Beebe Okoye is the owner of Kiva Cafe

When Beebe Okoye set out to open her own café last year, she wanted it to be a laid-back, relaxed eatery: a restaurant that would offer New Yorkers affordable, flavor-packed snacks and meals in a setting filled with paintings and sculptures by local artists. The café she imagined would feed both body and soul.

"The idea was to create a place that was aesthetically pleasing," Okoye says, "that nourished your mind with artwork, and nourished your body with good food."

Today, Kiva Café, located at 229 Hudson Street, serves coffees and teas as well as simple, fresh foods -- sandwiches, soups, salads, and quiches -- in a brightly-lit space where customers can also enjoy and purchase paintings and pottery displayed throughout the restaurant. The name "kiva" is an ancient American Indian term for a gathering place where people came together for meetings and ceremonies, a concept that inspired Okoye.

At Kiva Cafe, customers enjoy fresh food and works of art

"I liked the spirit behind the idea, the idea that you could have a place where the community could gather," she says. "To me, the café offers that."

Okoye, who previously worked for ten years as an architect in Arizona and New York, designed the café.

"I wanted to have a casual elegance to the space, a place where you could be comfortable, but in a beautiful environment," she says.

Guests to Kiva enter a charming, hardwood-floored room. There is a coffee bar, where patrons sample teas, brewed coffee, espressos, and lattes. For breakfast, there are home-made baked goods like muffins and scones, as well as organic granola, and salmon, leek, and bacon quiches. Midday offerings include salads and pastas and sandwich platters, such as the Marseille (brie, sun dried tomatoes, and pesto on olive bread) and Sausalito (tuna salad and greens on walnut raisin bread).

"The food is just sort of like nature's best, put together simply" says Okoye, dressed in a simple black tank top and white jeans. "We pick fresh ingredients and great bread. We stay away from preservatives and artificial stuff as much as possible. It's as if you're going to eat over at your grandmother's house."

The cafe serves soups, salads, quiches, and sandwiches

While lunching on couscous salads and portobello mushroom sandwiches, customers can sit back and enjoy the colorful, richly glazed pottery that is for sale at Kiva. The pottery is featured in a well-lighted niche wall, on the right-hand side of the café. Also, the wood tables at the eatery are outfitted with glass table tops so they serve a dual purpose as display cases. Okoye fills the tables with different items, everything from potpourri to jewelry.

"There is not always something in the table that is for sale," Okoye says. "Sometimes, it's just something organic or something to look at. Maybe I'll put poetry in the table one day. It's just one more fun, creative aspect to the café. It makes the place seem alive because it's always growing and changing."

Walking through the front area of the restaurant, patrons pass into a second dining nook, where customers sit at a single, communal wood table. A few paintings and sculptures hang on the walls of the smallish, quaint space.

"Most of them are local New Yorkers," Okoye says of the artists whose work she features. "I always think there is room for art."

When the weather warms here in the city, there is also a garden in back of the restaurant for diners to enjoy. Adorned with a few tables, the peaceful, sun-soaked garden is shielded by exposed brick walls and decorated with pots of blooming flowers and plants. Last year, the café presented a film series there, showcasing the work of film students.

Customers relax in the cafe's garden

Okoye tries to bring the downtown community together in her café by hosting these kinds of cultural events, everything from poetry readings to cooking demonstrations, as well as concerts featuring jazz bands, flutists, and live DJs.

Music plays an important role at the eatery, Okoye says, where a diverse range of melodies -- including African, American, and Arabic songs -- hum from speakers throughout the day. Sometimes, customers also bring their own CDs.

"Customers understand that music is important here," Okoye says. "So they bring CDs for me to play. Everyone contributes to the community, which must have been similar to the ancient Indians, in that everybody brought something to the kiva."

Kiva Café, 229 Hudson Street

The café is open from 8 a.m. to 7 p.m., Monday through Friday, and 12 p.m. to 6 p.m. on Sunday. For more information, please call (212) 229-0898.

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