Katrina from Juliet.

By JT Thompson

Katrina: co-founder of Juliet, a European style café, which she and her partner Josh opened in early 2016. They hope the café will become a longstanding neighborhood space that helps foster a welcoming, diverse community in Union Square.

When I walk into Juliet, there is a friendly bustle on both sides of the counter, an L-shaped enclosure behind which the kitchen is open to view. The sun coming through the tall windows is bright against the white tables and white walls; the atmosphere is both crisp and cozy.

Katrina is sitting at the kitchen counter with a laptop open in front of her. She is in quiet, serious discussion with one of her employees, nodding thoughtfully as they talk. Katrina’s look, like the look of the café, is a mixture of the elegant and the comfy – high heeled, open toed sandals, crisp mustard colored trousers, and a loose, untucked blue and brown plaid shirt. Her dark hair is pulled up above her slender neck; her features are both delicate and strong, like a finely modeled Roman bust.

Katrina asks me if I want anything (a glass of water) and we sit down to talk. She is as poised and thoughtful in conversation as she was while talking with her employee up at the counter. Both cerebral and earthy, she is articulate about her ideas, and vivid in her descriptions of how those ideas play out in daily life. She has a quiet, steady passion about what she and Josh hope to achieve with Juliet.

Katrina was born in Queens, New York, where her parents lived for many years, but was raised in Austin, Texas. Her parents had met in Austin, while they were both working as waiters in a tennis club, and they returned there to raise their children. The power of food to bring people together goes deep in Katrina’s family history.

As it says on the Juliet website, Katrina “grew up surrounded by the romanticism of food…her parents often told stories about mixing caesar salads and steak tartare tableside, painting a picture of classic service and black tie waiters along with the notion of camaraderie within the industry. Frequent dinner parties solidified their status as the ultimate hosts, further exposing Katrina to a spirit of hospitality at an early age.”

She also encountered a rich world of food as early as elementary school. Their family lived in the same neighborhood as the campus housing for professors and graduate students, which meant her school had a mix of kids from all over the world.

“At International Day at school, kids would bring dishes for us to try; that’s when I had sushi for the first time.”

Family vacations, to California and New York, also broadened her experience.

California was where her father’s family was living. They’re Iranian, and moved to L.A. when the revolution happened and the Shah fell. Katrina’s father had already been in the States, where he came for college. He and her mother got married on Halloween of 1979 and “Mom went back to Iran with Dad. Maybe an ill-advised move,” Katrina laughs. “I think it was November 4th after they got there that the hostages were taken.”

As vivid as her father’s family history is, it was her mother’s love of NYC that really captured Katrina’s imagination.

“My mom was a great tour guide, she really loved the city. ‘That’s the hotel where Leonard Cohen was living when he wrote that song I play for you.’ I always romanticized New York City.

“I loved all the activity, the palpable sense of history. Mom would describe all the changes she’d seen happen. California was physically beautiful, but in New York you had such a blending of different groups. People like you and people who are completely different.

“You don’t get that everywhere, it doesn’t work everywhere. San Francisco was more divided up into distinct neighborhoods. In New York, going to the florist takes you past people’s homes, the grocery store. There are lots of easy opportunities to interact with different people.”

That ability of common spaces to bring people together, which she and Josh hope Juliet will do in Union, is also what Katrina loves about Austin.

“Austin epitomizes something I love about America. If you live on the coasts, you’re exposed to diversity, tolerance, education. That can be a privileged point of view.

“When I tell people I’m from Texas, people often make derogatory assumptions. What I love about Austin, that no other place has provided me, is the commonality of people. So many things uniting different groups. There’s barbecue, live music, the swimming hole – all kinds of different people enjoying them. Hippies, punks, cowboys, college kids – all going to the same venues, the same restaurants, listening to live music. Everybody eating chips and salsa outside.

“Part of it is just the weather – you can gather outside. You’re not wondering what’s on the other side of the door of a restaurant.

“All those different people coming together is what I love most about Austin, and I do think it epitomizes something about America.”

From Austin, Katrina went to Santa Cruz for college, where she got a degree in social justice. She then moved to San Francisco for two years, where she worked at a social entrepreneur incubator, while researching infant neonatal care and injury prevention at the USFS medical center. She had done a college internship in New York City working on immigrant rights issues, and she was planning to move to NYC, when her sister said she wanted to go to NYC as well.

“She was living in Union Square at the time, and invited me to come here first. She loved Union. When I first arrived we walked over to the Square from Lincoln Park, where she was living, to look around.

“Four or five years later, we’re both still here,” Katrina laughs.

“I didn’t get Union at first. I was fresh from Brooklyn. It took getting involved to understand the appeal. I got plugged in with JJ Gonson at Cuisine en Locale. I had studied public health, social justice – I was looking for some way to bring food and health together with building a community.

“And I had always wanted a business of my own. It was great to be plugged into the food scene in a fun way. There was an atmosphere in Union that I can do what I want, things that wouldn’t be in reach in Manhattan.

