Dining from the heart

New San Antonio cafe serves up comfort food for a good cause

Comfort Cafe helps put San Antonians on the path to recovery.

"It was actually a surprise for us,” says Teri Lopez about the May 17 debut of San Antonio’s new Comfort Cafe. “We weren’t thinking about opening a cafe here.”

An offhand comment from a customer in Smithville, where Comfort Cafe has been serving guests on a donation basis for almost a decade, would soon take her and co-founder and wife Rosie Lopez on a rapid path to expanding their work in helping Texans maintain sobriety.

“[A customer said], ‘If you guys are doing so well in Smithville, imagine what you can do in San Antonio,” says Lopez. A quick online search led them to the former home of Oky Doky Restaurant at 5616 Bandera Rd. in Leon Valley.

The area made sense because many of those served by Comfort Cafe’s parent nonprofit Serenity Star live in the neighborhood. And the color scheme and eclectic feel of the space was reminiscent of the original location felt like a sign it was meant to be.

Like the Smithville restaurant, the San Antonio Comfort Cafe is entirely staffed by people in recovery. Donations are suggested at $10 for a full meal or $5 for a specialty drink, but the staff does not turn away any customers.

The menu is the same, spanning everything from breakfast fare like sweet cream pancakes and scrambles to sandwiches, salads, and burgers. There is also a full coffee menu with a wide variety of espresso drinks.

“We figured it's worked,” says Lopez, noting that some Smithville customers have already made the drive to the new spot to try out their favorites.

Those same loyal guests and grads of the Serenity Star program are also helping the program are also helping to find transitional housing in the area. Lopez says San Antonio has organically become a "step two" in the recovery program. Smithville has morphed into serving those new in recovery, while San Antonio is now staffed by those with more time under their belts.

And though Lopez admits they got an offer to bring Comfort Cafe to Phoenix, for now the two locations are more than keeping the team busy — and providing much needed aid to an underserved community, one omelette at a time.

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SPARE ART

North San Antonio gets crafty with new creative supplies shop

Photo by Ismael Rodriguez.

Local nonprofit Spare Parts recently opened its brick-and-mortar center for creative reuse.

One local nonprofit organization has spent years getting environmental accountability and community education down to a fine art. And now it’s getting crafty with a new brick-and-mortar shop in North San Antonio aimed to help locals to go green.

Spare Parts was founded in 2010 by executive director and longtime arts educator Mary Elizabeth Cantú to provide a creative spark for area students and schools lacking arts funding and resources. Through a variety of educational programs, public art exhibitions, events, and the organization’s traveling Mini Art Museum, Spare Parts has enlightened thousands of students and San Antonians, all while fostering reuse practices and sustainability, a key tenet of the nonprofit.

Spare Parts’ latest endeavor is another artistic triumph. Its new center for creative reuse, located at 13451 Wetmore Rd., is nothing less than a crafter’s delight. The shop features an impressive array of “pre-loved” and price-reduced artsy merchandise — from paint supplies and paper crafts to sewing items, beading and jewelry, school and office supplies, vintage gadgets, and crafting kits — all of which has been rescued from area landfills.

Cantú notes that proceeds from the new Spare Parts’ shop will enable the organization to further increase creative and educational experiences for San Antonio students and families. But even more so, she hopes the shop will help locals embrace the concept that one person’s trash can be another’s artistic treasure.

“There really isn’t any more room in the world for this stuff. Buying pre-loved at places like Spare Parts or other stores is a way to reduce the amount of things [people] feel that they need,” Cantú said in a recent interview with the San Antonio Sentinel. “We’re challenging people to rethink things around them, buy pre-loved, and find a way to be creative in their lives.”

In the time of COVID-19, however, getting the creative juices flowing isn’t as simple as popping into the Spare Parts shop. Though the center for creative reuse is open, the store is currently offering only weekend curbside pickup of items ordered through its website. But crafters shouldn’t despair, as Spare Parts is offering private in-person shopping experiences in the new year, with the first planned for January 16 and 17.

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