The Mayan Cafe

Today, we were honored to receive a lifetime achievement award for supporting the Kentucky Proud program. This one means a lot to us because buying local, sustainably-sourced meats and vegetables means a lot to us. We’ve been committed to this since 2008. I wish we knew how many thousands and thousands of dollars we’ve spent with Kentucky (and Indiana! 🤫) farms over the last 16 years. All I can tell you is, it’s A LOT.
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Farm to table is personal to us. Our farmers are our friends and the only people will respond to when they call the restaurant. They are our fellow small business owners, also just trying to make it in these low margin industries.
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Our food tastes better because of the people who cared about it. The farmers care for the seeds and the soil and the weather. We care for the flavor and the presentation and cooking techniques and the education & stories we share about the food.
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This industry is hard. Days like today help make us feel like our hard work and effort matters. ❤️🍅🧅🥔🥕🫑🌶️🍠❤️

📣 A quick announcement about a class one of our owners, , will be teaching for other restaurant owners.

Anne believes in sharing the lessons she has learned over the 17 years of owning Mayan Cafe. She worked as a business coach with the where she helped over 400 entrepreneurs start and grow their businesses. Later, she started her own consulting company, Left Brain Solutions, where she does deep dives with small businesses to improve their operating systems and run their businesses more profitably and enjoyably. Quality of life for small business owners is her #1 goal.

This class is the perfect introduction to her work. Reach out directly with questions to [email protected]

Our catering team GETS IT DONE. This group of people is dedicated, detail-oriented, efficient, knows how to make delicious food and genuinely cares about our clients. We are so lucky to work with each of them. Not pictured are the fabulous head of the department .l.jones and all around catering badass 🤩🥰 We love you all!!

This week, we are rolling out two new vegetarian entrees. 🌶️🫑🌽🥕🥔🍠🧅🧄🫛🥑🥦🥬

1. HARVEST TOSS: This flavorful dish combines quinoa with roasted sweet potatoes, cauliflower and mushrooms over a red bell pepper hummus and topped with crispy chickpeas. Not only is it vegan, it’s also gluten free. Oh, and it’s DELICIOUS. (Add salmon to it if you’re a pescatarian and looking for more protein)

2. CHILAQUILE: A former fav gracing the menu again, this dish layers our housemade tortillas with zucchini, mushrooms and tomatoes all smothered in chihuahua cheese and tomato casera sauce. It’s rich and heavenly. Add chorizo to scratch the meat lover itch or hold the cheese & sour cream to make it vegan.

These hot summer days are just begging for an ice cream sandwich!

And not just those ice cream sandwiches in a white paper wrapper that sticks to the cookie part as it melts (though they do bring fond memories of childhood…)

What you need is our MAYAN ICE CREAM SANDWICH. Gooey housemade Mexican chocolate cookies made with cinnamon & cayenne and filled with French vanilla ice cream.

Come sit as our fabulous new bar (we’ll have the up all the way) and enjoy this perfect summer treat. 💛

Exciting stuff!!!! Make your reservations now for our new patio bar!! 🥂🍻🍸🥃🍹🧉🍾

We are so grateful for the incredible support from this community. We’ve opened our patio today to an amazing response from our regulars, old and new. Thank you to all who came out today! Please make your reservations for seats at our new bar or on the patio. We can’t wait to serve you out in this beautiful space!

📣 BIG NEWS! 📣

We are opening our BRAND NEW patio bar next Thursday, March 14! We couldn’t be more excited to launch this space we have poured our hearts into for the last year +. Please make your reservations today to join us next Thursday and all the days after that!

