Alex Na at a free tiramisu pop-up hosted by Church Hill’s Giorno Market
Most everybody has a nickname. Alex Na’s is “the free tiramisu guy.”
The dessert — ladyfingers dipped in instant coffee, layered with creamy mascarpone and dusted with cocoa powder — has unlocked a new world for the South Korea native since he relocated to Richmond. It led him to his current roommate, helped him make friends and unexpectedly became his calling card.
Since October of last year, Na has been making pans of tiramisu and popping up at events throughout the city to serve free slices to the community. On Sept. 12, he’ll be at boba tea shop TeaDo at 1225 W. Broad St. He says, “I think if I view tiramisu as a dessert, then I’ll get bored of it quickly, but I view it as a way to bring people together.”
While it sounds like a mission statement, his connection to tiramisu actually stems from a case of too many leftovers.
Na moved to Richmond in July 2025 looking for a clean slate. A policy worker, he had been fired from his job in Washington, D.C., “literally the week of inauguration” and had ended a long-term relationship.
Looking for new beginning, he eyed capitals along the coasts and got a job in Richmond. “I didn’t know anyone, so it was like starting fresh on everything, a whole big restart,” Na says. “I feel like I can be genuinely myself because no one knows me, so I can be as authentic to myself as I can, almost a little freeing in a way.”
When he was growing up, Na shadowed his mother in the kitchen, cutting ingredients, peeling garlic and often telling her, “It needs more salt.” He never thought of baking or cooking as a way to bring people together, but it all traces back to his birthday celebrations last October.
Because he was new in town, most of his guests were old friends from Maryland. To thank them for making the trek, Na made a massive pan of brownie tiramisu using a recipe he’d found online. With a third of it left after the party, he says, “I just couldn’t finish it by myself.”
He turned to TikTok, posted a video featuring his cat, LeBron, and told viewers, “Pull thru plz help me finish this.”
It turns out, a bunch of people did. The video surpassed 20,000 views, drawing hundreds of comments and DMs asking, “Where’s your apartment?” He told them to meet him at Jefferson Park in Union Hill. “I thought like three people would show up, because at the end of that it was still a stranger giving [food] away,” Na says, “but like 10 to 15 people show up that evening.”
At the next event, at Libby Hill Park, people brought baked goods, and it turned into a picnic. “I’m dusting cocoa on my tiramisu, and I’ll never forget — I look up, and I see a swarm of like 35 to 40 people walking my way,” he says with a laugh.
Since then, Na has done a dozen-plus pop-ups. The crowd was initially people his age, he says, but it has expanded. “I think now it’s kind of grown into, like, everyone’s coming. It’s so cool, because then you get a multi-intergenerational connection,” he says. “I think community building can only be true community building if it’s free and removes as many barriers to entry as possible. I think that’s my ultimate goal.”
In addition to the park pop-ups, Na has served free slices at local businesses Basically Halal, Richbrau Brewing, ILYSM Books, The Park, Conex, RVA Katana, The Purrfect Bean and Giorno Market, and he has woven himself into Richmond rituals — preparing a Ukrop’s Rainbow Cookie version for the annual Monument Avenue 10K and holding his biggest pop-up to date at a Richmond Flying Squirrels game.
“It’s such an honoring and humbling feeling that people see my content and are inspired,” Na says. “I just kind of started as some random guy, a D.C. transplant, and now people are looking at me and inspired by me, and I just think that’s so heartwarming.”
When he first started the pop-ups, Na says, people often asked if he was from the area. When he replied that he’d recently moved to the city, their reaction was often, “What you’re doing is such a Richmond thing.”
“I’m so glad that I could kind of fit into the Richmond culture in that way,” he says. “I didn’t mean to. There’s so much personality and culture in Richmond. But I think the root of it is genuinely people being who they are and finding their own community and finding their support group.”
Na uses a tiramisu recipe he found online and tweaked. He’s not worried about authenticity or satisfying tiramisu purists. “It’s always new people coming in, and it’s an avenue to support small businesses and bring [people] into small businesses, bringing the community together,” he says.
Na typically makes two to four pans per pop-up, calibrating portion sizes based on the size of the crowd. There’s a process he follows for each event, including skipping grocery shopping the week before to ensure he has enough room in his fridge. He makes it all happen with a small stand mixer and a tiny pantry piled high with ladyfingers.
The pop-ups are always free, although local businesses have sponsored events to cover the cost of ingredients, and Na has partnered with organizations including RVA Community Fridges to cross-support. As for the future, he says, “I think there’s a lot of opportunities.”
Although Na isn’t paid, he says he gets something in return: a growing community in a city that was once unfamiliar. “I don’t think you can do what I do in any other city. I think this is so uniquely Richmond. I found that’s what makes Richmond Richmond,” Na says. “It makes it so unique and so fun and, I don’t know, just so wholesome. If people believe in your cause, they will come around to support you, and I think I’ve truly felt that.”
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