Ever fancied sipping on a glass of crisp champagne or sultry wine, while engrossed in a captivating story? This episode has it all, as we get up close and personal with Diana Boga, the creator of Duas Champagne and Wine Lounge in Lantana, Florida. Diana graces us with her inspiring tale, starting with her move from the hustling streets of New York to the sunny shores of Florida, her charming side gig crafting charcuterie boards, and then her grand leap into pairing her love for wine with her knack for food to open her own wine lounge. Prepare to be enchanted by the story behind the name "Dua", and drool over the thought of the delectable items on the menu.
As the conversation flows, we are treated with insights from Diana's experiences in setting up Duas Champagne and Wine Lounge. We navigate through the hurdles she encountered, and how the local community, including the town of Lantana, extended their support in her journey. She paints a heartening picture of the warm hospitality they extend to their customers, and how her venture has woven them into the fabric of Lantana's community. As we wrap up, Diana opens up about her relocation to Palm Beach County, her journey of growing her business from a seed into a flourishing tree, and her dreams for what lies ahead. Join us in toasting to Diana and her charming wine lounge!
Ever fancied sipping on a glass of crisp champagne or sultry wine, while engrossed in a captivating story? This episode has it all, as we get up close and personal with Diana Boga, the creator of Duas Champagne and Wine Lounge in Lantana, Florida. Diana graces us with her inspiring tale, starting with her move from the hustling streets of New York to the sunny shores of Florida, her charming side gig crafting charcuterie boards, and then her grand leap into pairing her love for wine with her knack for food to open her own wine lounge. Prepare to be enchanted by the story behind the name "Dua", and drool over the thought of the delectable items on the menu.
As the conversation flows, we are treated with insights from Diana's experiences in setting up Duas Champagne and Wine Lounge. We navigate through the hurdles she encountered, and how the local community, including the town of Lantana, extended their support in her journey. She paints a heartening picture of the warm hospitality they extend to their customers, and how her venture has woven them into the fabric of Lantana's community. As we wrap up, Diana opens up about her relocation to Palm Beach County, her journey of growing her business from a seed into a flourishing tree, and her dreams for what lies ahead. Join us in toasting to Diana and her charming wine lounge!
Hi, this is Rebecca Giacobo and Stephanie Co with I Love Palm Peach, the podcast, and today we have with us Diana Boga and she has the Duas Champaign in Wine Lounge in Lantana and it's fairly new and it's a pretty special place. From what I hear, dee, you want to tell us about how you got started and what's going on at your location.
Speaker 2:Yes, of course. Thank you so much. So I moved here from New York about two years ago and I was kind of bored and doing charcuterie boards as a side business, you know, kind of just having fun with it. It was a hobby of mine for a really long time and I started getting really busy and people kept asking where I was located or where my store was and I started looking for a job. Like I said, I was bored.
Speaker 2:I sold my businesses in New York and I started looking online and I found this cute little place for sale and I went and looked at it and absolutely fell in love with it, and my husband and I are huge wine people. So we're like let's put two and two together and open a little wine shop, you know, and serve cheese boards there, and it just turned into this big thing. So now it's actually a caviar lounge. We serve champagne and wines, we also have some cocktails and we do tapas. We have like a really great tuna tartare, we do a barata special every week, we also have artisan flatbread desserts, we do table side caviar service, we also have wine tasting once a month and we do a DJ party night once a month as well, so it's been really fun. We're a very small, intimate place and we treat everybody like family, so it's truly been fun and it doesn't feel like work at all and we love what we do.
Speaker 1:Well, it sounds delicious. Can we head on over right now?
Speaker 2:We're actually open Wednesdays and Thursdays from five to ten and we have happy hour from five to seven. We have some really great specials for happy hour. For instance, we have a wine flight for $18 and you get three full glasses of any choice of wine on our menu that we sell by the glass. And Thursday or sorry, fridays and Saturdays were open from five pm to midnight. We also open usually the first Sunday of the month. We do a pop-up brunch, so it only happens once a month and we're open from 10 to two and we have like a full brunch menu. We do sweet and savory crepes, we do breakfast sandwiches, we do breakfast flatbread pizzas. Our most popular item for brunch is our baked brie and we serve that with honey and brown sugar and it's baked in like a filo dough. We serve that with berries and crostini and crackers.
