New Uptown Restaurant Offers Cheap Vegan Food

Uncooked organic health food is not the only thing that owner Bob Radiv hopes will differentiate his new restaurant from its neighbors when it opens next month.

Cafe Fresh, which plans to operate out of the building at 431 W. 121st Street, aims to give customers an affordable chance to "eat a meal and feel good" in an increasingly expensive community.

The name reflects the fare owner Radiv plans to offer: a combination of vegan entrees, juices, organic teas and coffees. None of the food will be cooked, and, according to Radiv, all of the produce used will be bought directly from farms and at least 60 to 70 percent of it will be organic.
Radiv, a Serbian native who came to New York as a young child, has worked in the restaurant business since graduating from the Rutgers School of Engineering in 1998. He owns two restaurants in the city- Jou Jou Incorporated, an upscale sandwich shop near Columbia's medical school, and Euzkadi, a Spanish restaurant on East Fourth Street.

But, he said, "I think [the new restaurant] is a completely different concept."

The emphasis on raw foods may please the owner of the 431 W. 121st Street Housing Development Fund Corporation, who originally opposed the idea of having a restaurant in the building after enduring a Chinese restaurant for 10 years.

According to Betsy Cangelosi, treasurer of the housing cooperative and neighborhood resident of 32 years, the board of the HDFC only agreed to allow another restaurant to occupy the space after a deal with a physical therapist fell through at the last minute and restaurants were the only remaining offers.

"We were trying to eliminate our chimney," Cangelosi explained, and Radiv's restaurant, which will not use a stove, satisfies this requirement,
Still, though, the concern of vermin connected with food in the storefront remains, Cangelosi said.
Even so, many new tenants have reacted positively to the new store.

Neighborhood residents, already accustomed to a diverse array of restaurants, will find their dining options broadened by the new restaurant. "I don't know that there is another one of the same profile in the area, so it adds diversity," said Razvan Teodoresco, who moved near the site of the new restaurant in the last year.

Even potential competitor Emmanuel Tekeste, who owns Massawa, an Ethiopian restaurant directly across 121st Street from Radiv's, agreed. "I think their offerings are completely different," he said. He said that he anticipated that competition would be "no problem."

Still, Cafe Fresh plans on targeting the same primary market as the surrounding restaurants: Columbia students, ever-receptive to affordable dining.

The new restaurant reflects something of the area's transformation. When the co-op looked for tenants in the 1990s, according to Cangelosi, the Chinese restaurant was the only offer; upscale restaurants were not the region's selling point. Now, she said, residents often walk several blocks just to get a reasonably priced cup of coffee in a growing crowding of the "restaurant city" along the two-block stretch of Amsterdam north of 121st.

Nonetheless, Cangelosi is positive about the change overall. "I think it's an improvement," she said. "We'd like to see the restaurant do really well."
Some Columbia students are more skeptical. "I don't really like vegan-only" food, said Eash Cumarasamy, SEAS '08. He acknowledged that there was some demand for what the restaurant will offer; but, he asked, "Overwhelming demand? Probably not."

Cumarasamy also said that the restaurant's location might deter students who, like him, live further south.