A Restaurant With an Open Table

Every evening at 5 p.m., Tomás Reyes walks to the corner table nearest the kitchen at Mesa Abierta and sets it himself. Four plates. Four glasses. No reservation card.

It's for whoever needs it.

The name of the restaurant means "open table," and for eleven years, that has been more than branding. Neighbors who are between jobs, families whose paycheck ran out early, a man who sleeps under the bridge two blocks away: all have eaten there, served on the same plates as paying guests.

Where it started

Tomás grew up in San Antonio, the son of a cook who fed half the block on Sundays. When he opened his own place in 2014, after twenty years working other people's kitchens, he promised himself it would feel like his mother's dining room.

"She never asked anyone if they deserved dinner," he said. "She asked if they were hungry."

The hard math

The open table is not free. Tomás estimates it costs the restaurant about $1,400 a month in food and labor. In 2020, when the dining room closed, he nearly ended the practice. Instead, he switched to boxed meals at the back door and asked regular customers if they wanted to help. Many did.

There have been bad nights. Once, a guest at the open table stole a server's tip jar. Tomás paid the server back from his own pocket and set the table again the next evening.

"Grace that only works when people behave isn't grace," he said. "It's a reward program."

Caring for the people in the kitchen

His employees describe the open table as the visible part of a bigger habit. Mesa Abierta closes on Sundays so staff can rest. Line cooks get paid sick days, which is rare in the industry. Tomás has lent money to employees for car repairs and immigration lawyer fees, and has not always been repaid.

He doesn't call his restaurant a ministry. "It's a business," he said. "But it's my business, and I answer to God for how I run it."