Baobab Fare owners Hamissi Mamba and Nadia Nijimbere broke ground Monday on their second Detroit restaurant, a 3,000-square-foot space at 16900 East Warren Avenue in East English Village that has been years in the making. The couple marked the occasion by inviting attendees to eat for free from their Waka food truck, serving up beef chapati to neighbors who have been asking when this project would finally get started.
As Daily Detroit reports, Mamba and Nijimbere said sharing food is how they express thanks, and the owners have also developed a fizzy passion fruit drink as part of the expansion. The building that will house Baobab Fare's second location had sat vacant for about a decade, previously serving as a video store and later a tax preparation office, according to BridgeDetroit. Mamba and Nijimbere closed on the $145,000 purchase of the property, the outlet reported, in a deal that set the stage for Monday's groundbreaking.
From Pop-Up to Second Storefront
Baobab Fare began as a pop-up in 2017 before the couple opened their original restaurant at Woodward Avenue and East Grand Boulevard in 2021, serving East African food, per the same BridgeDetroit account. Mamba and Nijimbere came to the United States from Burundi as refugees, with Mamba described as having sought asylum more than a decade ago. The pair were finalists for the James Beard Foundation's Outstanding Restaurateur award in 2024, and Mamba also won Food Network's Chopped in 2023, donating the $10,000 prize to a Detroit shelter, BridgeDetroit noted.
Per Daily Detroit's account of the groundbreaking, Mamba had initially asked Joe Rashid, executive director of the East Warren Development Corporation, about a small space to sell products. Rashid instead suggested Mamba buy a building outright. Mamba said he initially had no money to do so, but Rashid told him to just say yes and supported him through the process that followed. Mamba had also been contemplating a second location in Ann Arbor before Rashid encouraged him to consider Detroit's east side instead, according to BridgeDetroit.
A Neighborhood That Asked for This
The push for more sit-down dining on East Warren traces back to community outreach funded by Invest Detroit in 2021, which involved knocking on 8,700 homes, per Daily Detroit's reporting. Sit-down restaurants were the top request to come out of that outreach, and East Warren residents have continued asking for more dining options and local developers, according to Urbanize Detroit. District 4 council member Latisha Johnson said residents have repeatedly asked her when Baobab Fare would get started, and that everyone wants a Baobab Fare in their district and community, Daily Detroit reported. Mamba has attended other District 4 small businesses' groundbreakings and ribbon cuttings himself, and said the restaurant's success should benefit the neighborhood.
Mamba and Nijimbere chose to put down deeper roots in Detroit. The planned 3,000-square-foot space is roughly twice the size of their existing restaurant and is expected to include larger tables and a mocktail bar alongside much of the current menu plus new dishes, BridgeDetroit reported. The renovation has been described by BridgeDetroit as a $1.3 million project, though Eater Detroit reported that Mamba told Axios the build-out could cost upwards of $1 million to $1.2 million.
Timeline Has Slipped Before
The project's schedule has shifted more than once. BridgeDetroit reported a target opening in late 2024, while Eater Detroit later reported an expected opening sometime in 2026, according to Daily Detroit's account of the two outlets' coverage. As of Monday's groundbreaking, Baobab Fare's East Warren location has no announced opening date. The owners addressed the delays directly in an October 2024 post on their website, writing that “access to capital has made everything move slower than we would like.” The project is moving forward.
East Warren's Bigger Investment Wave
Baobab Fare's second location is part of a broader wave of investment along the East Warren corridor. Rashid has said the corridor is on track to become one of the city's best food destinations, according to Axios, which reported that officials broke ground on a $5.5 million public market for local businesses and an East Warren Development Corporation office. Axios also reported plans from Saffron De Twah's chef and Southwest's La Jalisciense Supermercado Y Taqueria to open new East Warren locations, along with Ultreia, a $3 million rehabilitation project in a long-vacant, nearly century-old building at 16131 East Warren Avenue. Elsewhere on the corridor, Daily Detroit noted that Marvin's Marvelous Mechanical Museum has reopened at a new West Bloomfield location with a grand opening celebration planned, Franklin's Dairy Bar operated from 1969 until closing a few years ago, and a coming-soon sign for Black Tie Express Soul Food has gone up at Mack and Iroquois near Indian Village.
