A group of about 50 people, mostly Guinean immigrants, gathered on a recent afternoon in a cafe with a twist: The food was free.
On the menu that day: Sloppy Joes, potato wedges and kale salad.
This isn’t your run-of-the-mill restaurant. It’s Cafewal, which means “cafeteria” in Fulani. It’s a free restaurant, job training program and safe haven for asylum-seekers from Guinea in West Africa. Cafewal is where they can speak Fulani among each other, practice Islamic customs together, and discuss the shared battles that brought them to New York as well as the challenges they face here. And for longtime East Village locals, it’s the embodiment of the community pulling together to help those in need.
Cafewal, which is located in a nondescript basement underneath Elim House of Worship, is powered by volunteers. On the day I visited, several men were receiving help with their resumes in the job services room. In the room next door, some sat for an English-language class on civics, while others prayed on mats in a curtained-off section.
Cafewal is run by volunteers and aims to help migrants find jobs and community in New York City.
Inside the Cafewal kitchen, Diamy Bah, the soft-spoken operations manager, oversaw the assembly line, advising each of the cooks and servers.
As global displacement from war, poverty and climate change has increased, more Guineans have come to the United States, making up roughly 7% of residents at migrant shelters in New York, according to one estimate. Guinea is currently governed by a military junta led by the Malinke minority, and its political, economic and social instability often manifests as military persecution and violence against the Fulani majority — which many of Cafewal’s volunteers and diners have endured. One of Cafewal’s regulars pointed to his thigh bone and described how it had been broken by the police in one of several attacks.
Nearly all of the clients at Cafewal are moving through the immigration system legally and in varying stages of receiving their work permits and social security numbers, explained Patrick Colimon, a volunteer with EVLoves, a nonprofit dedicated to feeding hungry New Yorkers.
“All they want to do is work,” said Colimon.
And Cafewal’s goal is to find them work. Restaurants are a common entry point for immigrants as they have a variety of jobs — delivery, dishwasher, cook, busser — that don't require English fluency. Plus: the industry suffers from an ongoing labor shortage.
Sloppy joes and wedge fries were among the menu items on a recent Thursday at Cafewal.
Helming Cafewal’s operation is Tyler Hefferon, executive director of EVLoves, where he’s volunteered since 2020. He spent years in restaurant management and nonprofit finance and wanted to do something that could “have a more direct impact at the local level.”
Cafewal launched Oct. 1, thanks to a partnership between EVLoves and East Village Neighbors Who Care. Twelve volunteers overseen by Hefferon go through an eight-week restaurant training program that covers everything from food prep to hygiene.
The regular menu at Cafewal cycles through dishes like halal bulgogi, chicken curry, and Sloppy Joes to diversify culinary skill sets. When they opened, the Cafewal team was cooking 60 meals per day. Now, just six months later, that total is up to 300 meals per day. Half of those meals are available, for free, to anyone who walks in. The rest fulfill orders from distribution partners and public donors like Artists Athletes Activists and NYU Gallatin School.
Anyone can put in a catering order with a donation of $3 to $5 per meal.
How can that be sustained?
Cafewal relies on a local network of support — with regular donations from 7th Street Burger (240 pounds of halal chicken weekly), Windfall Farms (thousands of pounds of potatoes), Spice Brothers (shawarma) as well as food rescue programs from LES Food Not Bombs and Girls Club. The workers receive small cash stipends from EVLoves as part of their training program.
Many of the guests at Cafewal are working as deliveristas.
Seven out of the 24 trainees in the training program's first two cohorts have gotten jobs, said Hefferon. The third session started on Feb. 24.
“That makes me proud and happy,” said Bah, the operations manager, in the job services room.
Back in Guinea, Bah was an accountant and professional soccer player. In 2023, he left Guinea’s capital, Conakry, after the military tortured and killed his roommate for allegedly plotting a prison break from the outside and accused Bah of conspiring.
Bah’s brother paid for his flights to Turkey and then Nicaragua. From there, he said he made it to Mexico in 20 days by navigating through dangerous cartel territories on foot, by horse, by hitchhiking and by bus. In November, he crossed into Arizona, where he filed for asylum. Eventually, he made it to New York City, where he volunteered to cook Guinean food for Ramadan alongside Hefferon at EVLoves.
Bah grew up cooking with his mom, so he knew how to help Hefferon tweak what would become a regular menu item: mafe tiga (savory chicken in a thick peanut sauce). This year, for Ramadan, (which began this weekend), he’s helping expand the month-long holiday menu with fouti lafidi (smashed okra and eggplant), suya (grilled skewers), and catfish stew.
Despite the joy of community that Cafewal has provided, Bah said that he remains fearful about his future in this country amid Donald Trump’s indefinite suspension of asylum, and ICE detentions of legal migrants.
“It’s a big thing if you flew [from] your country, the torture, and then you feel maybe they will send you back. That’s,” he paused for a few seconds, ”very difficult.”
“Do you feel safe here?” I asked.
“I don’t know,” he said, his voice dropping to a whisper. He went back into Cafewal’s kitchen to check on his crew as they wrapped up lunch service and stored ingredients in the refrigerator for the next day.