Speaker 1:Sounds delicious, I'm hungry.
Speaker 3:And then would you mind going into a little bit of the background on the heritage and the name.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so my family is Albanian and the word dua means to want or desire. So dua, champagne and wine literally means I want champagne and wine. Te dua in Albanian means I love you, so the word can be want, desire or love. And I was born and raised here in the United States. But my family was born there and ever since we were kids, my grandmother barely speaks any English and we were just brought up in a very cultural, traditional Albanian home and I learned all these techniques for cooking and we always had big spreads, kind of like Italians. We had five main courses instead of one, and I just really was always a foodie and I basically fell in love with cooking. And when I was 21, I actually opened up an Italian restaurant pizzeria and that's where it kind of all started.
Speaker 2:For me was coming up with different recipes and trying to make food that is not only good but you can taste that it's made with love and that there's effort put into it and it's not just a piece of meat on a plate. So that's kind of where we started. Dua is a three letter word. It's very easy to remember and I don't know if you've noticed in our logo, the U actually has champagne bubbles in it, so the? U is kind of like the shape of the wine glass or the champagne glass. So we thought that it was just perfect, easy to remember and we're gaining a lot of popularity with our name. It's funny because when we go out we talk to people oh, we own a wine bar called Dua, and everyone's like, oh my God, I heard about it, so it's really cool.
Speaker 3:That's awesome. Can you also share a little bit about some of the items on your menu? I know you just briefly touched on them just now as far as the brief or brunch and everything else, but give people a little bit of a taste of what they can find at Dua, yeah.
Speaker 2:So we do. On our happy hour menu. We have a cheese board for two people. It's $20. So you get a really big cheese board. We also have a selection where you can pick your own cheeses and meats and you can mix and match. So you have a select two, select three, select four, and so on.
Speaker 2:Our burrata is very popular. It's a ball of burrata but there's truffles inside of it and we serve that over a rugula with freshly sliced prosciutto and then crostini as well, and we drizzle a truffle infused olive oil that we actually make ourselves with a balsamic glaze. It's really really good. It's one of the most popular items. And then our flatbread pizzas. As I mentioned, I got really creative. Our let's get figgy is our most popular pizza and that basically has a base of garlic-infused olive oil, hand-shredded mozzarella cheese, and then we put thinly sliced prosciutto on it as well as some dried figs. Once it's baked, we drizzle a little more of the garlic olive oil on top and a honey glaze and it's delicious. The prosciutto savoriness mixed with the honey. It just goes really really well together and people love it.
Speaker 2:We also have other appetizers, like I mentioned, the tuna tartare. We do doubled eggs. We have doubled eggs with caviar. We also have one that's topped with a crispy piece of bacon and a couple of the chopped health-pickled onions, and then we put a piece of chive on it. Our caviar service is awesome too One of our appetizers actually. We serve caviar poppers and it's a French blini with a dollop of creme fraiche and then the caviar on top with a chive and those are like literally melt in your mouth. You could pop the whole thing in your mouth and they're really popular. That's awesome.
Speaker 3:All right, perfect. And then talk to us a little bit about your time in Palm Beach. What brought you down here? Because you said that you were up north originally and then sold to your businesses. Why did you pick Palm Beach County?
Speaker 2:So my family has a vacation home here in Boynton Beach and I had been coming down here for vacation for a really long time. During COVID, unfortunately, my businesses in New York were shut down. I used to own a few tanning salons and a makeup artistry business as well, and I came down here during COVID because I was like you know, if I'm going to be stuck at home, I'd rather be stuck at home in Florida, where the weather's nice and things are open. I came down here and ended up spending seven weeks until they told me I could go back to work. So when I went back to New York and I opened up my business, unfortunately it was just really slow. We were deeply affected, you know, by the pandemic and I was just so miserable in the weather and the, you know, dark, cold early mornings and I was like coming down here every other month and I'm like why do I keep doing this? Why don't I just move to Florida and then vacation in New York? And it was funny because every time I would be on the airplane going back to New York, I'd be looking at houses for sale or apartments for rent here in Palm Beach County and you know, just dreaming. And I said you know what, let me put my house for sale and see what happens. And I actually listed my house in New York on a Friday, saturday morning. I had a couple that came to look at it and by Monday I had an offer. So everything kind of happened really fast.
