empanadas
Half Moon Bakery Credit: Emanuel Wallace

Half Moon Bakery, the popular empanada, sandwich and pastry shop, will open a spacious new café in downtown Cleveland. Owner Gerson Velasquez says that his newest venture is taking shape in the former Arby’s space on Chester Avenue at East 22nd Street.

“This will be more like the one we had on W. 25th Street,” he says.

Velasquez opened the original Half Moon Bakery with his partner Lyz Otero in the Clark-Fulton neighborhood back in 2020. That shop, now called Bella Luna, has since changed hands.

In 2023, Velasquez re-opened Half Moon Bakery at Tower City, where it operated until this past September.

When it opens in January or February, the new bakery and café will offer the same lineup of Argentinian empanadas, Colombian empanadas, empanada-style tacos, Cuban sandwiches and Latin pastries like tres leches cake. The café will also offer more seating than the original in Clark-Fulton, Velasquez notes.

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For 25 years, Douglas Trattner has worked as a full-time freelance writer, editor and author. His work as co-author on Michael Symon's cookbooks have earned him four New York Times Best-Selling Author honors, while his longstanding role as Scene dining editor has garnered awards of its own.