Uqbar Cafe
Completed October 2025
Named after the doubly fictitious Land of Uqbar in a Jorge Luis Borges short story, Cafe Uqbar is a deeply personal space for Jennie and Benji Smith. As young proprietors for whom cooking and service are a creative practice and a source of community, they lept at the opportunity to build a cafe arose from the impending closure of a 5th Street, Berkeley cafe that had seen better times.. Jennie and Benji bought the business, retained the staff, and I joined them to work out what a tight budget and a strict timeline could permit to refresh and re-imagine the space.
Simplification, openness, and air were our guiding moves. We removed decades of slowly accumulated cabinetry and shelving, storage and matter, and added back a few simple elements that solved for some entrenched problems of the old space:
- A functional and tile clad customer facing espresso bar
- Central to the kitchen, a open hutch for prominent storage and expo made of red laminate birch ply
- A high top communal table right under the skylight at the center of everything
Uqbar serves breakfast and lunch, with dinner popups.
