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Alison Stewart: This is All of It on WNYC. I'm Alison Stewart. Before there was an area known as Nolita. If you were downtown and you wanted a break, coffee, maybe something to eat, you could head over and grab a seat at Cafe Gitane. For its 30th anniversary, a new book spotlights the institution's origin story and explains how it became part of the cultural fabric of Lower Manhattan in the '90s and early '00s. Through interviews with patrons, wait staff and the individuals who helped build the restaurant into what it is today. There's also a few recipes for avocado toast, grilled eggplant and Moroccan couscous.

As it is explained in the book, a big part of what makes Cafe Gitane special is its atmosphere, where customers can sit and hang out for hours, created by the owner and my next guest, Luc Lévy. In the foreword, he states that their one job is to "Feed the people and make them happy." The book is titled Cafe Gitane 30 Years. The owner of the cafe, Luc Lévy, is here. Nice to talk to you.

Luc Lévy: Hi.

Alison Stewart: The author of the book, Isobel Lola Brown, are here to discuss ahead of the book's launch celebration next Friday, December 13th at Cafe Gitane at 242 Mott Street. Isobel, nice to meet you, as well.

Isobel Lola Brown: Hi, thanks for having us.

Alison Stewart: Listeners. We want to hear from you. Have you been to Cafe Gitane on Mott Street? Are you a regular? How did you first discover it? What's your favorite dish to order? Have you ever spotted anybody famous there? Share your best Cafe Gitane stories. 212-433-9692. 212-433-WNYC. You can call in and join our conversation or you can text to us at that number or hit us up on social media @AllofitWNYC. 212-433-9692. 212-433-WNYC. Luc, let's just start with a big question. Your 30th anniversary, what does it mean to you personally?

Luc Lévy: First, it's somehow it has been validated with the book. It's something that is concrete now. I don't know. I have mixed feelings. I think it's something that it would be more in retrospect. Perhaps we'll have this conversation--

Alison Stewart: In 30 more years?

Luc Lévy: Hopefully. Hopefully.

Alison Stewart: What does it mean for you?

Isobel Lola Brown: I grew up going to this cafe and I've seen it change. Not that much, but I've seen it evolve over the last 22 years of my life. For me, the most fun thing is walking in, in the morning, and seeing a group of people that I love, my friends there. When it used to be 20 years ago, I would go in and see family friends. Seeing that shift and walking and then also seeing the same chef who's been there since I was literally six months old. The same dishwasher. Luc. There's so much--

Luc Lévy: I'm not the dishwasher anymore. I used to be. Yes, I gave up the title.

Alison Stewart: Why do you think Cafe Gitane has stayed relevant and beloved for three decades?

Luc Lévy: The main thing that has been a focus, really, that I've been focused on all these years. I think that if I could answer is that to stay real in every sense. I think that my main focus that the key to the place. At every level, whether it's when I built the place and I designed the place and so on. There was not in any way like, "Okay, I'm going to be like this cafe in Paris or this place or this." It was just, "Okay, how do I feel? How would I want--? What would I want to put on this wall?" Et cetera, et cetera. The objects that I liked and so on.

Then at every level the people that are higher, as they sincere in a way. They're not putting on the whole act and all the way down the line, it's just really-- I think that would be the main thing and more so now where I feel that it's needed more than ever to bring that out, to stay real.

Alison Stewart: Isobel, where did the idea to put this book together? It's this big, gorgeous photo book, and stories as well, and recipes as well. Where did the idea come from?

Isobel Lola Brown: It was my college thesis.

Alison Stewart: It was your college thesis?

Isobel Lola Brown: Yes. I was in school at Bennington in Vermont. It was my sophomore year, and I had just interned for Gia Tolentino, who was a software editor at the New Yorker. I was getting to shadow a lot of her interviews and transcribe them. I loved getting to watch and see and learn from her. I wanted to take on a project after that internship of my own. I thought if there was anyone I was going to interview, it would be the staff at Cafe Gitane. I grew up going there and I knew so many of the stories, but I knew there were a lot more.

First I interviewed the chef, David, thinking it would be an article, and I asked him about his story. We sat in the cafe, he was cooking and he would have to-- We sat at a table, he'd have to get up every few minutes to make an order, come back, we'd keep going. Then I interviewed Luc. Then all of a sudden everybody wanted to be interviewed. I was like, "This is not going to be an article." 300 pages later, I was like, "Okay, I think this might be a book."

Alison Stewart: My guests are Luc Lévy and Isobel Lola Brown. We are talking about Cafe Gitane 30 Years Anniversary. The book is out now. Listeners, we want hear from you. Have you been to Cafe Gitane on Mott Street? Are you a regular? How did you first discover it? 212-433-9692. 212-433-WNYC. Let's go back to 1994. There is no Nolita around.

