The Dish: Downtown Kevin Brown opened his café with love, and kept it going in grief
by Christina Tkacik
Published September 24 in The Baltimore Banner
One moment, Kevin Brown, 65, is passing out cake to visiting art students. The next, he’s bent over, whispering in a deep conversation with a customer who is also a close friend. Later, he’s ribbing a guest who brought in a coffee cup from another store. Then he’s throwing himself on the floor to greet someone in an inside joke.
For two decades, Brown has served central Baltimore reasonably priced breakfast fare, soups and sandwiches at his Nancy by SNAC café.
“We don’t sell anything you can’t make yourself at home,” he says of his North Avenue eatery. But Brown’s quick wit and charismatic, always unfiltered personality make every visit feel special.
Chef John Shields called Brown “an explosion of joy” and a Baltimore institution all his own.
Nancy by SNAC celebrated its 20th anniversary Saturday with cornbread waffles, shrimp and grits, and cream puffs. There were congratulatory speeches from longtime customers, friends and even Comptroller Bill Henry, who told The Banner in a statement that Brown is “a fixture of Baltimore’s cuisine and culture for a generation.”
But the occasion was marked by a moment of silence for what was missing: Brown’s late husband, Bill Maughlin.
Maughlin’s influence on — and then absence from — the eatery has played an outsize role in its journey.
When Maughlin died suddenly of a heart attack in 2023 at 53 years old, a grief-stricken Brown seriously considered shutting down. Instead, buoyed by his customers and some help from his older brother David Brown, the doors remained open.
Brown opened Station North Arts Café (aka SNAC) with Maughlin on North Charles Street. They launched its current iteration, Nancy by SNAC, on the campus of Maryland Institute College of Art 15 years ago.
Nancy by SNAC “was like a ray of sunshine” when it opened, said Phyllis Berger, a photography instructor at Johns Hopkins University who frequently brings her students in to meet Brown. “Suddenly there was a place to go.”
Brown’s regulars include art students, elected officials and people high up in the local art world, such as sculptor Joyce Scott and muralist Ernest Shaw, whose paintings adorn the café.
“People in his restaurant smile at each other because Kevin brings us together,” wrote Olive Waxter, president of the Hippodrome Foundation Inc., in an email.
Ironically, Brown spent much of his early life trying to get away from the people around him.
His mother, a PTA veteran who showed up to every school board meeting, had high expectations for her 17 children, of which Brown was the youngest. The siblings were hard on each other and big on teasing, but underneath the sarcasm was a deep sense of loyalty and unconditional love. “We had to stick together,” Brown said. “We are all we have.”
Growing up in South Baltimore’s Millhill neighborhood, he found solitude in school and at the library. “I didn’t want to go home. There were too many people in the house,“ he said. “When I read every book in the library, I memorized the Dewey decimal system.”
Among the literature he devoured were the writings of James Baldwin, the playwright, essayist and social critic whose portraits hang all over Brown’s café. The work of Baldwin, whom Brown met twice, showed a path for someone like him. “It was OK to be smart and poor and gay and Black,” he said.
After college, Brown had various jobs in journalism, including at The Baltimore Sun, The Afro and WJZ — and he has a handwritten thank-you note from Oprah Winfrey to prove it. He later worked in city government but said his frankness and sometimes smart-aleck attitude meant he clashed with bosses. “I’ve been fired from every job I’ve ever had, except for this one,” he said.
While he was working for the city, a friend gave him the nickname Downtown Kevin Brown, which he has embraced.
Brown met Maughlin over drinks in 1990 at the Hippo nightclub on North Charles. The two were total opposites: Brown was a city mouse, while Maughlin, 10 years younger, grew up in the small, mostly white town of York, Pennsylvania. Yet the two clicked instantly.
Friends said it wouldn’t work, but Maughlin seemed to live to protect Brown and make him happy. “He did everything for me, and sometimes I feel so undeserving of that love,” Brown said. The laundry, the car registration — Maughlin took care of it all.
After several years as a couple — and after Brown was sacked from yet another job — they decided to go into business. Inside their first SNAC (which they closed in 2018), Maughlin prepared brownies, soups and other dishes from his own recipes. Brown held down the front-of-house operations and an art gallery. “I’m the loudmouth that talks too much and takes the money,” he said.
Together, Brown, who is Black, and Maughlin, who was white, fostered a space where anyone could feel at home. “Black, white, young, old, straight, gay, we don’t care,” Brown said. “We’re going to talk to you, we’re going to fuss with you.”
The North Avenue location they later added was named Nancy by SNAC after the late Nancy Haragan, a longtime supporter of the local art scene. “These students drive me crazy,” Brown said of the MICA crowd. “I didn’t have any gray hair before I started working here.”
The shop does not sell espresso drinks, nor does it carry oat milk. A handwritten, expletive-laden sign by the cash register notes in capital letters: “We don’t write your name on the cup. Fuck that.”
Yet for his tough talk, Brown is a natural teacher. Berger, the Hopkins photography instructor, recalled how she first met Brown when she was leading students to take pictures of an old gas station in the neighborhood. Brown invited them all to come back to his café.
“It personalizes the neighborhood, knowing there’s someone there who cares so much about it and who has really made such a difference on that street,” Berger said.
She’s made a habit of coming back with her students. During a recent sunny afternoon, they all filed into the shop where Brown presented them with slices of cake and asked about their work.
As he ended the chat, he offered some direction — and a sassy warning: “Take pretty pictures, and make our city look pretty! Or else I’m gonna hunt you down and fuck you up!”
It’s hard to imagine Brown anywhere else but the café. But after Maughlin died, Brown didn’t know if he could bear to face the business they built together without him.
David Brown, who had helped out in the café before Maughlin’s death, talked Brown into staying on.
After all, David reminded Kevin, Maughlin was the one who wanted the restaurant to reach 20 years in service.
This story was republished with permission from The Baltimore Banner. Visit www.thebanner.com for more.
