Kefa Café Plans to Reopen This Weekend

A worker updates the lettering on the sign outside Kefa Cafe on Bonifant Street in Silver Spring Thursday afternoon. Credit: Andrew Metcalf

Silver Spring’s Kefa Café is scheduled to reopen this weekend after being closed for nearly a year due to fire damage.

The café plans to host a grand reopening ribbon cutting at 10:30 a.m. Saturday. On Thursday, workers were inside and outside the space near the corner of Bonifant Street and Georgia Avenue putting the finishing touches on the coffee, pastry and sandwich shop.

The café suffered residual smoke and water damage when a fire struck the nearby restaurant Bombay Gaylord in March. Initially, the café’s owners hoped to only be closed for a few weeks, according to the restaurant’s Facebook page, but the repairs ended up taking longer. Attempts to contact the owners at the restaurant and at their new kiosk inside the Silver Spring Library Thursday afternoon were not successful.

Other restaurants damaged in the fire, the Bombay Gaylord and The Quarry House Tavern, are planning to reopen at their locations as well, according to their owners. It’s not clear how much progress has been made on repairing the building that housed the two restaurants. The building’s owner, Abbe Levin, is currently out of the country and could not be reached for comment Thursday.

The Bombay Gaylord suffered the brunt of the fire damage, which left its dining room charred black and unrecognizable. The Quarry House Tavern, below Bombay Gaylord, suffered mostly water and smoke damage, according to its owner Jackie Greenbaum.

Greenbaum has previously said she plans to return The Quarry House to its original location once the space is repaired. The restaurant currently occupies a temporary space at the former Piratz Tavern location across Georgia Avenue. 

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