Luc Lévy: No. Nolitas came about two or three years later.

Alison Stewart: In the early beginnings, what inspired you to open Cafe Gitane?

Luc Lévy: It was just like a feel. I go a lot by feelings and so on. First location, having that wall, the church wall, the wall of the old St. Patrick's Cathedral that really felt like to do a cafe, there was nothing else that I would think of. The place felt peaceful. It still does it. There's certain sounds. It feels like a bubble. Mostly it's the people, the creative people in the neighborhood was amazing, amazingly so. Some of it lived on the Bowery and some of it lived around on Elizabeth Street, Mulberry Street and so on. The level of it was unreal, really. They were not known yet.

I was mentioning it to Isobel earlier, you knew, and they knew, that somehow they would make it. They were fine with it. That there was no-- Yes, of course, there was a struggle of being an artist and being creative, but there was no doubt in their mind about being known as achieving whatever their goals were. There was an amazing amount of creative people and people who later on became all in their respective fields known and acknowledged.

Alison Stewart: What did you want to serve when you lived down there?

Luc Lévy: At first, I had no clue. Truly, truly, because I love food. I love my food. I recognize good food. I enjoy good food. My whole thing was on designing the place and making it comfortable, which was really very, very important to me, and about feeling in the neighborhood and so on. Then the food part started to hit me like, "Whoa. I have no kitchen. I have no tools to work with. I had bought a little Black and Decker toaster oven. Now, what do I do?" I was really fortunate to meet my consultant. She's more than a consultant. She's a friend of mine, a longtime friend of mine. Her name is Chloe Osborne, and she's the one who came up with all these incredible recipes and food. She's really-- I give her total credit for that.

Alison Stewart: Let's read some texts. "We love Cafe Gitane. It absolutely created Nolita and brought so many interesting people together. Our favorite dish is the palm salad with salmon." Someone else said, "I lived there in the mid-'90s. Love to meet friends there. It was like our living room. Relaxed and good food and coffee." It says, "I can't believe Gitane is now 30. I was nearly floored to hear that. I spent my twenties enjoying their vibrant menu and having many wonderful first dates and dates with friends. Many good memories on Mott Street." Sami has a question. "Is there a plan to open Cafe Gitane in Red Hook, Brooklyn? Months ago, a logo appeared on the window, but no activity. Mysterious."

Luc Lévy: It's a fact. It's going to be-- I am working on that. The point being that I'm working also in L.A., so I have two new Gitane on the works. L.A. is more. It's a larger, bigger project, so I'm focusing more on that. In time, Red Hook will-- Hopefully soon anyhow. Yes, it's been long enough.

Alison Stewart: Isobel. You know, I'm curious how the patrons and the staff talk to you about being in Cafe Gitane when it first opened in the '90s. That I remember it too.

Luc Lévy: Everyone described it as a social club more than anything.

Alison Stewart: Interesting.

Isobel Lola Brown: You would go there and you could be alone, and by the time you leave, four hours later, you're with 10 people. Five of them you knew and five of them you met and you all ran into each other. People describe it as a really beautiful place, pre technology.

Alison Stewart: Oh, interesting. Yes.

Isobel Lola Brown: A lot of the people I talked to who had been going there since opening day, opening week, opening year, really were reflecting on what that felt like to be at this place at such a peak moment in art and in the neighborhood and what that was like and how this cafe happened to feel like the center of gravity for all of those people and all of the projects they were doing.

Alison Stewart: It's interesting how that person said how it created Nolita. What do you think about that?

Isobel Lola Brown: Yes. Inez, who's a fashion photographer. Inez and Venue, they're amazing. They've been coming to the cafe forever. A quote she said when I was interviewing her was, she'd been in the neighborhood forever. She said, "It was literally Luc and the Mafia."

Luc Lévy: My dear friends.

Alison Stewart: My good, good friends.

Luc Lévy: I thought that was really funny. A lot of people had a very similar sentiment that, it was a lot of men on folding chairs on the sidewalk, and it was a lot of the old Italians in the neighborhood. Gitane was one of the first places that came in.

Alison Stewart: Yes.

Luc Lévy: If I may, on another level, totally on another level is that the energy at that time was moving east. In other words, before that, most of the energy, creative energy and commercial energy and so on, was more in Soho. It was moving. There was like a natural feel towards that neighborhood. Putting it at a different level. Something to that effect.

Alison Stewart: People can tell for your accent you're not from New York. Where are you from originally?

Luc Lévy: Morocco. From Casablanca.

Alison Stewart: That was important to you to include in the cuisine? Yes?