The patio has heaters and fans so it’s great at 50 degrees and above. You can reserve bar stools or patio tables through our online reservation system. www.themayancafe.com

Join us in celebrating this gorgeous new addition to Mayan Cafe! ❤️📣❤️

Today is a special day for Chef Bruce. He wouldn’t want us to celebrate it, but his birthday is a big deal at Mayan Cafe. He’s the vision behind our food, the jokes in the kitchen, the care for all the details, the hope for future growth and the love that drives us. We are all better because we know him. 🩵

We were honored to have some VIP guests tonight dine with us tonight. ❤️🙏🏼❤️

We're loving this blog post from Alyssa Nelson's travel blog - Wayward - about Louisville. She's got some fabulous recommendations here for all aspects of Louisville life!

Urban Bourbon: The Perfect Weekend Travel Guide for Your First Visit to Louisville, Kentucky | wayward A travel and style blogger shares her recommendations for where to eat, drink, shop, stay, and play for a first-time visit to Louisville, Kentucky.

Chef Bruce representing his hometown in Mexico! 🇲🇽

TUNA CEVICHE

Fresh ahi tuna, soaked in a smokey guajillo-coconut sauce, tossed with mango & pickled onions and served with crispy malanga chips.

It’s the perfect pair with sunshine and 50 degree temps. ☀️🍣

One of our two owners, Anne Shadle, will be teaching a restaurant operations class in conjunction with her consulting company, Left Brain Solutions, as well as the Kentucky Small Business Development Center. The class will cover the basic tenants of running your restaurant more efficiently and profitably. Anne will go over financial best practices, HR strategies that lead to lower turnover and more positive company culture and some marketing secrets that she's gained from these past 17 years of owning her own restaurant.

Restaurants must be open for a minimum of 18 months to apply and the cost of the class is $300. Check out this link here to fill out the application and learn more details.

Share with all of your restaurant owner friends, please!

Plate to Profit: Mastering Restaurant Operations, Finances & Staffing Solidify your restaurant’s operations, grow your profit margin and improve your quality of life as a business owner!

Tomorrow is a special day for us.

On January 18, 2007, we opened our doors as the Mayan Cafe. We can hardly believe that 17 years have flown by since then!

Bruce, our chef and the heart of the business, had 10 years restaurant ownership experience at that point in his career. He knew how to make delicious food and he had mastered food cost & inventory management. He knew he wanted to make his food more approachable and he didn’t want to just be a special occasion restaurant. He had learned a lot in the 10 years of running his first restaurant, the Mayan Gypsy, and didn’t want to make the same mistakes.

His partner and soon to be sister-in-law, Anne Shadle, was just leaving the world of geriatric health care. She offered to help Bruce type the menus and file for the ABC license but never imagined that 17 years later, she’d still be here, running the restaurant alongside Bruce. She certainly never imagined that she’d become a consultant, helping other restaurant owners implement better operating systems with the lessons she learned in these 17 years.

These pictures are from Anne’s wedding this past November that, of course, Mayan Cafe catered. We invited our whole team to join in the celebration as well as many former staff members. Over these 17 years, we have had the true fortune of working alongside so many talented cooks, servers, managers and dishwashers. It has been an honor to serve this city food for so long.

Thank you all for your support. We are here because of your love. Cheers to many more years together! 🥂

Today is a day for CARRY OUT. You all know it is. Put that extra big jacket on for a minute, call us or put your order in online through our website. We will bring the food to your car if you call when you arrive!
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Here are the best dishes to order as a carry out: Tuna Tacos | Guacamole & Chips | Veggie (or chicken) Burrito | Cochinita Pibil | Mayan Burger | Salbutes of the Day | Scallop Ceviche

The Three Sisters Salad
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This salad gets its inspiration from the indigenous Mayan (and also Native American) traditions of planting corn, beans and squash together. These three vegetables grow better when planted together. The corn provides stability for the beans to climb up and the squash provides ground cover, helping to retain moisture and provide shade. It’s a brilliant thing that Mother Nature does when you pay attention to her.
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This salad features pickled butternut squash, black eyed peas & roasted corn along with pepitas, jicama, queso fresco, greens and a mint vinaigrette. It’s a delicious tribute to these way the Mayans have grown vegetables for centuries.

