This Brooklyn couple is building community by bridging cultures.

Lamine Diagne and Nilea Alexander, New Yorkers by way of Senegal and Atlanta, respectively, are the married couple at the crux of this community, as the owners of Café Rue Dix and Marché. The two met in 2010 and got married soon after, back when Diagne had to travel an hour on his scooter to Harlem every weekend just to get a taste of his beloved Senegalese food. When the French café he’d been working at closed, they decided it was time to fill that void in their own neighborhood and opened Café Rue Dix in 2013. Though Diagne was the one with years of restaurant experience, Alexander, who had spent the majority of her working life in the retail and corporate world, and selling clothes at vintage markets on weekends, had a love of food that was just as deep: “Eating out was kind of like a part-time job for me,” she says with a laugh. “I was a typical New Yorker in that way.”

Her knowledge of operations and customer service became key components in getting Café Rue Dix off the ground, and her eye for design produced the welcoming atmosphere, which features a graphic mural painted on the exterior wall and gourd drum lamps inside. On the menu, flaky pastry pockets filled with meat known as fataya are served with a Senegalese staple, scotch bonnet hot sauce (a recipe derived from Diagne’s mother’s), and regulars love the spicy stewed beef mafé with peanut butter sauce served over rice or couscous. (The French fare—cheeses, breads, desserts including crème brûlée—is also rooted in Diagne’s upbringing, since France colonized Senegal and embedded its culinary influence.) But as much as the bold flavors draw locals and travelers alike, it’s the Senegalese spirit that keeps folks coming back. “I think the words that I would use to describe it are: communal, family, sharing,” Alexander says of the Senegalese way of eating. “It’s so much more than just putting food in your mouth; it’s how you communicate with someone that you love them and you care about them.”