Every Wednesday at 3 p.m., for two and a half hours, Comedor Comunitario on 24th Street serves whoever walks in the door. There is no charge. There is no application. There is one question on the way out: do you want to take a plate home for someone.
Carmen Reyes, 62, started the kitchen in her apartment in 2017 after she lost her husband. She had cooked for twelve people that first Wednesday. Twenty-two showed up. She borrowed chairs from her neighbors.
It moved to its current storefront in 2019, after a landlord on 24th gave Carmen the space rent-free for a year. He has not raised the rent since.
The Wednesday menu is whatever a rotating crew of 14 volunteers can put together from donated ingredients. The morning I visited, lunch was rice, beans, chicken in salsa verde, sliced cucumber, and tortillas a volunteer named Doña Rosa had pressed by hand starting at 6 a.m.
“We do not ask anything,” Carmen says. “We do not ask if you have a job. We do not ask where you live. We do not ask if you have eaten yet today. We give you a plate. If you can pay, there is a wooden box. If you cannot, you do not see the box.”
About a third of the diners on a typical Wednesday are unhoused. About a third are seniors from the SROs on Capp and Folsom. About a third are working people on lunch break who cannot afford to eat out and like that the food is good.
A man named Walter, 71, has come every Wednesday since 2018. He brings his own fork in his coat pocket. Carmen has offered him one of the kitchen’s forks every week. He prefers his. He has never said why.
