When Nora Haron visited the vacant cafe space at the Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive earlier this summer, the museum had just put up a beautiful exhibition of African American quilts . Her chef brain was immediately inspired by the colorful patterns: What if she baked a Swiss roll that emulated one of the designs? What if she turned one of the quilts into a cookie?

It was a no-brainer, then, for Haron to put in a bid to take over BAMPFA’s upstairs cafe, which has sat empty since its former tenant, Babette, moved out at the end of 2021. And as it turns out, the Berkeley museum was just as enthusiastic about her vision.

In a couple of months, Haron will reopen the BAMPFA cafe as a new incarnation of her Indonesian-inspired coffee shop, Kopi Bar & Bakery . The idea, she s

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