Ravenswood Gets a Bakery and Cafe Offering Filipino Flavors Folded into Classic Pastries

WTTW - Play List / Daniel Hautzinger / March 17, 2025

What did you get for your 23rd birthday? For Justin Lerias, it’s the realization of a dream conceived during high school of opening a Filipino pastry spot, Del Sur Bakery & Cafe. But calling the March 29 opening of the shop a gift overlooks the year of work, planning, and crowdfunding that has gone into it since Lerias first took out a lease on the space at 4639 N. Damen Ave. in Ravenswood almost exactly a year ago.

And it also belies the creativity and effort behind the pastries that make the business a possibility. Lerias’ signature offerings, honed over two years of pop-ups, fold Filipino flavors into laminated dough: citrusy calamansi curd in a morning bun, sweet-savory longanisa sausage in a croissant, caramelized banana jam in a danish that mimics the fried banana egg rolls known as turon. Trendy purple ube makes it into a cream pie as buttercream sandwiched between oat cookies, a nod to Lerias’ and the bakery’s roots in the Midwest as well. Read More Here.