When it opened a year ago she was welcoming 50 people a day in Nigeria's megacity Lagos.
Fear of coronavirus has driven most diners away.
But Igbe believes inflation rather than the pandemic may kill her business.
The price of basic ingredients has risen sharply since Cafe de Elyon opened in January 2020, just weeks before Nigeria's first known coronavirus case was diagnosed in Lagos.
Food inflation stood at 19.56% last month, after rising for 16 months straight.
"This has really, really crippled us in the last one year. The prices of food have just skyrocketed and the quality of food we would normally plate for our customers we've had to reduce this."
She says she resisted increasing the price of dishes to retain customers who now mainly use the restaurant's takeaway service.
Nigeria is in its second recession in four years, triggered by an oil price crash that hammered state revenues and weakened the local currency.
That has made imports more expensive, spurring on inflation.
Restaurants and wholesale vendors are feeling the impact.
Tina Shaire, head chef at Zolene restaurant in Lagos, blames Nigeria's border closures for cutting off access to cheap imports
"Most of our produce are not really made locally and the ones that are made locally which is at the middle belt, they were lots of killings and fighting there so price really spiked so we are talking about more than a 100 percent differential."
The closures began in August 2019 to combat smuggling and continued until December 2020 to prevent the novel coronavirus spreading.
The borders reopened last month, but prices remain high.
Hitting business owners like Melanie who are struggling to stay open.
