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A spread of food from the Oct. 5 Handheld Delights pop-up at the ICA’s Abby Moore Cafe, including crispy pork spring rolls, a steamed bun sandwich, num pang (baguette sandwich), and a scallion and sweet sausage biscuit (Photo by Eileen Mellon)
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Santana Hem, the chef behind Hem and Her (Photo courtesy ICA Cafe)
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The ICA Chef Residency series launched last week. Future events will take place on Nov. 2 and Dec. 7, 2025, and Feb. 1 and March 14, 2026. (Photo by Eileen Mellon)
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The ICA’s Abby Moore Cafe has undergone a refresh since Head of Cafe and Retail Operations Mai Warshafsky took over. (Photo by Eileen Mellon)
Professional experiences, particularly in the restaurant world, often build instincts that stay with you forever. For example, former kitchen staff may want to shout, “Corner!” whenever they make a turn — no matter how long they’ve been out of the industry. Those ingrained instincts have helped guide Mai Warshafsky, head of the Abby Moore Cafe at the Institute for Contemporary Art at Virginia Commonwealth University, in reimagining the museum eatery.
A native New Yorker with deep roots in food and beverage, Warshafsky has worked in countless restaurants, ran a successful shortbread and caramel business for nearly a decade, garnered national press, and happens to be married to a chef. Through that journey, she’s honed a sharp intuition for flavors and the rhythm of kitchen life.
Now, she’s channeling all that culinary cred into a more community‑focused endeavor. On Oct. 5, she launched the cafe’s inaugural Chef Residency series — a program to spotlight emerging culinary voices and offer them a platform to bring new ideas to life.
“That was part of my inspiration for this program,” Warshafsky says. “I really want to continue to be a part of this journey and support people, because I understand it, and I think it’s important for us to have independent businesses and people who are continuing the craft of food, of the culinary arts.”
The first resident chef is Santana Hem, of Hem and Her, whose Khmer‑inspired cooking reflects his Cambodian American background. Over the next six months, Hem will take over the Abby Moore Cafe kitchen for special curated dining events, introducing guests to his culinary perspective.
He’s careful about labels. “I don’t define my food as ‘traditional’ or ‘authentic,’” Hem says. “Any grandma’s going to make the traditional food way better than I am,” he says with a chuckle. “I’m not going to try to re-create what my mom’s going to make. It’s about what I can bring from my training and experiences and my flavor profiles.”
Hem grew up in Northern Virginia and has cooked in well-known New York restaurants including Momofuku Ssäm Bar and Marta. For the past three years, he’s been hosting family‑style supper clubs, first in New York and then Richmond. Warshafsky, already familiar with Hem’s food, previously worked with him at Hatch Kitchen. When she reached out to gauge his interest, he says, “It was the perfect opportunity. I couldn’t turn it down.”
The residency gives Hem space to experiment and explore. At last weekend’s brunch, he served a menu of “Handheld Delights”: kaw sach chrouk (braised, caramelized pork belly on a steamed bun with a jammy egg), num pang (lemongrass meatballs on a baguette with piquant pickled vegetables) and sips including a zingy tamarind-ginger limeade and creamy Khmer iced coffee. The pastry case displayed coconut‑mango sticky rice treats, pandan blondies, scallion and sweet sausage biscuits, and his signature treat with a tongue-twisting name, brown butter black sesame brittle chocolate chip cookies.
For Hem, there’s an excitement that comes with offering a less frequently experienced cuisine, with many diners trying the dishes for the first time.
“Some of these weren’t really refined enough for the supper clubs,” he says. “In Asian, and Southeast Asian culture, there’s a lot of warm, comforting soups and noodles for brunch. It’s not really sexy saying ‘rice porridge for dinner,’ but I’ve always wanted to serve it because it’s delicious.”
At the next event on Nov. 2, Hem will reprise favorites from his brunch menu. As the series continues, the menu will shift more toward Khmer comfort fare, with heartier offerings including buh baw (slow-simmered rice porridge), served at the Dec. 7 and Feb. 1 events. The finale, March 14, will be a Khmer communal tasting dinner — an expansive showcase of Hem’s evolving voice.
Explaining the choice of an extended residency over individual pop-ups, Warshafsky says, “There was always this talk about pop-ups, but I wanted something more, because what I see from pop-ups is this one-and-done [approach], right? They come in, they take over the space. There’s this huge excitement for X amount of time, and then it’s over, and it’s like, ‘What did we build?’ A chef residency gives us this much longer runway to build a relationship, to understand the concept, to edit, to work through challenges, and then also to build on successes.”
Since taking over cafe operations, Warshafsky has spent time refreshing the everyday menu, embracing bold, contemporary versions of familiar flavors: curry-spiced egg salad on toast with a generous slather of locally made VegTable tomato jam, a sandwich elevated by ZZQ smoked chicken and snacks from area purveyors such as Keya’s. In years past, the cafe has been run by third parties, including Ellwood Thompson’s and Soul N’ Vinegar, but bringing operations in-house has given the team more creative control and consistency, Warshafsky says.
For Warshafsky, a first-generation American, the less obvious aspects of Hem’s story were as compelling as his food. “The idea that you are carrying this knowledge and this culture that is originating somewhere else, but you are also very American … if we could change the dialogue a little bit — instead of it being compartmentalized, like, ‘This is the Cambodian or Khmer part, this is the American part’ — I really would love it if we could look at it holistically and just look at it as something new. It’s unified, and you’re just presenting something new to the world.”
At the heart of the residency is interaction and imagination: Hem receives a fresh stage to showcase his creative vision, with the support of a kitchen staff, against a modern backdrop, and the cafe gets to engage with guests differently.
Warshafsky adds, “It’s a relationship that we’re building together for the next six months; we have time to evolve. We have this resource here, let’s use it.”
