The Dish

Cafe Sauvage owner recommends these Black-owned restaurants

As part of our Yes, Chef series, Anaïs Lambert shares her favorite local Black-owned eateries for breakfast, lunch, dinner, and a nightcap.

February 14, 2025

3 minutes to read

You’re reading The Dish, Boston.com’s guide to the Greater Boston food and dining scene. Sign up to get expert food guides, chef Q&As, and industry news in your inbox every week.

When Anaïs Lambert opened Cafe Sauvage in Back Bay with her husband, Antoine Lambert, she admits she was stressed. For usual reasons around opening a restaurant, sure, but this Parisian expat wasn’t sure if her concept would work in Boston.

Cafe Sauvage has the look and feel of a hip French cafe — you’ll find Croque Madame, and they dedicate monthly dinners to speaking only French — but Lambert wanted the menu to go beyond escargot and steak frites. She wanted the menu to represent the Paris food scene she grew up with, which is far more diverse and global.

“It’s a French restaurant with some [touches] of African cuisine,” Lambert said. “But people really liked the concept, and they understood what we were trying to do.”

Lambert said she thinks this is because Boston diners want more variety and food diversity. You can see it in Boston’s recent openings and hot spots, like rooftop Vietnamese restaurant Saigon Babylon and Basque Country-inspired Zurito.

Despite more chefs and restaurant owners making room on their menus for exciting global-influenced dinners, there’s still a lot of room for improvement. Specifically, Boston’s Black-owned restaurant community remains small, much smaller than the 21% of Black residents that make up Boston proper.

“There’s still a lot to do,” Lambert said. Cafe Sauvage is just one of many restaurants in Boston’s Black Restaurant Challenge, an initiative that began in 2018 as a way to celebrate Black History Month and support Black cuisine.

For our Yes, Chef this month, Lambert gave me her Black-owned restaurant picks, and a few more, just because we love sharing food recommendations from Boston’s culinary community.

Breakfast

“Other than my own?” Lambert laughed. Cafe Sauvage is definitely a favorite for brunch, but did you also know that James Beard finalist Comfort Kitchen also does brunch? Lambert recommends the Dorchester restaurant, as well as Cicada in Cambridge for Vietnamese coffee and Angele’s Cafe in Eastie for their chilaquiles.

Lunch

All four MIDA locations are open for lunch or brunch, and Lambert is in the mood for Douglass Williams’ classic carbonara bowl of pasta. Close to her restaurant is Eastern Standard, with a menu made for any craving you might have. When Lambert wants French food staples, this Parisian chooses La Voile.

Dinner

For Caribbean-Southern cuisine, Lambert recommends Savvor Restaurant, a restaurant and lounge that hosts live music. Her picks include the oxtail and the mac-and-cheese. She also wanted to shout out Comfort Kitchen again for its Yassa Chicken, and new restaurants she loves right now, Baleia and Kaia. A more low-key dinner calls for fried chicken from Loretta’s Last Call.

Nightcap

“I have two kids, a husband, a restaurant — it’s really hard to go out,” Lambert admits. One place that is on her radar is the modern supper club Grace by Nia, located in the Seaport. But when she does go out, she orders anything with Mezcal in it at spots like Zazi Bar or Yvonne’s.

For your reading list

🫶 Help me build the perfect Boston date night
🍕 Fill out our pizza bracket
☕ George Howell comes back to Cambridge (Boston Globe)
🙌 No reservation? No problem (Eater Boston)

For your calendar

🍅 Help decide the best bloody Mary
✍️ Poetry at Neighborhood Wines
🌮 V-Day takeout from Sunset Cantina
🎬 Watch sports rom-coms at Parlor Sports

What most of the Boston.com newsroom has been eating:

Pizza. Pizza. More pizza.

I’ll have more thoughts on what that’s been like for me soon, but until then, I wanted to use this space to shout out the Boston.com pizza bracket and all the pizzerias that have fed me and my co-workers over the last couple of months. I’ll avoid sharing my thoughts on any of the pizzerias still left in our bracket, but I do want to mention one pizzeria I was sad to see drop from the bracket: Picco.

It was my first outing after coming down with a cold. At 2 p.m., an hour before they closed lunch service, the place was slammed. I had a glass of orange wine with some of the best sausage and ricotta pizza I’ve ever tried. We can expect better from our pizzerias, and Picco gets it.

— Katelyn Umholtz

Katelyn Umholtz

Food and Restaurant Reporter

Katelyn Umholtz covers food and restaurants for Boston.com. Katelyn is also the author of The Dish, a weekly food newsletter.

Cafe Sauvage owner recommends these Black-owned restaurants