Nilea Alexander and her husband, Lamine Diagne, started out with a neighborhood coffee shop in Crown Heights, Brooklyn. Over the past decade, though, their modest enterprise has evolved into what they call “an experience”. Next door to Café Rue Dix, which serves Senegalese cuisine, pastries and lattes, is Marché Rue Dix, their marketplace-boutique stocked with goods sourced directly from Senegal, Diagne’s birthplace. The couple’s goal is to create a one-stop destination where customers leave with both a story and a piece of Senegal.
Rue Dix, or “10th Street” in French, is a nod to Diagne’s roots in Pikine, a city to the east of the Senegalese capital of Dakar. “Markets are very big in Senegal,” he said. Visitors to the cafe can order its signature dish, thiebou jen – a savory blend of jollof rice, vegetables and red snapper stew. And then they can head to the boutique, which offers everything from traditional Ataya tea and an asymmetric crochet skirt to a gilded brass arm cuff and a bucket bag made from rope and plastic.