Speaker 2:And then I sold my businesses quickly and I just up and left and I'm not really like used to change. I don't like change. I never thought I would leave New York, but being down here with the palm trees and the sun and everything, I'm just like. You know, if you're having a bad day, all you have to do here is go outside. And you know, like I said you just I feel like I live on vacation every day. It's been two years now and I still feel like I'm on vacation, which is awesome, a lot happier. I feel healthier, you know, getting vitamin D, being able to do things, and I just love Palm Beach in general. You know we have the beaches, we have a lot of great restaurants. There's a lot to do. I love the people here. So it's been really, really great and I definitely I don't miss New York. I miss my family, but I don't miss New York at all.
Speaker 3:Is your family coming down and staying with you and then you know kind of catching the same bug too, or what's going on there.
Speaker 2:Well, funny story. So my parents vacation home is in a 55 and older park here in Boyton Beach and when we move down here we're like let's just move into their home until we find our own place, you know. So we have a couple of months to decide where we want to be. We're not rushed and fortunately my significant other actually got hired as the superintendent of the property, so we actually live here even though we're not 55. And my parents come and their house is two doors down from us. So it's great. And you know, if my brother's come with their wives and kids, they either stay at my parents or with us. And it's great because my mom comes down pretty often and we get to see her, you know, for a month or two at a time, and it's cool. I'm familiar with this park, I'm familiar with Boyton Beach, I love the area and I've been coming here, like I said, for years. So to me it was like my home away from home, but now it's really home.
Speaker 3:And then talk to us about your business. I mean, you've run businesses in New York. You've run business down here in Florida. What are some differences that you've noticed between the two? Was it easy for you to, you know, open up a business in Florida? Harder than you anticipated Any obstacles? Talk to us about that.
Speaker 2:Um, well, just to let you guys know a little bit about me, I'm a huge risk taker. So when I want something and I see something and I get this crazy idea, I'm like this is what I want to do, this is what I'm going to do. And people look at me like I'm nuts and they're like okay, diana, whatever, whatever you say, and for me it was just like this is what I wanted to do. I've always wanted to open a wine and champagne bar or a wine and cheese shop or something like that. And when the opportunity came up, I was like am I really going to do this? Like I don't want to go through this again.
Speaker 2:You know I've been a business owner for years and I'm an entrepreneur and I love it. But at the same time, you know it takes a toll on you because you're never not working. There's no nine to five when you own a business. Literally in my sleep I'm like waking up in the middle of the night like, oh my God, I need to put this on my menu. But unfortunately, I found that it has been a little bit harder, um, regarding like permits and things like that in Palm Beach County, compared to where I was in New York. I was in, like, the Albany area, I was in the Adirondack and I don't know if it's different, you know, in New York City, compared to upstate where I was, but down here I definitely felt like it took a lot longer. Um, I do know that a lot of people were giving me the oh, we're short staff excuse, even though you know COVID kind of happened a while ago.
Speaker 2:So I don't know if that had anything to do with it. But you know, getting up like our, our seating permit and things like that just took a while. Our sign took forever. I mean, we were open for six months, I think, before we got our sign, just because it the the town of Lantana, you know, was giving us a hard time and they're like, oh, this sign is not approved, but it's the sign that they told me to apply for. So eventually my sign company obviously took care of everything, um, and we were able to do that.
Speaker 2:So I do feel like it was a little bit more difficult and I hate to say that because I don't ever want to discourage somebody from for not, you know, following their dream and whatnot. And you know, if I had to do it all over again, I would, because it's it's totally worth it. And people come into our place, like I said, and they feel like family and when you tell them the truth, like, oh, so complicated to open, or it took months for us to open, and people really like love that you're a real person, you know, and you're talking about your struggles and they appreciate all the effort. You know, people know what we went through. People appreciate like all the hard work and everything and they they could feel it when they come in.
Speaker 2:You know we treat like I said, we treat everybody like family. We become friends with everyone. We'll sit down with people at a table and have a glass of wine with them and there's not many places that you can go around here or pretty much anywhere where the chef owner comes out and talks to people or asks people how their food was or hangs out with them or makes jokes with them and we're basically a two man show. John is the bartender, I'm the chef, we both serve, we both bust and you know, sometimes we have a dishwasher that comes and helps out. But it's just the two of us and people really love that and they love our story.
