All can gather at this table

Denver —  IT has been six months since Brad and Libby Birky opened a small cafe on a grungy strip of Colfax Avenue. They have no idea how much money they’ve made. Or how much any of their customers has paid for a bowl of the chicken chili or a slice of the organic pesto pizza.

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.

“I have these silly bangs and they’re getting in my face,” Libby explains. Dee pulls up a chair next to James and they’re off, marveling at how young people these days like the oddest music. “The other day, the band over there was ‘Saliva,’ ” Dee says, nodding across the street at a seedy lounge.

Abruptly, Dee stops talking and peers into James’ bowl. “What kind of soup is that?”

“Potato,” he answers, and pushes the bowl toward her. “Try some! Try some!”

She dips in her spoon. “How did I miss that?”

“You want a cup?” Libby asks, jumping up.

Until she discovered the cafe, Dee lived on instant noodles and cold cereal, with a fast-food burger now and then for a treat. Now she lunches in the cafe at least four times a week (and Libby often packs her a meal to take home). When she can, Dee pays $3 or $4. When she can’t, she mops the floor. Today, she has money, and lingers over Libby’s sugar cookies.

James, a part-time math teacher, is out of cash today. He carries his empty bowl to the kitchen, pulls on rubber gloves, starts washing.

In the back of the restaurant, Will Murray, 52, is wondering how much to drop in the donations box after a meal of soup, salad and pizza. Ten dollars, he decides. On the wall behind him are framed quotations about giving: “A person’s true wealth is the good he or she does in the world.” And: “Be the change you want to see ... “

“Maybe I’ll toss in a few more,” he says.

BRAD, 31, and Libby, 30, came up with the concept for the cafe as a way to help the hungry while letting Brad indulge his passion for cooking. Friends told them they were crazy. But the Birkys began scouring online auctions for secondhand restaurant gear.

They paid off their car -- they figured if they went broke, they’d at least have something to their name. They drew up a financial plan. Several prospective landlords took one look and turned them away.

“It was a very alternative business model,” Brad says, grinning. “It took some convincing.”

To make their case, the Birkys pointed to the success of the One World Cafe in Salt Lake City, which has been serving up organic food on the pay-what-you-can philosophy since 2003. Its founder, Denise Cerreta, helped the Birkys map a start-up strategy, including applying for nonprofit status and setting up a board of directors.

In October, the couple opened the SAME Cafe, tucked under a green awning a few doors from the Kung-Fu Karate Studio and Purple Haze Smoke Shop. Other neighbors include a Salvation Army thrift shop, a liquor store and a tattoo parlor. But this area is slowly beginning to gentrify, attracting an art gallery, a clothing boutique, even a sushi restaurant.

The cafe is tiny, just seven tables and a narrow kitchen. Behind a tangle of plants in the big bay window, the room’s sunny yellow gives off a cozy feel. The Birkys hung a string of origami cranes in the kitchen and decorated every table with a bud vase of orange silk daisies.

Brad hopes eventually to pay himself to run the cafe. For now, the Birkys live off Libby’s salary as a teacher of gifted elementary students and Brad’s part-time work as a computer consultant.

Because they’re the only employees, they keep the cafe open just five days a week: Tuesday through Thursday for lunch, Friday and Saturday from 11 a.m. to 7 p.m.

Brad changes the menu daily, using seasonal ingredients to create two soups, two salads and two varieties of gourmet pizza. Libby’s in charge of the desserts: her grandma’s sugar cookies (the recipe is pinned to the spice rack), fruit tarts, brownies, cheesecake or a rich banana-sour cream pie, served with a dollop of peanut butter.

To curtail waste, the Birkys don’t set portions for their food. Customers take plates from a stack by the entrance and tell Brad how to fill them: a taste of the couscous with olives and feta cheese, a full bowl of the creamy squash soup, a thin wedge of the pear-and-gorgonzola pizza. They are always welcome back for seconds.

Brad’s a largely self-taught chef -- unless you count his high school job at Dairy Queen -- and his food wins raves from customers. In a neighborhood dominated by fast-food chains and greasy diners, it’s rare to find anything as inventive as his black-bean-quinoa salad, or the spicy tomato soup spiked with lime and finished with chunks of chicken and avocado.

BUT it’s not the food alone that draws customers.

“You feel like you’re helping them help others,” says Bob Goodrich, 64, who walks to the cafe with his wife, Iris, several times a week. They give $15 or $20 when they can, $5 when that’s all they have.

“It’s like coming over to our friends’ for lunch,” Bob said.

While her husband gabs, Iris polishes off two slices of pizza and a green salad studded with dried cherries and pecans. “I cleaned my plate,” she calls. “Can I get a cookie?”

Libby comes over with a tray of sweets. Bob turns to Brad. “Hand me your cloth,” he says. “I’ll wipe down the tables.” The retired maintenance worker, wrapped in a cardigan sweater, lugs a bucket of soapy water to an empty table and gets to work.

By 1 p.m., the lunchtime crowd is gone. Libby dumps flour in a bowl for another batch of cookies. Brad leans against the fridge, trying to estimate the cafe’s budget.

“Libby, you did those deposits recently. What do we take in?”

“Well, two weeks ago it was $850,” Libby answers. “Last week, it was $200.”

Brad shrugs, his interest waning. “Plus or minus a few hundred,” he says.

In a few weeks, the cafe’s board of directors -- including a chef from a Denver culinary school and a nun who helps run the Catholic Worker shelter -- will meet to review the books from the first quarter. All Brad knows, all that counts, is that the donations have been covering the rent and groceries.

Both Birkys grew up religious. Libby was raised Catholic; Brad, Mennonite. These days, they don’t belong to any organized religion -- except, maybe, the cafe.

“If we didn’t have faith in the goodness of humankind, we wouldn’t be doing this,” Brad says. “This is our church.” He pulls out a rolling pin and gets to work on another pizza crust.

stephanie.simon@latimes.com