You could say that Mai Warshafsky’s love affair with Richmond began with a brief, whirlwind fling.

The native New Yorker’s first visit to the River City occurred while returning from a trip to her father-in-law’s in North Carolina. Warshafsky and her husband crushed some “world-class pastries” at Sub Rosa. They downed beers at The Veil. They had dinner at Brenner Pass. In short, they were more than impressed by the city’s food and beverage scene.

“I was blown away,” says Warshafsky, who previously ran Café Warshafsky, a mail-order bakery that garnered writeups from The Wall Street Journal and the Southern Foodways Alliance; her husband, Garrett Eagleton, is a chef. “It seemed like a place with possibilities.”

Before long, the couple traded the Hudson for the James and moved to Richmond in early 2020. For the past two-and-a-half years, Warshafsky has been at the helm of the ICA Café at the Institute for Contemporary Art at Virginia Commonwealth University.

Her menu is short but compelling: the curry egg salad toast and the ZZQ smoked chicken salad sandwich are knockouts; the oatmeal apricot cookies have just the right amount of cardamom; the peanut butter cookies are so silky they remind one of buckeyes. And the spicy chili cabbage slaw is a fresh side with a potent little kick.

Originally hailing from Woodstock, New York, Warshafsky began working in food at the age of 16 before attending New York City’s Hunter College as a studio art major. Among other dining establishments, Warshafsky’s resume includes three years front-of-house at SoHo’s Balthazar, the bustling French brasserie known for its zinc bar, red banquettes and celebrity sightings.

“That was my first really demanding restaurant job,” Warshafsky says. “There was always a wait. It was always so busy there. When you were there, it was all consuming. You had to be present, and you had to perform at a pretty high level, but I enjoyed it.”

Warshafsky followed Balthazar with Jack’s Wife Freda, a Mediterranean/South African-influenced spot opened by Balthazar veterans Maya and Dean Jankelowitz.

“It was great to stay within the [restaurant] family, but see people who started working for a larger restaurant group get all this experience and be able to open their own café two blocks around the corner from Balthazar,” she says. “Seeing people have that growth and open their own business, especially in SoHo, was really great to see.”

Warshafsky then worked at John Fraser’s now defunct Narcissa in the Standard East Village hotel, which emphasized farm-to-table. There, she met her now husband, who was a sous chef at the restaurant. She closed out her front-of-house career at Ignacio Mattos’ Estela.

Desiring to start her own business, Warshafsky launched Café Warshafsky while she worked at Jack’s Wife Freda in 2014. The Jankelowitzes let her use their kitchen space for her shortbread creations and offer them at their restaurant.

“I was selling the hell out of those cookies,” Warshafsky says. “That was a great strategy, and it was a great way to get market research and see what people liked. It gave me the confidence to go off and get more accounts.”

Warshafsky gained a following for her shortbreads with curious flavors: currant and anisette; lavender and coconut; strawberries and cream. Matcha. Earl Gray. Rosewater.

Her goal was to build a brand that she could eventually leverage into a brick-and-mortar café.

“It was very whimsical, and not just the flavors, but the art direction that was behind it and the branding,” she says of Café Warshafsky, which often featured the blue and red striping of an airmail envelope on its packaging. “It was a creative project for me as much as it was a food project.”

The brand was inspired by her love of having coffee with her father: “My dad is someone who loves to have coffee and a little nibble, a little something sweet, and I think I picked that up from him. I can’t just have coffee. I need a little something.”

Eventually, Warshafsky and her husband realized that the New York City slog was taking a toll on them.

“We were both really grinding,” she says. “I was baking at night. I was making deliveries in the morning and then I was going to my restaurant gig.”

At that point, her husband was chef de cuisine at Fraser’s vegetarian and vegan restaurant Nix.

“They got a Michelin star, so you can imagine the lifestyle and the amount of work. We hardly ever saw each other,” she says. “We were thinking about the future and about our quality of life and wanting a quality of life.”

This realization led them to move to Richmond in January 2020, just before the pandemic hit. Luckily for her, Richmond commercial kitchen Hatch never closed, and she was able to continue operating Café Warshafsky.

As successful as she was, after nearly a decade of running the brand, Warshafsky decided it was time for a change. She missed working in a restaurant and interacting with customers. She began putting out feelers and learned that the ICA, which opened in 2018, wanted to relaunch its Abby Moore Café.

“For this café they really needed entrepreneurs,” she says. “They needed someone to build the menu out. There was some groundwork done, but it really needed to be fleshed out. They needed someone outside of the box who understood logistics and was creative as well.”

Warshafsky consulted her husband on the menu, which aims to offer incredibly fresh food that’s also visually appealing.

“Our menu is contemporary, but it’s approachable,” she says. “I like surprising people with our flavors and the different elements that we put together to create a dish.”

Warshafsky says the practice of art institutions collaborating with chefs is something she was exposed to while working in New York City: while she was at Estela, Ignacio Mattos opened Flora Bar at the Met Breuer; Lee Hanson and Riad Nasr, who were at Balthazar when she worked there, went on to open Frenchette Bakery at the Whitney Museum of American Art.

Inspired by the fact that the ICA is LEED Gold-Certified, Warshafsky says the ICA Café has a goal of creating zero waste. She also sources from local small businesses as much as she can, including Afterglow Coffee Cooperative, Bitchin’ Boucha Kombucha, Dayum This is My Jam, Roots Tea Blends, VegTable, ZZQ Craft Texas Barbeque; the floral arrangements in the café are done by Field.

Warshafsky also runs the gift shop, tucked in the back of the café. The shop’s offerings aim to embrace sustainable practices: Cyrc 3D vases made from recycled plastic; ecofriendly Solar Eclipse Hair Clips; Poppy & Pout lip balm that comes in cardboard tubing, instead of plastic. The shop also offers ceramics made at Brookland Park Boulevard’s Hand Thrown Studio.

“I really feel strongly about supporting people who are putting out a product with integrity and are trying to make it happen,” she says. “A lot of the makers that we’re working with, they have sustainable practices, and that really spoke to me.”

Warshafsky invites visitors to stop by.

“We are kind of a hidden gem because we’re on VCU’s campus, we’re facing the campus side, we’re in the back of the building,” she says. “I would just love to let more people know that we’re open.”

Visit the ICA Cafe at 601 W Broad St. Tuesday-Sunday from 10 a.m.-4 p.m.