The Mole Croissant Is a Weekend Special. Plan Your Weekend Around It.
Valeria Socorro Velazquez Lindsten built Loba around Mexican-inspired pastry technique and a coffee program serious enough to make that the harder sell.
The name comes from a story about a female wolf in Yellowstone, unusually independent, operating on her own terms, that gave chef-owner Valeria Socorro Velazquez Lindsten the push she needed to open her own bakery. Loba means she-wolf in Spanish. The name fits. This is a place that knows exactly what it is and has no interest in being talked out of it.
Lindsten cooked at Blackbird and Charlie Trotter's before opening the original Loba in 2016. The pandemic closed it. Crowdfunding brought it back in 2023 in a larger space in North Center, and a 2024 James Beard semifinalist nomination for Outstanding Bakery confirmed what the line out the door had been suggesting. Walk past the pastry case to order. Then walk back past the pastry case to pick up your drinks. The case is the length of the shop and it is doing a lot of work.
The coffee stopped me before the pastries did, which I did not expect. Loba is not a roaster. They use Little Wave, out of Durham, North Carolina, but the sourcing is only part of the story. The barista pulled a clean shot, steamed the milk correctly, and handed me a cappuccino with a swan on top. Latte art at that level is a signal about everything that came before the pour. For cold brew, they run two Kyoto-style drip towers: a method popularized in the United States by Blue Bottle that brews by dripping water onto grounds one drop at a time, the liquid traveling down through hand-blown glass coils before pooling in the carafe. Slow, deliberate, designed to draw out nuance rather than extract volume. When it is dialed in, cold brew stops tasting like iced coffee and starts tasting like the actual bean. At Loba it is dialed in.
The pastry program is where Lindsten's fine-dining background shows up without announcing itself. The style is Mexican-influenced and noticeably less sweet than most American bakeries, which sounds like a small distinction until you realize how much sugar most pastry programs use as a crutch. The buttercream does not overwhelm. The flavors are specific and layered rather than loud.
There is a core menu and then there is whatever is fresh that day, which changes seasonally and keeps the case genuinely surprising. The pineapple sourdough muffin is the signature for good reason — crisp and chewy outside, moist and tangy inside, the kind of thing that makes you understand why this place has a line. The mole chocolate croissants are a Sunday and Monday special (but not guaranteed), must-order when available. The embrace of masa throughout the menu means a solid collection of naturally gluten-free options exists without being positioned as a dietary accommodation. It is just the ingredient, used because it belongs there.
No laptops. No cash. Expect a line and plan for it. The kitchen is open and the staff is visibly working hard and genuinely friendly, which is the right combination for a place asking you to wait.
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