There is also a boutique where you'll find romantic clothing of natural fibers, artifacts and exotic jewelry from around the world. Winner of Downtown Lexington Urban innovation award and voted “ Best ethnic Restaurant”

We About Us

We are a husband and wife team that didn't want to work apart. No one would hire us together. Our lives were about merging cultures and families. We come from completely different cultures and backgrounds, (Natasha, a communist Russian Jew and Gene, an American Baptist with Buddhist tendencies) We hate malls for different reasons so there is still something to argue about. We like museums and galleries, but we prefer yard sales and bazaars. We don't believe the customer is always right. So we opened a Cafe and store together...not being able to agree on which.

Gene and Natasha Williams

We had no experience in restaurants or cafes until we opened ours. This business adventure was a pure creation of our intuition, spontaneity, and our merging cultures. There was no business plan or market study (then...well now there is). It just happened, and it's still working.

We opened our doors in l991 and sales have grown each year. In 1995 we published our mail order catalog/magazine--Catazine, in 1996 we moved onto the web and in 1999 we began plans to move into a larger space in downtown Lexington. In 2000 we enlarged our world boutique concept and changed the name to Balagula which will become a separate website later. In march 2001 we began construction on our new space downtown, and opened the doors in July. Sounds like big stuff, but in truth we're a small family business and actually want to stay that way. Sort of. On-line sales lets us grow our numbers without changing the way we do everything. We still prepare home cooked meals, invite performers to sing and play, and travel, looking for the new and unusual, trying to figure out who we are. More on our business philosophy.

Members of the parallel universe internet crew: Our son Gene A. Webmaster (supreme overlord of all things with buttons or instruction booklets) who tracks our lives on our computer, Mel & Paul a cyberclerk couple who get it right (excluding acts of God), and perform all the work that starts with a "p"...like picking, packing, panicking, philing and phones. Meleasa runs the numbers, writes legibly, speaks softly and walks on water. Ryan decorates with robots and finds obscure answers to every little thing and Kathy grinds mysterious coffees and makes mysterious dinner theatre. Kathy Hobbs now the coffee queen and first to arrive in the morning, when not performing those murder mysteries the night before.