Mari Borr started making arepas for friends and family. One day she handed one to Shahin Afsharian as a gift. He ate it, and that was the beginning of a business plan. It’s really that simple.

Mari was already part of the Big Bon Bodega family, working alongside Shahin and Big Bon founder Kay Heritage. They saw something in those arepas: an opportunity for Mari to launch her own brand, with Big Bon offering an assist into an expansion for them, yes, but more so Mari’s entrepreneurial spirit and potential for something they hadn’t seen in Savannah to this point.

That arepa became a ghost kitchen pop-up, then a farmers market stand, then small pop-ups in Charleston and Hilton Head Island. Now it is a café and venue called Maizal, going into The 912 at Habersham and 37th. I spoke to both this week for an episode of the Eat It and Like It Podcast.

Here is what you need to know ahead of their soft open the week of November 9th soft open:

The pitch

• First of its kind. Maizal will be Savannah’s first fully gluten-free Colombian café.
• Marisol put it plainly: “It will be the first Colombian café, gluten-free, and we are going to offer no seed oils.”
• Arepas lead. Mari describes them as a traditional Colombian meal, a white corn bread you can top with scrambled eggs, shredded beef or cheese. The simple one is mozzarella and butter.
• The rest of the menu. Cassava waffles with dulce de leche and membrillo, empanadas, bowls like the bandeja paisa, and chicharrones, the crispy pork belly Mari made when she worked at the JW Marriott.
• Coffee. Single-origin Colombian beans, plus a Café Campesino built on cinnamon, cloves and panela, an unrefined brown sugar. Mari says they are “really, really excited” to partner with the roaster.
• Keep it short. Shahin says the menu is “small, strong, not overly complicated.” His pick: “The arepa won my heart.”

How it started

• The ghost kitchen. “Everything started because we did a ghost kitchen,” Mari says. Shahin suggested a Colombian pop-up. “A lot of people love it. And we saw a really good opportunity.”
• The first bite. Shahin tried Mari’s arepas when she brought him one. “She was like, here, I made you an arepa.” He called it “a delicious product that I haven’t seen in Savannah at all.”
• Not a takeover. It was never supposed to be a full partnership. Shahin says it was a way for her to use the Big Bon platform, “which is part of our mission in the brand, to create entrepreneurship and for her to launch her own thing.” They gave her kitchen space and helped with permitting.
• The corner. The landlord is the same one Big Bon has. Shahin’s reasoning: “A Big Bon that close to the other Big Bon didn’t make any sense.”

The room

• Hours. Open 7:30 a.m. to 2:30 p.m. Bring a laptop and stay a while.
• The look. Organic, curvy lines, neutral colors. Shahin: “We want people to feel like a traditional Latin venue where you can feel at home, but with a modern twist.”
• The kitchen. All electric, no gas, no volatile grease, and on full display. “You’re gonna be able to see everything that’s moving in there.”
• The stage. The center of the room looks like a little stage, with the barista and kitchen on it.
• The patio. A corner patio with a fireplace Mari picked out. A fountain and string lights are possible later. Shahin: “It’s a labor of love and it takes so much effort and time.”
• After 2:30. The space turns into a venue for rehearsal parties, cocktails and DJs. They studied what this section of central Savannah near Starland was missing, and smaller spaces for that kind of thing were high on the list.

The neighborhood

• Then. Shahin moved to Savannah eight or nine years ago, around when Big Bon started. For about three years the shop did not take cash.
• Now. “It has really transformed,” he says, with streets “full of people almost all the way up to Victory.”
• The students. The café sits across Habersham from a SCAD instructional building. Ten years ago, nobody was telling students to walk over there for coffee. Now it is a completely different vibe in that part of Savannah.

When to go

• The week of November 9th. The soft opening. Shahin: “We’re not gonna advertise it as the grand opening, but let’s call it more our soft opening.”
• Patience. “We know there’s a lot of pieces that are gonna be discovered with the community together and how the flow goes.” Give them the room. New kitchens earn it.

Maizal Cafe, 2018 Habersham St, Savannah, GA 31401

Listen to the entire conversation on the podcast, here

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