Pull up a chair.
Kaia means home. I grew up on a farm in the Free State — maize, sunflowers and dairy cows — and this is that table, moved to First Avenue.
My mother's bread, forty South African wines by the glass, and nobody rushing you out.
Fifteen years on Third Avenue. Since January, three blocks east on First. Same table, same bread.
1446 First Avenue, between 75th and 76th
Walk in whenever. Five or more? Ring me first.
This season at Kaia
Wat aangaan
Brunch on the farm.
Saturday and Sunday, 11am to 4pm
Bobotie vetkoek, the plaas brekkie, malva pudding French toast, a Bloody Braai with a chili bite in it. Bottomless mimosas or bellinis, $29 for an hour and a half.
Mondays and Tuesdays are for the people in scrubs.
15% off for healthcare workers, every Monday and Tuesday
In 2020, when every restaurant on Third Avenue went dark, Kaia stayed open by cooking: weekly meal plans for the neighbourhood and for the hospitals, my mother's baking and our family's farm recipes going out the door in containers, and a farmers market on the sidewalk when nobody else was outside. The hospitals kept us alive that year. Years later, this is how we say so.
Show a hospital or clinic ID and 15% comes off the whole bill. Food and drink, dine in, no minimum.
Monday night football. Happy hour all night long.
Every Monday from kickoff — game on, TVs on
The game-day combo: Kaia's smash burger and tots with a glass of wine or beer, $20 all in. Happy hour prices don't stop at six on Mondays; they run till the final whistle. Pull up a chair.
Marathon Sunday
Sunday, November 1 — doors at 9am
We're on the course. Mile 17, First Avenue, the loud part. Coffee, rooibos, boerewors rolls and biltong out front for anyone holding a spot on the barricade. Brunch runs all day inside.
Finished the race? Come back that evening with your medal on and the first drink is ours.
Saturdays are market day.
From Saturday, October 3 — every Saturday through December, from 11am, out front
A table, a tent, and whatever came out of the kitchen that morning. Boerewors by the pound from the hundred-year-old recipe, biltong, droëwors and chili bites cured in house, dukka, Ma Elize's bread, her mustard and jam, and malva pudding to take home. Come early; when it's gone, it's gone. We first ran this market in 2020, when it kept the lights on. It's back.
The room is yours
Holiday parties, office lunches, the whole place
Tell me the date and the number and I'll build the menu around it. Braai-style, family-style, or passed. December fills up — say so early.
On Sunday evenings, everybody eats together.
Sondagaandete
On the farm, Sunday lunch was the whole point of the week — one long table, too much food, and nobody allowed to leave early. We lay the same table here on Sunday evenings, from 6pm: a roast, the bread, a bottle opened for the room, and pudding whether you asked for it or not.
One table, and reservations are required — ring us to hold your seats.
Made by hand, from De Hoop.
Gemaak met die hand
The biltong, droëwors, chili bites and boerewors come from one recipe, a hundred years old, from De Hoop — our family farm in the Free State. It crossed the ocean with my mother's handwriting on it.
We make it the way it was made there: air-dried, never cured, with the traditional South African spices — coriander, black pepper, salt, a splash of vinegar — in small batches, by hand. Sliced to order, ¼ lb at a time, or by the pound to take home.
If you're South African, this is why you're here. If you're not, this is where you start.
Fifteen years on Third Avenue, a new room on First.
Ons storie
My father farmed maize, corn and sunflowers, and milked the cows every morning. I came to New York with no plan to open a restaurant, worked years in other people's dining rooms, and missed home badly enough to build my own.
Kaia opened on Third Avenue in 2011. My mother Elize's bread recipe is on every table, and my parents are somewhere in nearly every detail of the room.
Then came 2020. All around us restaurants closed; we didn't. We fed the neighbourhood and the hospitals with weekly meal plans, ran a farmers market out front, and my mother was in the middle of it — her bread, her baking, the heritage recipes from our farm, week after week. It's how we kept the doors open, and it's why the people in scrubs still get looked after here.
In January 2026, fifteen years on, we moved three blocks east to First Avenue. Bigger room, same table.
— Suzaan
Every language here has a word for home.
Kaia is my own spelling of two of them — ekhaya in Zulu, kgae in Sotho. Eleven official languages, eleven ways to say the same thing, and it's the only thing I've ever wanted this room to be.
A braai is the national pastime. We keep the fire going.
Braaidae en partytjies
Springbok match days on the big screen, birthdays, rehearsal dinners, work parties, or the whole room to yourself. Tell me the date and the number and I'll build the menu around it.