Ethnic variety

By Erin Hyden

The Global Cafe features a lunch buffet for hungry diners. (Aaron Eisenhauer)

Cape Girardeau may not be considered a culinary metropolis for "ethnic" cuisine.

The area is known more for dishing out some saucy barbecue, golden fried catfish and occasionally some ethnic foods. Usually, foreign foods are only available at a few restaurants scattered around town. Each of these restaurants creates dishes from a particular area or country, but at the Global Cafe you can find foods from several countries around the world, all under one roof.

"Our food is very diverse. We offer food that has never been known to the community," said Belen Lichtenegger, part-owner of Global Cafe and Southeast Missouri State University mathematics professor. She said that although they mainly specialize in Indian and Philippine cuisine, they plan to expand the menu into other geographical areas.

The Global Cafe (Aaron Eisenhauer)

"When we bought the building, we bought the recipes from Cafe Azu with it, so we are going to bring back things that a lot of people liked to eat, like the schnitzel," Lichtenegger said. She says that she wants to also start making things like tabouli to incorporate other parts of the world and their cuisine.

"I want it to be truly global. I want to pick up the best in every culture," Lichtenegger said.

Lichtenegger runs the restaurant with her brother, Ray Watin, who left his engineering job to help at the cafe, mainly as a chef. He said they plan on trying new dishes from all over the world. "We learn as we go. We test out new recipes from other countries, and we change them as needed. One day we hope to have foods from every part of the world," Watin said.

Anja Lichtenegger cleared plates from a table Monday during lunch at the Global Cafe.

Although Watin and Lichtenegger are area pioneers in what some consider to be "fusion cuisine," they just consider themselves to be trying new things.

"At Global Cafe we never intended to be a fusion restaurant. We have been told that we were cooking fusion food, but then we learned that fusion really means that we would be using ingredients from different parts of the world in the same dishes ... I don't think that we are doing this," Lichtenegger said.

According to the brother-sister duo, they never had really planned to own a restaurant. "We bought the building so that our business across the street [Global Trading] would not have the same kind of store across from it. It was to help our store," Watin said.

Lichtenegger said now their focus is on the restaurant, they have plans to expand the services offered there. "We are planning to open up a meeting room where the recruiting offices were, have bands come and play in the evenings and we are going to try and do more catering."

The restaurant has a full bar, but Lichtenegger said it has never been much of a focus. "We don't have a happy hour or anything, but I think that when we are ready we will try to do something like a happy hour."

Catering services are available but aren't a focus of the restaurant. "Now we really want to try and have healthy, good food and a variety of foods. Soon we hope to really expand what we do," Lichtenegger said.

Global Cafe is open Monday through Saturday with a lunch buffet from 11 a.m. until 2:30 p.m. A more extensive dinner menu is available from 5 to 9 p.m.