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As this year comes to a close, we are especially grateful for our kitchen team- both for the restaurant and catering department. This talented group of people have each been with us for a very long time, which we know is unique in our industry. We want to take just a moment to celebrate each of these people and thank them for their time and dedication. ❤️

• W***y started with us in 2008.

• Jeff began running the catering kitchen team in 2018.

• Jesus was first with us in 2013 and then returned in 2021 on the catering team.

• Julio first started cooking in 2013 and then came back in 2021.

• Pedro has been with us since 2015.

• Esli first came in 2016 and then returned in 2019.

• Carly has been cooking with us since 2019.

• Josh, our newest team member, started on the catering team in 2022.

• And Bruce, the OG, has been here since day 1. He created us. He inspires us. He makes us laugh. He feeds us. He is our foundation and heartbeat. 🤎

Last night, we took a few hours to enjoy the holidays with our incredible team. We are so very grateful to get to work with this group of people. They are loyal, they are smart, they are fun, they are talented and they all care about each other.
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We’ll be honest- these last few years in the restaurant industry have been hard. Everything is more expensive, good staff is hard to find and the numbers of our fellow restaurants that have closed is chilling.
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As we shared yesterday, most independent restaurants last 3-5 years. Next month, we will celebrate our 17th anniversary. Gratitude is the only word we have for all of this. For the special people working with us, for the customers who have sustained us through tough times and for the community in this city which has supported a Mayan restaurant for nearly two decades.

🎄 THANK YOU ALL 🎄

Big Happy Birthday to this very special ten year old right here! His bday dinner request was Mayan Cafe and he picked out his best suit & tie for the occasion. Along the way, Chris & Tara’s sweet little baby became a diehard cauliflower fan (swipe right for proof). We’re so grateful to for all his support over the years. Hats off to you and Tara for raising kids with such impressive palettes! 🥳

These unsolicited messages after our catered events are what we live for!
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What sets us apart from other caterers in the city are all of these details that our client from Johnson & Johnson mentioned. Our top priorities are giving customer service that is memorable and serving food that makes your “taste buds dance,” as one client said this week.
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Call us today to find out for yourself! The catering tab on our website has tons of info on menu styles and pricing. We even have a catering calculator!
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www.themayancafe.com/catering

We are so excited about this delightful article in the Courier Journal this week about our restaurant! Check it out here and learn about our upcoming specials and new back patio!

There's a reason why Mayan Café sells 500 sides of lima beans each month. Why it's so tasty There's a reason why Mayan Cafe is a 'must-visit' restaurant in Louisville. And it has more to do than its ever-popular Tok-sel lima bean dish.

This year, we received one of Louisville Business First's awards for Best Places to Work in Louisville. We were #11 in the category of businesses with a team of 25-150. There were no other restaurants included on this list of 50 companies total. To say this honor means a lot to us in an understatement.

Our team is everything to us. They are why we can do what we do. Improving their lives is what keeps us growing. During covid, keeping them as healthy and as financially sustained as possible was our number 1 goal. It kept us up at night and it kept us fighting to survive.

I could share so many stories of the relationships that have been formed here and how our lives are all better because of each other. But, I won't bore you or try to make you cry. I'll just say that the folks that work with us are the absolute best this city has and we are beyond grateful to get to be around them.

Thank you for this award, Business First. It means so much.

11. Mayan Cafe - Louisville Business First Here are Greater Louisville's Best Places to Work for 2023.

On Saturday, Sept 2, 2023, we had the true pleasure of catering Kim & Mike's wedding at the historic home and gardens of Whitehall. This couple had excellent taste (though we are partial!) and had assembled an amazing team of folks to bring their special day to life. The space was designed by Simply Sara O. and coordinated by…...

Kim & Mike's Wedding - The Mayan Cafe On Saturday, Sept 2, 2023, we had the true pleasure of catering Kim & Mike's wedding at the historic home and gardens of Whitehall. This couple had