Café Selmarie began with the chance meeting of two neighbors in a local grocery store in 1983. It already seemed as though they were destined to meet. Jeanne Uzdawinis and Birgit Kobayashi lived one block away from each other on Giddings and had heard about each other from their neighbors. "A mutual friend had sung the praises of Birgit's hazelnut cheesecake and her nut tarts with apricot—she just loved her stuff," recalls co-owner Jeanne Uzdawinis. "One day we ran into each other at the old Pleasing Supermarket on Lawrence. We chatted on the spot for about 30 minutes, then got together for coffee afterwards," says co-owner Birgit Kobayashi. Their friendship and collaboration led to Lincoln Square's longtime destination restaurant and bakery.

The serendipity of Birgit's and Jeanne's meeting didn't end there. There were other similarities in their backgrounds that prepared them to go into business together. Both grew up in households with mothers who baked and cooked regularly. Before coming to the US, Birgit's family lived in Freiburg, Germany, near the Swiss border. Both her father and mother worked in Switzerland. "My mother took great pride in what she had learned there," says Birgit. "She always made these wonderful dishes and told us that they were recipes she had learned in Switzerland." Jeanne, who grew up in Indiana, moved to Chicago when she was 25. She worked in a number of restaurants as a cook, yet her experience in commercial kitchens made Jeanne realize that she wanted something different. "I disliked restaurant line work, but the one thing I really loved was baking," she says. So Jeanne approached Rolf's Patisserie and offered to work one day a week without pay, in exchange for learning more about the art of pastries. Eventually, she went to work for Rolf full time and learned the Swiss pastry tradition.

A few months after their first meeting, Birgit joined Jeanne as an employee at her wholesale bakery and catering business. They worked out of a rented kitchen at Cicero and Addison and served clients all over the city. It didn't take long for them to decide to start a new business venture together. "The gourmet pastry business was booming in Chicago at that time," recalls Jeanne. "No one had ever seen these types of sweets before and everyone wanted something new. We were at the right place, at the right time."

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