She bakes all of her pastries here, and creates tartines, chicken confit and blueberry cheesecakes in the cafe’s open kitchen. The idea, she said, is to help bring fresh, healthy food to a neighborhood that has long relied on fast-food eateries and carry-out restaurants for meals.

AD

The French-themed cafe and wine bar comes nearly a decade after Carpenter opened Domku in the District’s Petworth neighborhood before it became the trendy hotspot it is today. With Nürish, Carpenter is forging a similar path with hopes of helping draw more entrepreneurs to Anacostia.

AD

“Nürish has a real coffeehouse ambiance that Anacostia has not had in a while,” said Edward S. Grandis, executive director of the Anacostia Business Improvement District. “We do have sit-down restaurants and we do have carry-outs, but this type of coffeehouse is new to the area.”

Armed with an $85,000 grant from the District’s Great Streets program, Carpenter plans to expand the small cafe by building an annex, purchasing more kitchen equipment and adding a garden cafe to the back of the restaurant.

AD

She would not disclose start-up costs, but said she raised $15,000 using the Web site Clovest, and took out a bank loan to finance the rest of the business.

Carpenter built much of the furniture at the cafe herself, repurposing old chairs and fashioning light fixtures out of copper tubing. The walls, painted a cotton candy pink, are bare. But, Carpenter said, all that will evolve with time.

AD

“Eventually we’ll change things as we have money,” she said, adding that she took a similar approach with Domku, which specializes in Scandinavian food. “I knew that it would be difficult in the beginning. I wanted to minimize the up-front costs knowing what was ahead.”

AD

The biggest challenge, she said, has been attracting new customers. The cafe’s perch at the back of the Anacostia Arts Center doesn’t lend it a lot of visibility. There have been other surprises along the way, too. Beer and wine sales have been very slow, and the bustling nighttime business that Carpenter relies on at Domku seems to be elusive in Anacostia. The restaurant is now closed on Mondays, which turned out to be a slow day for lunch business. Sunday brunch also got nixed.

“The cycles of business are the complete opposite of what they are at Domku,” Carpenter said. “We thought Sunday brunch would be huge, but it turned out to be very quiet. Most people go to church and then they have family dinners.”

AD

Jehiel Oliver, who works at a business incubator next door, stops by Nürish almost every day. Before discovering the cafe, he often bought a slice of pizza or walked home for lunch.

AD

“I’ve been coming here since they opened,” said Oliver, 32, who was camped out at the cafe’s bar with his laptop one morning this week. “It’s nice to have a more healthy, interesting food option.”

Before opening the cafe, Carpenter — who has a background in international development and a master’s in education policy — worked with a handful of pop-up restaurants in the neighborhood, including a chicken-and-waffles eatery at the arts center. She is also the founder of Nürish: The Center for a Creative Culinary Economy, a nonprofit incubator for restaurateurs.

She said she hopes Nürish’s presence in Anacostia will inspire more restaurateurs to open cafes and standalone eateries in the neighborhood.