by Laura Garber
Mary Roy made a promise to herself when she held her nine-month-old daughter in her arms.
“She could not speak, she could not understand but I held her and promised her a better life,” Roy said.
That promise carried the mother and daughter from Bangladesh to the Mediterranean coast of France, and finally to a sunlit stretch of 14th Street in Hermosa Beach, where she opened Covinten Cafe on the last day of 2025.
Roy grew up watching her family transform fruits and vegetables into vivid dishes and fresh juices, timed to Bangladesh’s six seasons. Her father, she remembers, was a meticulous cook who approached every meal as something to be shared and savored.
“We are very playful with our food,” she said.
At 20, when her daughter Cinderella was born, everything shifted.
“I came from a third world country,” Roy said. “Just one look at her and I knew I wanted more.”
Roy’s work at the Bangladeshi embassy opened doors to international business. She specialized in building companies from the ground up, she said, “handing over the key when it was ready to run.” A French tech company brought her to the French port city of Marseille, on the Mediterranean.
When Cinderella was old enough, Roy enrolled her in a private school in Southern California, returning alone to France.
“It was so hard leaving her at the door of the school and crying,” she recalled. “But I knew it was the best thing for her.”
In Marseille, Roy found an unlikely mentor: a French baker who invited her to learn the intricacies of pastry-making, down to the precise way a garlic bulb should be cut. Roy helped run the bakery’s operations for over a decade, growing it into a successful waterside bistro. Then, in 2020, a late-night call changed everything. Cinderella was alone and sick in a hospital in Southern California.
Roy booked her flight to California.
Her mentor understood, complications of her own had already made the future of the bakery uncertain. They agreed to close it together.
“I came to America and had to start over,” Roy said. “I had nothing.”
Despite two master’s degrees and years of international business experience, Roy struggled to find work.
“It got to the point I started asking interviewers why they weren’t hiring me,” she said. “They told me it was maybe my language or that I wasn’t educated in the States. But I thought that shouldn’t matter.”
It was Cinderella who saw a way forward. If her mother knew operations and pastry, why not open a cafe?
Roy took the advice seriously. Without a car, she walked miles to the food safety courses required to open a business, toured the South Bay for the right location, and continued applying for jobs in between.
They looked at Malaga Cove, Manhattan Beach, and Redondo Beach. But nothing felt right.
“Then we were lost in Hermosa Beach,” Roy said. “My daughter and I saw the Pier and decided to walk around.”
They had a seafood lunch nearby and noticed something in the faces of the people around them.
“Everyone looked so happy here, so calm,” she said. “I knew this was my spot.”
That evening, Roy called her friend in Marseille at sunset, the same hour the two had once stood together after closing the bakery, watching the light fall over the water.
She told her about the dream.
“Do it,” Roy recalled her friend saying.
Roy found the space on 14th Street not long after — concrete dust billowing from the open doors because construction was underway.
“I told them not to tell me the price,” she said. “I knew it was mine.”
What followed was harder than she had anticipated. Roy and Cinderella ate cheap, easy meals while building out the cafe, often sleeping on the floor during construction.
“There were many nights that I cried,” Roy said. “I felt like I may have let my daughter down.”
But Cinderella kept them moving. Helping with construction, including climbing up on the roof. She assured her mother that nice meals would come again. The process was part of the promise.
During construction, Roy landed a full-time job with a technology company in El Segundo. She now starts her days at 4 a.m. in El Segundo, and opens the cafe doors at 7.
She named the cafe after a distant relative her mother had always spoken about; a figure said to have traveled between South Asia and Portugal, trading spices. The surname was Covinten.
“Her memory isn’t doing well,” Roy said of her mother. “But she has always mentioned Covinten.”
The cafe reflects the full arc of Roy’s life. Vintage chandeliers, candlelit sconces, and gold-framed, filigree mirrors give it the feel of another era. The menu draws from her Bangladeshi roots; playful, colorful and seasonal filtered through a decade of French pastry training. A matcha latte comes layered with citrus jam and whipped cream. The Mojito Goldfish, a vivid non-alcoholic green mojito, arrives garnished with Goldfish crackers.
“Americans are very open with their cuisine,” Roy said. “They will try anything.”
The community response has been warm, she said but not surprising.
“It’s just the way people are in Hermosa Beach,” Roy said. “They are so welcoming and supportive.”
The promise she made in Bangladesh, she said, has been kept. Not once, but twice. Once for Cinderella. And now, for herself.
Covinten Cafe is located at 87 14th Street in Hermosa Beach.
For more information visit Covintencafe.com. ER
