A Perfect Marriage Between Wine And Ice Cream

Caleta is a bar on Avenue A in the East Village where you can eat small piles of mortadella and sip tart, sparkly natural wine. It's also an ice cream parlor that churns off-beat flavors like hojicha and roasted banana caramel, which you can take home in pints or asas scoops to carry across the street to Tompkins Square Park. Caleta's owners, Javi Zuñiga and Jesse Merchant Zuñiga, are not just business partners — they’re husband and wife, too. “It's been fun to sort of marry everything, legally and otherwise,” Jesse told me over a sweet corn cone. I spoke to them about how exactly they wed two completely different restaurant concepts, their personal relationship with a business partnership, and of course, each other.

How do you two meet?

Jesse: We met in 2019. I worked at a restaurant in the Lower East Side that was nearly nextdoor to where he worked — there's a hat shop in between, which really just adds to the charm of the story. We met through work, honestly, I guess, formally. And then one night we got drinks at a dive bar in the East Village. And yeah, honestly I think the first time we had ever even really spoken was the first time we went out to get drinks. So it was very unexpected. Neither of us at all were expecting literally anything other than killing an hour, and then we closed out the bar. And I guess the rest is history, as the saying goes.

That's so sweet.

Jesse: A very industry story.

Where are you both from originally?

Javi: She's from L.A. and I'm from Venezuela.

When did you move to New York?

Jesse: I moved here six years ago in 2017 when I graduated. And you've been here almost ten years?

Javi: Almost ten, yeah.

Have you always cooked, Javi?

Javi: Yes.

Jesse: Well, when you were younger, you were studying law.

Javi: I did go to law school, I almost finished it. But it was just one of those things that at the last six months I decided just to start cooking.