Chameleon Café Akron. Akron's newest café - coffee shop. Offering gourmet coffee, homemade soups and artisan wraps and sandwiches.
Well, when I was a kid, this place, this whole area, there was nothing here. The feelings started about ten years ago. Jeff Smith and Brendan Smith were kind of They decided to come to Laraville. Jeff came in and really re-envisioned the whole neighborhood. He saw something a little bit grander, I think, that nobody else could really see. He wanted to challenge the status quo, and he wanted to do classic French cooking and do it right, but not compromise his beliefs. He really stuck with the local farming and seeds local food, and he really provided something that really nobody had known. He really revolutionized not just this neighborhood, but cooking in general and in Baltimore. I feel We have the market under the JFX, and a lot of amazing restaurants, actually. I started being a pastry chef here in May, which was actually a great time to come in, because that's when all the local spring fruits start coming out. We started with the strawberries, and now we're getting some beautiful local peaches already in late June. And we're finding that my food is very much following the path of what's available and what's delicious. And Maryland is such an amazing place for local foods, and I love developing my recipes according to what's available. I don'think the importance of the chameleon to the neighborhood of Laraville, the greater Laraville area can really be overstated. And I think people come and support the restaurant that always have in the past 10 years, because they know what it has done for the neighborhood. It's important for us to kind of really maintain that legacy. And what's important is that we also look towards the future and evolve. Our loyal clientele have put so much of their time and so much of their money into this restaurant, that we really, I mean, it's important for us to give back to them. We're great right now, but we really just want to be excellent. And it's things like our bathrooms, Our floors are falling apart, our dishwashers leaking every day, our air conditioner doesn't work at the moment. People are coming in here doing these really hot days, and they're sweating, We want everyone to be able to come here, to want to come here, and to realize the importance of supporting your local community. We want to keep a lot of the old philosophies that make the chameleon what it is. We also want to introduce some new ones. We are changing the name to Maggie's Farm. Maggie's Farm is a Bob Dylan song, kind of about striking off on your own and following your own philosophy. It's not just about what we can do for our customers, but also creating a network of local businesses, and that's not being in competition, but working together to really make this a vital, vibrant, bustling area. We get a lot of help from people in the neighborhood who are excited to see the chameleon change hands to us, and it's a really big responsibility. The regular customers that have been coming here for 10 years have loved the changes, have loved what we're doing, and are really feeling what we're trying to express with the foods. That kind of communication, that kind of relationship that we want to build with the customers. We do think that the chameleon has always entailed this kind of values. We want to make that more front and center of what we're doing. If you don't just want to be a restaurant, we want to be Thank you.
