Owners: Edwin Rueda Sr., Edwin Rueda Jr. & Mayte Rueda
By Ann Marie Byrd, Feature Writer
A beautiful new patisserie and café, Mayte Sweets, is celebrating their grand opening in September! Located at 901 Broad Street in New Bern, across the street from Crema Brew and next to Broad Street Laundry, this light and airy café is decorated in Parisian style. With comfortable velvet chairs, plenty of small tables, books, board games, a piano, and vivacious original artwork, the overall ambiance is one of eclectic European elegance and soft sophistication.
The café is designed to be an place to relax and slow down, unwind and enjoy some quiet time alone or a meet up with friends and have pleasant conversations.
The patisserie specializes in authentic French pastries, lovingly created with the highest quality ingredients by trained, artistic hands. The offerings are wildly tempting: macarons of extraordinary flavors and colors, charlotte cakes, tarts, cream puffs, cheese cakes, custards and cookies.
Truly, the pastries look too flawless to eat. I was offered a selection of macarons and was surprised by how light and fragile they were, like little treasures flavored with lemon, pistachio, raspberry, almond and caramel.
The café also serves up a wide assortment of European-style coffees in a variety of styles: americano, espresso, cappuccino, latte, mocha, and even Turkish coffee.
Head Chef and Partner in Mayte Sweets, Mayte Rueda, is energetic, charming and worldly. She was born in Chihuahua, Mexico, trained in culinary school at University of Hawaii, and completed pastry school in Boulder, Colorado in 2006. “I studied with pastry chef Richard Wagner and he taught me everything I know,” says Mayte. “All that I learned was due to him and I am grateful.”
Mayte’s children, Kimberly and Edwin Jr. describe her as “an artist first and foremost. Her original paintings on the walls, the attention to color and texture in her pastries, her perfectionism in creating the most unique, high quality products—these elements are her signature style.”
The café is co-owned by Mayte’s husband Edwin Rueda Sr. and her son, Edwin Rueda Jr., who is the manager of Mayte Sweetsx. Edwin Sr., who was formerly in the United States Marine Corps and a diplomat in Egypt, Paraguay, Afghanistan, Macedonia and Brazil, has taken his family all over the world with him. As a result, the Rueda family speaks multiple languages and embraces a broad, multi-cultural world-view. They invite people in the community who are multi-lingual to come in and have conversation with them in Spanish, French, Portuguese, and Italian.
“We hope that Mayte Sweets becomes a favorite local place,” says Mayte. “It would be wonderful if people in the five-points community and greater New Bern would come to our café regularly to enjoy the atmosphere, our excellent coffee and our authentic French pastries. We want to know our customers by name, come to understand what they enjoy from our offerings and see their faces again and again.”