If a Café Could Hug: Inside Fatma’s Cozy Corner
Fatma Aydin at Fatma’s Cozy Corner, photo by Ellis Anderson
April 2025In a historic Tremé community hub, Fatma Aydin continues the hospitable tradition, offering a tempting menu, a comfortable vibe – and hugs.
– by Kim Ranjbar
photos by Kim Ranjbar and Ellis Anderson
This column is underwritten in part by Matthew Peck Gallery, 534 Royal Street.
Visiting Fatma’s Cozy Corner in the Tremé is a lot like an open invitation to hang out at your best friend’s house. Comfy, high-backed, paisley-upholstered couches are tucked next to the front window, an upright piano stands stolid, waiting patiently to be played in a rear dining room, and a proud tabby cat guards the stoop where tall French doors stand open to the corner of North Robertson and Ursulines Avenue.
Aside from white-washed, fiddleback chairs and the aroma of buttery baked goods and rich coffee, the coziest characteristic of this quaint café would have to be its owner, Fatma Aydin. Day in and day out, Fatma is always present with her ready smile and sincere bear hugs, welcoming new customers and old friends like family.
“I love what I do. I cannot imagine doing anything else,” says Aydin.
A cozy corner indeed, photo by Kim Ranjbar
Though she opened the Tremé neighborhood café in 2017, Aydin is no stranger to the restaurant industry. Since 1985, when Fatma and her brother Suleyman opened Mona Lisa, the French Quarter’s first gourmet pizza joint, she has balanced many proverbial plates over the years.
“Mona Lisa’s was a po-boy place and the two guys who ran it just left, so the landlord gave it to us,” recalls Ayid. “She said I’ll give the place, you can run it and live upstairs. We said okay, we can try. We’re still good friends!”
With help from other investors, Fatma and her brother not only opened Mona Lisa’s (still open under different management), they successfully expanded into a small local chain with an outlier launched in Denver, Colorado.
On the corner of Ursulines Ave. and North Robertson Streets, photo by Kim Ranjbar
The brother and sister team also co-owned and operated several other restaurants including franchises of café Roma, a pizza and pasta spot on Magazine Street, café Angeli, a popular late-night pizzeria in the French Quarter, Fellini’s café (now Blue Oak BBQ), and Santa Fe Restaurant, currently on Esplanade Avenue.
Before opening her Cozy Corner, Fatma’s most recent venture was a Mediterranean restaurant called Fatoush located next to the New Orleans Healing Center. café Istanbul, a music venue her brother Suleyman co-owned and operated with local poet Chuck Perkins, is just down the block.
“He [Suleyman] was always my mentor, my help, and he was always there whenever I needed whatever I needed,” explains Fatma. “He was a hardworking man and I just followed in his footsteps and we did well.”
Sadly, her brother passed away last year. “I miss him,” admits Fatma. “He was everything to me.”
photo by Kim Ranjbar
Open nearly a decade, Fatma’s Cozy Corner always seems to have customers, whether it be neighbors dropping in for a jolt during the morning rush or leisurely afternoons with folks chatting over sweet bites of baklava in the front parlor or sipping Turkish coffee while debating current events at one of several sidewalk tables on N. Robertson Street.
“Because I have been in this business so long and worked in all of those different places, I have met many beautiful people,” says Fatma. “Whenever I open a new place, I always do well because those people come and find me.”
Drawn by the power of Aydin’s affectionate, generous personality, people have also long adored her cooking. Limited by the Cozy Corner’s tiny kitchen, the seasoned cook and restaurateur has spent several years honing the menu.
Stuffed grape leaves, photo by Ellis Anderson
Beef and lamb gyro, photo by Ellis Anderson
Today Fatma’s offers a jumble of cuisines, as eclectic a mix as the artwork adorning the café’s walls. Dishes include breakfast biscuits with scrambled eggs and American cheese, bagels and lox with cream cheese and capers, a Mediterranean plate with kasseri, feta and brie, and a Cuban panini with ham, salami and pickles.
“I’ll prepare Greek foods and American foods, but because I am from Turkey, I know how to cook Turkish foods the best.” If you’ve ever tasted Fatma’s stuffed grape leaves or börek – a flaky, buttery spinach and feta pie – you’d be hard-pressed to disagree.
Börek – a flaky, buttery spinach and feta pie, photo by Kim Ranjbar
Cold baklava or soğuk baklava, photo by Kim Ranjbar
A relative newcomer to the menu, Fatma’s has also begun serving cold baklava, a dessert that’s been trending in Turkey over the past three years. Similar to traditional baklava, cold baklava or “soğuk baklava” is made from layers of crisp phyllo dough and chopped pistachio, but is soaked in a milky simple syrup, topped with a sifted layer of cocoa powder, then chilled in the refrigerator.
A Historical Location
With its beadboard wainscotting and faded painted sign, it’s almost like the corner building has always been a café. According to Ayid, it’s been standing for over 150 years. Mama Ruth Queen opened the club back in 1971 when her other establishment – the famous Caldonia Inn known for launching Professor Longhair – was demolished to make way for Armstrong Park.
Many locals these days remember when it used to be Joe’s Cozy Corner, a popular bar and live music venue, and a place that became integral to the city’s brass band renaissance.
Olympians at Cozy Corner, Photograph by Michael P. Smith © Historic New Orleans Collection, 2007.0103.8.1749
Former proprietor "Papa" Joe Glasper welcomed burgeoning musicians Troy “Trombone Shorty” Andrews and Kermit Ruffins, while the bar also served a dual purpose as a small, community hub where neighborhood kids could get free breakfast and school supplies.
During the 2017 renovations, Ayid discovered hand-painted lettering advertising Ruth’s Cozy Corner on the old wooden lapboards, a sign that was hidden by a brick facade. With the intention of preserving as much as she could, Ayid had the sign touched up and re-mounted on the side of the building facing N. Robertson Street.
Since she opened eight years ago, Ayid has seen a lot of changes in Tremé, and not all for the better. After the devastation of the 2005 levee failures, many people couldn’t come back as they had no insurance for homes passed down through generations, nor did they have the money to make needed repairs. “ A lot of the buildings were vacant and in bad condition, and as time passed, they just got worse.”
“When Joe’s Cozy Corner was here there were always lots of people outside, sitting on the stoops and walking up and down the street. There was so much life,” remembers Ayid. “But after Katrina we lost all of that.”
As an active member of the Tremé Neighborhood Association, Fatma regularly attends meetings and tries to encourage new people in the community to embrace the neighborhood's unique history and culture. “It’s why tourists come to visit us. If we don’t have the culture our city is known for, what do we have?”
Regardless of changes to the neighborhood, Fatma is unabashedly happy serving loyal customers and newcomers alike at her corner bakery and café, a spot which will likely be her final venture.
“I don’t have the energy to start something new,” laughs Ayid. “I don’t want to work that hard anymore. I’ll leave young people to do that now.”
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