Luc Lévy: Yes. Again, when I was describing about my sense of trying to stay real and things like that, it was not about, "Okay, I'm from Morocco, therefore I'm going to emulate my Moroccan dishes," and so on. It was really a mix, in other words, where I've mixed some of the dishes, some of my sister in law's dishes, and then other dishes, of course, that Chloe, that I mentioned before came up with. There is a feel of Morocco. What I think is where I put more an emphasis on Morocco is on the welcoming side. It's something that's very important to me. It's been very dear to me that in terms of service and that I like to think that I have a staff that's very welcoming. That's my Moroccan part.

Alison Stewart: Okay.

Luc Lévy: You know, that's where I want a little extra on that.

Alison Stewart: My guests are Luc Lévy and Isobel Lola Brown. We are talking about Cafe Gitane 30 Years. That's the name of the book, and it is the anniversary. I'm curious about what people liked to drink there. We talked about the food a little bit, but also what did people do? Would they go and just sit and drink coffee? Did they--? Tell us a little bit about that?

Isobel Lola Brown: Yes. A lot of people I talked to who were the early inhibitors of the space said that it was the first place in the neighborhood you could get a good cup of coffee. That wasn't like a thing then. I think that's been very consistent. We've always had good coffee. Also, the juices are fresh squeezed every morning. The menu has been very consistent since the beginning. It hasn't changed very much. We've had the same orange juice, the same-- There's no like syrup coffee type of things. It hasn't gone in like a trendy type of way. Then in the evening it's more wines

Luc Lévy: I think also the big surprise was that we were probably the first one to have a watermelon juice, a fresh watermelon juice. That people-- That's a big seller, a big part in the drinks.

Alison Stewart: Truthfully, when you think about what it did to the neighborhood, initially, who were the people who weren't so sure about having Cafe Gitane in the neighborhood?

Isobel Lola Brown: Well, there's a funny story about Moby that I'll let Luc tell.

Luc Lévy: I'll let you. You're much better at this than me. Go ahead.

Isobel Lola Brown: Well, you're going to have to correct me, but I believe that while Luc was building the cafe, Moby approached him and said something along the lines of, "You're ruining the neighborhood."

Luc Lévy: In a half-joking kind of way.

Isobel Lola Brown: Then he came back later as a customer often. Then I think he ended up opening his own teashop nearby. He must have been inspired.

Alison Stewart: How did you do that balance of bringing something new to the neighborhood, but also retaining what the neighborhood was about?

Luc Lévy: Well, the good part is that at that moment I had no experience. Really. That was my biggest strength. As I came along, I really didn't know in advance what was going to happen. I didn't know in advance that all this creative bulk was existed. I didn't know about this energy that I spoke about that was moving from the Soho and so on. I did all the things I like to do and then I went along with it. What helped is that before that I have a strong visual background, photography and film and so on. That helped me connect, obviously, with all the creative people in the neighborhood. It was really not something that I really thought of, digested, and dwelt on. It just happened. Yes, it's an interesting phenomenon.

Alison Stewart: In the book, there's not only gorgeous pictures of the people who went there and people in the neighborhood. There's also really good recipes. Tell me what recipes you wanted to make sure were included in the book, Isobel.

Luc Lévy: The two that I knew had to be in there were the couscous, because that's just a very iconic dish at the cafe, and the roasted chicken sandwich, which is basically everyone I know's favorite lunch dish in the world. Those were the priorities to me. Then we filled in the gaps. The menu itself is pretty small, so we actually included a lot of recipes. We included the baked feta, the oranges and olives, the heart of palm salad, the grilled eggplant, the meatballs, the salmon. It's a majority of the entrees and appetizers, actually.

Alison Stewart: Let's talk to Howard on line one. Hi, Howard. Thanks for calling All of It.

Howard: Yes, hi. I was very familiar with Nolita. I spent a lot of time there because I had a lot of friends who worked and lived there. One of my best friends had a Australian restaurant on Mulberry Street. I would go to Cafe Gitane, I went to a lot of restaurants and bars of Nolita. I liked Nolita a lot. It had a small scale feel to it and also had a-- I wouldn't say it was such a creative crowd, but an international crowd. You met a lot of people from different countries in the neighborhood. When my friend's father would visit from Australia, he would invite me to sit outside Caftan and we would share a bottle of Sauternes.

Alison Stewart: That's awesome. Thank you so much for calling in.

Luc Lévy: Just one, if I may. Again, as far as there's a little bit of a history with the Australian feel to it, is that Chloe Osborne, my consultant, is Australian. There was a whole crowd, my original crowd, whether it was in the staff or customers, I had love Australians, New Zealanders and so on. We even had the, I remember at the time, Vegemite on the menu.

Alison Stewart: The book is titled Cafe Gitane 30 Years. I've been speaking with the owner, Luc Lévy, and general manager and the author of the book, Isobel Lola Brown. There will be a celebration next Friday, December 13, at Cafe Gitane on 242 Mott Street. Thank you so much for coming in.

Luc Lévy: Thank you.

Isobel Lola Brown: Thank you.

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