Met Her at a Cafe adds an eatery to a Baltimore neighborhood that sorely needs them

It’s hard to tell from the outside of Met Her at a Cafe off Aisquith Street that the owner wanted it to have a woman’s touch.

The black-painted building hardly hints at the flurry of colors inside, from the pink walls to the vibrant plates of food.

When it opened at the end of last year, Met Her at a Cafe joined the very few dine-in eateries in the Oliver neighborhood. Carryouts are abundant in many parts of the city, including this one.

Owner Martin Francois said he wants the cafe to be a place where people can get freshly cooked food for a reasonable price — and offer creative combinations.

“They’ve been happy that we’re bringing some type of quality food into the neighborhood,” Francois said of customers.

Originally, Francois thought the cafe would be called something like “Waffle World.” But a friend told him about a place in Los Angeles called Met Her at a Bar, and a riff on that name felt right.

Cereal additions make Met Her at a Cafe’s options reminiscent of a child’s lucid dream. Cap’n Crunch’s Crunch Berries can be baked into a pancake platter. The Fruity Pebbles waffle sandwich is exactly what it sounds like, and it has powdered sugar and chocolate, vanilla and strawberry syrup options.

Francois, who attended Morgan State University, once had a go-to chicken and waffle spot. Every weekend in college, he’d go to Pigtown to devour fluffy red velvet waffles paired with well-battered chicken, he said.

Lately, he started thinking that there aren’t a lot of places that solely provide that combination consistently. Met Her at a Cafe followed.

It isn’t Francois’ first restaurant venture. A native of Haiti who grew up on the Eastern Shore, he also runs one of the city’s only Haitian restaurants, downtown’s Francois Caribbean Cuisine, and a new chicken joint on Greenmount Avenue called The Coop.

Real estate and development are his first loves, and he has owned the building that houses Met Her at a Cafe since 2018. It’s open 8 a.m. to 3 p.m. Wednesday through Sunday. Francois balances his time among his three restaurants.

Inspiration for the cafe also came from Francois’ breakfast-loving girlfriend, Nailah Pemberton, who helps out by working in all three restaurants. Observing what kid customers did and didn’t like has helped spawn new ideas for the menu, she said.

The waffle sandwich, one of the cafe’s bestsellers, wasn’t originally on its online menu.

The small spot has just a few tables and a staff of two or three, depending on the day.

“I try to tell them I don’t need employees — I need lieutenants,” Francois said.

As SZA and Cardi B tracks played through the cafe speakers, Ashley Ishae shuffled through phone calls and periodically click-clacked a spatula against the stovetop as she prepared eggs.

Ishae helps build the cafe’s social media presence in addition to knowing how to cook everything on the menu. The “one-woman band,” as Pemberton calls her, hopes people are mindful that they’re still learning and doing their best even when they get backed up with orders.

One woman strolled into the eatery on a busy Wednesday morning, saying under her breath that she wanted to see what the hype was about after watching their videos on Instagram. A video of two young boys ordering customized waffle sandwiches has been their most popular video so far, with more than 178,000 views, according to Ishae.

Jazzman Dykes has been a loyal customer since they first opened. She can walk to the cafe from her home, she enjoys the reasonable prices and the tastes of her go-to orders: a waffle platter or a breakfast sandwich.

The cafe has inviting decor in what some might consider a “touchy neighborhood,” crime-wise, she said.

“When you walk in, it’s kind of like a breath of fresh air because of the aesthetic and they’re polite,” Dykes said.

She said she tries to head to the cafe at least once a week.

Francois and the rest of the crew are looking forward to what the warmer months will bring, especially since they are already seeing busy days. They’re also exploring expanding their menu, but at a pace that works for them.

“You have to be very intentional,” Pemberton said. “It’s better to move very slowly in the right direction than 1,000 miles an hour in the wrong direction.”