City Café brings new choices in allergy-friendly dining

WHITESBORO — City Café has wrapped up the final touches on its new business model and renovations at the allergy-friendly restaurant that adds a new menu along with dinner service. Alyssa Williams opened the café in December 2020 mainly as a bakery and lunch place. While not a trained chef, Williams perfected cooking that avoids wheat and gluten, dairy, and peanuts after her now 12-year-old son developed severe food allergies at the age of one. “I needed to learn how to be able to cook,” she recalls. It became a challenge for her to find ways to make foods “so he could experience all the same things everyone else has.” Over the next several years, more members of her family developed food allergies, which ultimately spurred Williams to open the café after experiencing how difficult it is to dine out with allergies. Now, with that same thought of not wanting anyone with allergies to miss out on anything, she is changing the model at City Café from quick-service only to add a table-service dinner option. “We realized there is kind of a void in the area for allergy-friendly dining, and a lot of it is in the dinner space,” she says. “We wanted people to be able to come and have a date night or a birthday dinner.” The new dinner menu, served after 4 p.m., will feature foods such as pasta, artisan breadsticks, and popular appetizers like onion rings and fried ravioli — foods that are hard to find in an allergy-friendly version. The café launched the new menu on Friday May 17, according to its Facebook page. “We want people to have a full choice,” Williams says. She also wants people to have options that are delicious while also being safe for them to eat. Often there is a stigma that allergy-friendly foods are less-than their traditional counterparts, she notes, and she wants people to know that isn’t the case at City Café. In fact, all its food items are taste-tested by a panel of non-allergy diners to ensure they taste just like the “real thing.” City Café is an option for everyone, she says, not just those with allergies. “We want people to come in with their family, and everyone can enjoy it.” The cafe is also adding a new brunch menu on Saturdays featuring items like French toast and pancakes and a kid’s menu for little diners. With all the new additions, Williams isn’t taking anything away. “We’re not changing in a way that anybody is going to lose anything,” she says. The lunch menu will still be offered during open hours, giving people even more choice for dinner. They can keep it simple, or opt for a more-refined dinner experience. To help create that experience, City Café has undergone some minor renovations. A bit of rearranging in the kitchen was required to set things up for dinner service. As the space was once home to a pizzeria, there was a 25-foot-long counter people could dine at that is now closed off to give the dining area a more intimate feel, Williams says. The café can seat 50 people inside and another 16 outside in the nicer months. The café currently employs between 11 and 14 people, depending on the time of year, and Williams expects she will need to hire people for the kitchen, the bakery, and as wait staff. She has one final menu addition she hopes to have perfected in time to offer by the time school lets out at the end of June. “We are finalizing it as we speak,” she says of the café’s own ice-cream recipe that has been years in the making. The ice cream is dairy-free, and some flavors will also be vegan. “We’re making it from scratch,” Williams says. The café will use items from the bakery to make additional flavors like cookies and cream, she adds. While City Café is a dedicated wheat/gluten, dairy, and peanut-free facility, it also works to accommodate other allergies, such as eggs, soy, or tree nuts, as well. It’s all about giving people with food restrictions as many options as possible, Williams says. “This is such a passion project for me, and it comes from such a personal place,” she says.