The story of Hom Café takes place over four continents and a lifetime spent mastering recipes that were almost lost during World War II. Elisabeth Raab lived in Hungary during the war, and being Jewish, she was put in a concentration camp. While she was there, her fellow captives helped preserve the recipes she had created by writing them on scraps of paper, pieces of cloth, and other materials. Elisabeth saved these materials in a recipe book her family still has today, and which they put to use in the menu of Hom Cafe.
After the war, Elisabeth moved to Ecuador where she met her husband and started a family. They moved to Australia before settling in Canada. “It was my grandmother’s dream to open a café, bakery and coffee shop,” says her grandson, Jamie Yanowski. “She came close but never got a chance to do it. She passed away in 2015. We decided to open Hom Cafe in her memory.”