Photo courtesy of Olexa’s Cafe
Diane Olexa, left, with her mother, Marilyn, and the America’s Best Restaurants Roadshow crew after filming an episode for the web series in October 2022.
Before there was a cafe — before there was a cake studio or a catering operation — there was a woman who wanted a restaurant. She never got to open one herself. Her daughter did it for her.
Diane Olexa grew up watching her mother bake wedding cakes and cook for brides on the most important days of their lives. At 22, fresh out of college, Diane made her first wedding cake as a gift to a college roommate — and something clicked. A catering business followed, launched out of the kitchen at Southeastern Bible College. Then came a staff. Then came the cafe.
Photo courtesy of Olexa’s Cafe
Olexa’s Cafe, Cakes & Catering serves lunch Monday through Saturday from 11 a.m. to 2 p.m., with dinner on Tuesdays until 8 p.m., offering soups, sandwiches and butter creme cakes alongside wedding cakes, occasion cakes and full-service catering for rehearsal dinners, corporate events and private celebrations.
Her mother joined her as a creative partner along the way. Today, Olexa’s on Culver Road in Mountain Brook Village operates as a cafe, a cake studio and a full-service catering operation, with a team of more than 24 people and a clientele that has been showing up for more than 20 years.
Olexa doesn’t separate her business story from her family story. Asked what it was like to build something alongside the woman who inspired her, she paused before answering.
“She wanted a restaurant before she left this earth, and her dream was realized in Olexa’s Cafe,” Olexa said. “God used the next generation to bring her dream to life. I would not be me without her.”
Photo courtesy of Olexa’s Cafe
The cafe itself came about the way many good ideas do: from a customer who wouldn’t let it go. A guest at one of Olexa’s catered receptions pulled her aside and asked where they could eat her food every day. That question led directly to Olexa opening the dining room in 2004. The French-courtyard atmosphere she built around it — airy, easy-going, distinctly unlike a working lunch — became the calling card. So did the buttercreme cakes.
Olexa is deliberate about what she wants guests to experience the moment they sit down.
“We hope that they feel like they are on a retreat — that they can relax and have a vacation-like peace from the courtyard atmosphere, the servers and the food,” she said.
Photo courtesy of Olexa’s Cafe
The catering side of the business puts Olexa’s team inside weddings, rehearsal dinners, bridal luncheons, baby showers, corporate lunches and private after-hours events. It’s work that carries weight, and Olexa knows it. Events, she said, are about creating memories, and that means every detail has to be thought through before anyone walks in the door. The same approach carries into the cake studio, where brides come in with a vision and leave with the confidence that it will show up exactly right on their wedding day.
Mountain Brook Village has rewarded that consistency with loyalty that spans generations. Customers tell Olexa they’ve been coming since they were little girls. Brides return with their families for Tuesday night dinners. Milestones — birthdays, anniversaries, celebrations of all kinds — keep finding their way back to the same table.
“We have so many regulars that make our days feel like we are not at work but among friends,” Olexa said. “Food brings us all together.”
Photo courtesy of Olexa’s Cafe
The growth hasn’t been without strain. Olexa described opening the cafe as the hardest stretch of the whole journey and said, with some relief, that she’s glad she didn’t know in advance how hard it would be. What’s kept things moving through the difficult seasons, she said, is loyal staff and something harder to quantify. Olexa’s is not shy about its faith: she described praying that every guest who walks through the door leaves with a refreshed spirit.
More than two decades in, Olexa still lights up at the sight of a happy face leaving with a birthday cake or a bride who got exactly what she envisioned. Her mother’s dream — the restaurant, the connection, the nurturing table — is very much still open for business. As long as the customers keep coming, Olexa said, she’ll keep showing up.
Olexa’s Cafe is located at 2838 Culver Road, Mountain Brook. Call 205-871-2060 or visit olexas.com.
