The Mayan Cafe

About The Mayan Cafe

Welcome to the Mayan Café, an indigenously-inspired farm-to-table restaurant in Louisville, KY. The Mayan culture, one known for rich cooking traditions, still lives on through our chef, Bruce Ucán, a Mayan Indian from Mexico’s Yucatan peninsula. Here, at the Mayan Café, Chef Ucán fuses traditional Mayan flavors, ingredients & cooking techniques with local, sustainably-farmed ingredients. One of our Louisville’s food critics, Marty Rosen, said it best : “…it’s true that Ucán’s cuisine draws on his Yucatan heritage. But it’s also true that his cooking is shaped by an original, sensual imagination that transcends his geographical origins.” The concept of sustainability is at the core of what we do and how we do it. We source our meat exclusively from local farms and use as much sustainably-farmed local produce & cheese as is seasonally available. We believe in what our farmers are doing and also believe that incorporating those products into our dishes makes better food. This is how Chef Bruce grew up eating, and it’s at the foundation of his understanding of food. Chef Ucán is at the farmer’s market every Saturday morning (except when his brother and Sous Chef, Willy, goes for him!), searching for “that odd vegetable that no one wants to buy,” he says. He loves a challenge. And that vegetable that no one wants is a gold mine for him. Parsnips, daikon radishes, Brussels sprouts, rainbow chard…all represent little challenges to make something delicious. Farmers are constantly stopping by the restaurant – trunks full of tomatoes, greens, eggs, whatever – because someone told them Chef Bruce would probably buy their vegetables. And it’s true. Chef Bruce employs the same mentality with vegetables in Kentucky that he did growing up in the Yucatan.