Babylon Café:
Hand-Rolled Pasta, the Herb Room, and Union Ave After Dark
If you blinked while driving down Union Avenue in the early nineties, you would have missed it completely. Tucked in the gravel alleyway behind 1783 Union was a two-story wooden clapboard sanctuary that smelled like fresh rosemary, hand-cranked pasta, and dark roasted coffee.
That was Babylon Café. Between 1991 and 1993, I was the café’s all-around “Boy Friday.” I was living independently on my own nickel for the first time, and that little restaurant kept my belly full, my hands moving, and my spirit anchored when the world felt like shifting sand.
My days were measured in tangible, honest work. I stood at the wooden bench rolling fresh sheets of egg pasta until my forearms burned. I brewed coffee to exacting, uncompromising standards. And I tended the Herb Room—a fragrant, sunlit nook filled with bundles of drying basil, oregano, and lavender that perfumed the entire alleyway before the dinner rush even started.
Babylon taught me what hospitality actually means. It’s not starched white tablecloths or stiff, rehearsed corporate scripts. It’s walking into a room where somebody looks you in the eye, hands you something made with care, and gives you permission to take a breath and stay as long as you need.
The old building at 1783 Union Rear is quiet now, swallowed by the relentless crawl of modern Midtown redevelopment. But anyone who ever sat on that front stoop under the magnolia trees with a bowl of pasta knows: places like Babylon don’t really die. They stay etched in your hands.
I drew this piece as an archival monument to the two-story house, the green shuttered windows, the roses climbing the siding, and the people who made midnight on Union Avenue feel like home.