Speaker 3:I'm sure people love that hospitality with it all. Before we run away from that topic, I do want to ask were there any good resources? You know because you're an inspiration to other people that might be listening from out of state and saying I want to transition to Florida but I'm not sure what to do with my business on it all. Are there any resources that helped you in your transition and opening up or that you wish you had known about before you started?
Speaker 2:Honestly, I kind of just did everything on my own. The restaurant was open before I purchased it. It was open for like a month. The previous owner was trying to do a caviar champagne place, but he wasn't open for very long, so I kind of had to start from scratch in a sense because he had no business yet.
Speaker 2:But he was very helpful with telling me what I had to do and where I had to go, and the town of Lantana was pretty helpful when I said what do I need? What are the permits? You know they're like all right, you need to go to the liquor authority, you need this, you need that. But honestly, I kind of did everything by myself. I researched, I asked a lot of questions and it's funny because we actually have a cigar lounge opening up a few doors down and I told her, I said anything that you need, because I've been through it, please let me know, because I wish that there was somebody there for me.
Speaker 2:I didn't know anything, I don't know the laws here in Florida and I was just. I went from owning tanning salons to opening up something that I've never done before. So it was a little difficult. Like I said, I wish I did have some resources and help, but I kind of just had to do everything on my own and figure it out as I go, which is usually what happens Because, like I said, I'm just a crazy risk taker and I'm like let's do it right now.
Speaker 1:Well, I'm excited to visit your store. It sounds awesome. Are you right there on ocean? Is that where you are?
Speaker 2:Like across from the wall, greens, which is right next to Oceano, and we are 118 East Ocean Avenue. We're a block away from the restaurant called Brabish. And we're about two blocks away from old Key Lime House. We're on the same side of the street.
Speaker 1:That's what I thought.
Speaker 2:I literally walked into the kitchen.
Speaker 1:And I guess you've met Frank the cheese man.
Speaker 2:I have. Yes, we work together. We work together sometimes if I'm out of a cheese that I know he carries or whatever.
Speaker 2:I'll go grab it. I also send people there, you know, so they can buy cheese to take home and make their own cheese boards. We are thinking of doing a charcuterie class so people can learn how to, you know, fold the meat and cool ways and cut the cheeses in different styles and yeah, but we love that Frank is there. We love the community. We've really like grown to learn about Lantana a lot and it's very homey. We're actually really good friends with the mayor. She comes in all the time. She was actually in on Friday night for our Halloween party and she's been very, very helpful and very, very supportive and you know we love her. We're lucky to have that relationship with her.
Speaker 1:We interviewed her this morning, so that's kind of interesting.
Speaker 2:Oh really Karen.
Speaker 1:Yeah yeah. She was awesome, so passionate about her city and what she's doing there, so we're happy to have both of you on today for learning more about Lantana.
Speaker 2:Yeah, thank you.
Speaker 1:Well, the one thing are you ready, stephanie? You go for it.
Speaker 3:No, either way, it's the same question what is your favorite thing about living in Palm Beach County?
Speaker 2:I think it would be the closeness to everything that really makes you feel like you live in paradise. You know, the beach is right there, you have malls, you have stores, you have restaurants. It's awesome. You're not that far away from Miami or Fort Lauderdale. If you do want to, you know travel a little bit. You have everything you need and that's really why I love this location so much. You know, you don't feel like you're stuck in a country town, like I was in upstate New York.
Speaker 1:It needs 10 minutes.
Speaker 2:You know. The stores are 10 minutes. There's great restaurants. The food here, I feel like, is really phenomenal as well. You know, being so close to the water, there's fresh seafood everywhere you go. So I really, really love that and I definitely love Palm Beach County. I know I have a lot of friends moving from New York too, but they're on the West Coast and I'm like I like it here, guys. But I don't know, I've always been a city person. I grew up in New York City, so I feel like Palm Beach County is a little bit of everything Paradise, vacation, city, country whatever you want is right there.
Speaker 1:Absolutely.
Speaker 3:Well, thank you so much for coming on today. We look forward to coming in personally and wish you the best of success and luck on your place, but I don't know if you'll need it. It sounds like you're doing a phenomenal job already and you know again, welcome down to Palm Beach County. We're happy to have you. Thank you so much, have a great day. Thank you so much. Have a great day, thank you.
Speaker 1:Thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you.