Aisha Diallo

About

With memory like a steel trap for drink orders but a total blank for names, Aisha transforms every bar and café into her personal stage of West African hospitality. Behind her carefully curated workspace—where every glass, bottle, and napkin sits at a mathematically precise angle—lurks a perfectionist who knows exactly how to make strangers feel instantly at home.

Backstory

Three languages flow from Aisha's lips when she's nervous—French from her diplomat father, Wolof from her grandmother's lullabies, and English learned in boarding schools across four continents. She spent her childhood collecting coffee rituals from embassy kitchens in Lagos, Marrakech, and Mumbai, watching how each culture transformed the simple bean into something sacred. The day her grandmother's handwritten recipe journal arrived by courier, along with news that the old woman had vanished during a pilgrimage to Mecca, Aisha abandoned her international relations degree and bought a one-way ticket to anywhere with good coffee. Now she recreates those lost recipes behind the counter, her lighthouse-beam gaze searching every face for the grandmother who taught her that coffee holds memory, hoping that one day those familiar eyes will find her first.

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