Phil Davis of Phil the Fire to Open Pasteleria y Café Downtown Next Month

25 years ago, Phil Davis made a big splash in the Cleveland food community when he launched his chicken-and-waffle concept, Phil the Fire, from the basement of The Civic in Cleveland Heights. Davis went on to open multiple Phil the Fire restaurants before getting out of the retail restaurant space.

“It was a wild ride, and I wouldn’t trade it for the world,” he says. “All these years later, people still refer to me as Phil the Fire.”

Now, Davis wants to be known as the tres leches guy. It’s a niche he stumbled upon five years ago when his daughter asked him to make her one after seeing them on TikTok.

“I became obsessed with tres leches,” Davis says of the sponge cake-based Latin treats.

After refining his recipes and techniques for a few years he began selling the cakes wholesale to Mexican restaurants such as like Cozumel, El Palenque and others. Early last year, he took space in the Carnegie Food Hub ghost kitchens to further refine his products.

“The purpose of the cloud kitchen was as a proof of concept,” he explains.

Soon, Davis will graduate to a brick-and-mortar space when he opens Pasteleria y Café (236 Euclid Ave.), in a former PizzaFire space that had been vacant for five years. If all goes as planned, the café will open in late February.

Davis and head chef Yaxcira Torres will make a variety of tres leches cakes, cookies and other treats from scratch onsite.

“They’re my recipes, but it’s her kitchen,” Davis says. “We describe tres leches as a feel-good dessert: it’s cold, it’s creamy and it’s delicious.”

In addition to traditional tres leches flavors, the café will offer a dozen other flavors like Key Lime, banana, strawberry and coconut that will rotate in and out. To pair with the sweets will be fresh-ground coffee, music and art.

“We want our space to be the happy place,” Davis explains. “We want people to come here, sit down and talk, and listen to the vibe of the Latin music.”

Davis says that in response to his tres leches cakes, he received the highest compliment one could hope for.

“They say that our tres leches is like your grandmother’s,” he boasts.

Davis hopes that the colorful 56-seat café will become a place for celebrating cultural experiences like quinceañeras, proms and weddings.

Subscribe to CLE Bites, Doug Trattner’s weekly food newsletter.