeachcafe.com.

Helena Perray is the restaurant and dining writer for The Daytona Beach News-Journal. A New Jersey native and passionate storyteller, she can be contacted at hperray@gannett.com. Follow her on Instagram and Facebook. Support local journalism by subscribing

This article originally appeared on The Daytona Beach News-Journal: Zugba Cafe serves the Daytona area internationally inspired cuisine