“I got plugged into the art scene. It reminded me a bit of Austin. I’d been trying to find, or recreate, the sense of shared community there. I hadn’t found it yet. Creating and protecting the kind of spaces Austin offers is needed for an open, inclusive community. I was interested in creating spaces for people to interact – where you get something special that’s harder to create than you might think.”

It was JJ Gonson of Cuisine en Locale that introduced Katrina to Josh, her partner in creating Juliet (the café’s name is Katrina’s middle name).

“Josh was cooking at the Beacon Hill Bistro. I was managing Belly and The Blue Room. We started by creating different kinds of events in our days off. We loved them, it was fun creating things that were different from where we worked.

“We did Texas barbecue. Breakfast tacos. A dinner party at a farm. Any restaurant we wanted for one day. We did it for two years, and everyone started asking us about our restaurant.

“We used to come here when it was the Sherman Café. We heard it was going out of business. That changed everything. We had a vision for Union Square – this might be our in.”

To get ready, and because it would their last chance to travel before diving into opening a café, Katrina and Josh went on a research trip to Europe – Paris, Barcelona, Seville, Nice – checking out cafes that offered the kind of all-day community space they were interested in creating.

“We loved Somerville – the question was, what is it missing.

“We wanted to create an all day space, where you can meet your neighbors. The European scene seems less susceptible to trendiness. We wanted something substantial, that could be there forever. Create community by establishing trust. And within that trust, you can offer adventure and discovery. Where you can get an espresso or a full meal. Dishes that might be a little more expensive, but with more technique behind them.

“What I like about Union is all the outwardly creative people, the cultural diversity. From a food perspective, you rarely have to leave Union to get great versions of what you’re looking for. That’s something you can’t manufacture.

“And tracing the history is really special here. If we lose that, it won’t be what I love. You can trace the waves of immigration by walking down the street. That restaurant, that bodega, that plumber, that electrician.

“I love being the host to my neighbors. When I first moved here, I missed that interaction that was so second nature in Austin. Saying hi on the streets. Chatting in the grocery store. I missed that.

“The question was do I move and look for it somewhere else, or try to create that here. We’re open all day long, offering a welcoming, disarming experience. You create the potential for that kind of interaction when you know someone’s coffee choice, say hi, make people feel like they belong in a community. Helping create that atmosphere is the most fulfilling part of the job.

“And we’re doing something unique with our staff. No tips, instead a profit sharing model. Ninety percent of our staff live in Somerville, eighty percent in Union.

“We’re proposing and proving another way to operate a business that prioritizes workers, creates a healthier structure to be part of. We’re modeling what other more traditional professions offer – knowing what your salary will be, so you can plan your life.

“We’re taking that risk, trying to be a role model of improving equity. Which connects back to my work in social justice. The restaurant is a perfect laboratory to test those ideas, see the impact, provide a career that’s not often on the table for unskilled workers, or people reentering the working world, or maybe it’s their first job.

“Part of creating the community we want to be part of is improving the lives of our employees.”

I ask her if anything else she loves about America has come to mind. She thinks a moment.

“I love the spirit that we can think about and set our goal to improve our lives, and those around us. You can take action, be persistent, make it happen.

“In my generation, it’s not just an option, but an imperative to address problems, work with people to make progress.

“Maybe that’s naïve – but I see the American spirit as seeing a problem, and knowing we’re smart enough to do something about it. Hopefully others want to help others.”

Katrina is 28; she was 11 when the millennium turned.

I ask her if there if there are things about America that she thinks are great.

“Do you have to use that word,” she laughs.

She perches her head thoughtfully on her folded hands.

“More than I can either recall or enumerate now.” She smiles, then continues.

“Freedom of speech is an awesome and complicated concept. Extremely valuable and challenging. Hopefully we’ll always protect freedom of speech, and the ability to live your own life without hurting others.

“It’s not always realized, but as an underlying ideal, it’s very powerful.

“When I disagree with someone, I remind myself that their opinion has the freedom to be expressed.

“The communities and industries that are drawn to that idea, that ideal, that’s what makes America a place to be revered.

“It’s really important now to deliver on the reputation we’ve set for ourselves in the world.”

I thank Katrina for talking with me and she asks if I’d like something else to drink. I stick with my water, and she returns to her laptop at the counter.

I look around at the other tables. In the corner by the window, a young woman in punk clothes – studs, rips and tears, blacks and greys – is staring intently into a laptop which has political stickers plastered all over its back. In the middle of the room, an elderly couple in sweaters is having a quiet, relaxed conversation over their coffee. To my left, a pair of young men with messy hair and precise clothes are talking animatedly at each other.

Katrina’s vision for helping foster the vibrant, inclusive community of Union Square is so deeply thought through, and so beautifully realized, that I am convinced more than ever that Union Square is a microcosm of what America could be.

And, as I leave, her vision of her generation’s commitment to solving problems, and helping others, puts me in a hopeful mood about our long-term future.