All can gather at this table

Prices, profits -- those don't mean much in the SAME Cafe. The acronym stands for So All May Eat, and that philosophy is all that matters.

After years of volunteering in soup kitchens, Libby and Brad wanted to create a place that would nourish the hungry without setting them apart. No assembly-line service, no meals mass-produced from whatever happened to be donated that week. Just fresh, sophisticated food, made from scratch, served up in a real restaurant -- but a restaurant without a cash register.

Pay what you think is fair, the Birkys tell their customers. Pay what you can afford. Those who have a bit more are encouraged to drop a little extra in the donations box upfront. Those who can't pay at all are asked to work in the kitchen, dicing onions, scrubbing pots, giving back any way they can.

The Birkys could probably feed more hungry people, with far less effort, by donating the cash they spend on groceries to a homeless shelter.

That's not the point.

"It's not just the food," Libby says. "Often, homeless people, people in need, don't receive the same attention and care. Here, someone recognizes them, looks them in the eye, talks to them like they're just as valuable as the next person in line. That's why we do this."

Brad has turned away several panhandlers. He's not rolling pizza dough for four hours a day to give handouts. He and Libby aim to build a community in the SAME Cafe, one that draws in bankers and students and women living on the streets in double layers of clothes. They want their small space to fill with conversation -- and with fellowship.

On this warm spring afternoon, James Duncan, 44, pedals up to the cafe and locks his bike to a banged-up rack. His T-shirt is ringed with sweat; his hair is matted.

But Libby lights up when she sees him, abandoning her post at the sudsy kitchen sink to perch on a chair beside him. She's been meaning to ask his opinion on the Dixie Chicks documentary.

They haven't chatted long before another regular comes in, an older woman with brassy black hair who has introduced herself to the Birkys simply as Dee. "What about that hat?" Dee squeals, laughing at Libby's boxy chef's cap.