Spoken Cafe Serves the Community with Pay-What-You-Can Meals, a Sustainable Ethos, and Louisiana Specialties

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On a wan Monday night in late January, even the snow seems tired of the cold, protesting the loss of its fresh whiteness to sad, dirty gray by squeaking and sighing under booted footsteps. But inside Spoken Cafe, weathered wood, the aroma of spices, and even the occasional rumble of the ‘L’ through the pressed tin ceiling overhead offer a cozy counterpoint to the frigid darkness outside as Sidonie Gaude greets a handful of guests and her husband Will Goodwin portions servings of beef and vegan shepherd’s pie into to-go boxes. 

This polar stretch of winter is the hardest time of year for restaurants and cafes, with reduced sales just barely covering payroll until the weather warms and people go out again. But Goodwin and Gaude, the owners of Spoken, aren’t charging for dinner. Since November, they have been hosting community suppers on Mondays where the meal is pay what you can. Any proceeds go to a different food pantry every month; on this night, the $350 of donations went to Ravenswood Community Services, which runs a food pantry and community kitchen. (Patrons can also donate during Spoken’s regular hours.)

“It’s a warm and welcoming place,” says a guest named Brian, who was first brought to a Spoken community supper by a friend. He has become a regular, bringing friends himself and coming to Spoken instead of a synagogue that offers meals on Monday nights, drawn by the opportunity to share a meal at a place that’s “letting people know they’re valuable.” 

He knows the restaurant business is difficult, so he was “struck that they’re giving back to the community.” After enjoying the dinner and some ice cream donated by nearby Bartleby’s with his friend Vincent, he takes several portions of shepherd’s pie to go for some “shut-ins” he knows who didn’t want to make the journey in the cold.

“We’ll be here next Monday, too,” Gaude says as guests leave, while Goodwin chimes in that they’ll be serving red beans and rice. “Thanks for coming by. Stay warm!”

“A Touchstone for a Lot of People” 

Spoken is located next to the Montrose Brown Line stop in Ravenswood and produces everything from a line of gluten-free baked goods to ever-changing sandwiches on which even the mayo is housemade in its narrow, 863 square-foot space and downstairs prep kitchen. Espresso, coffee, and tea drinks are served in either a customer’s own travel mug or a Forever Ware reusable metal cup for which you pay a $5 deposit that is refunded when the mug is returned to Spoken or another participating location. (In addition to reducing the waste of disposable to-go cups, it also saves Spoken the cost of those to-go cups, which they now only buy in very limited quantities.) That emphasis on sustainability and reducing waste is evident in the pickles and jams Spoken prepares and sells to preserve seasonal produce (you can return those jars for a refund as well) and the scavenged wood that is seen throughout the cafe. 

“That has been the ethos all along, as much as possible within a price point that we can reach for what is ostensibly a cafe,” says Goodwin. “We do as much as we can, sourced locally and made within the cafe.” 

Bagels come from Skokie’s esteemed New York Bagel & Bialy and donuts from Do-Rite Donuts, and a few locally made treats are for sale. But parfaits are assembled with housemade peanut butter, cream cheese is mixed downstairs, meat is roasted and sliced for sandwiches in house, and spiced nuts and granolas are baked there. 

If all that in-house labor didn’t distinguish Spoken from many cafes, their Louisiana specialties do. Goodwin and Gaude are from the southern Louisiana region of Acadiana, where French-speaking residents of Canada settled in the eighteenth century after the British defeated the French in the Seven Years’ War. Their menu has gumbo, red beans and rice, and the pork-vegetable-and-rice sausage known as boudin, Goodwin’s pride and joy. 

“There’s almost nowhere that you can get hot link boudin, and Chicago has plenty of Louisiana transplants,” he says.

“I love being a Louisiana liaison to the Midwest,” Gaude says, especially to show that Louisiana is more than just New Orleans and that there are ubiquitous dishes like boudin that are less known up here.

Mardi Gras is unsurprisingly a huge day for Spoken – both owners pronounce it something like “Mawdee Grah” – and this year they’re shutting down the regular cafe offerings to serve an entirely Louisiana menu, as Goodwin excitedly told regulars who came in to community supper. In addition to their standards, they’ll have muffuletta and po’ boy sandwiches, one of the latter with a pork-centric twist on Italian beef in the form of cochon de lait. There will be a limited amount of gluten-free bananas foster eclairs and beignets, even while Chicago’s own favorite fried dough will be represented in the form of pączki from Do-Rite; after all, Mardi Gras is also Pączki Day in Chicago. 

The gluten-free baked goods – cookies, cakes, biscuits, South American treats – are made by Angela Torres-Kutkuhn, who has been with Spoken for 13 years. She headed up the cafe’s pickling, preserving, and savory food for years but started baking for it during the pandemic, drawing on experience at the legendary Zingerman’s in Ann Arbor, Michigan. Now, Regina Raleigh is the savory chef while Torres-Kutkuhn produces a varied line of gluten-free baked goods under the name Love Spoken Here. She hopes to eventually acquire her own space to produce gluten-free baked goods and provide them wholesale to places like Spoken, according to Goodwin.

Goodwin himself moved up from employee to owner at Spoken. He started working at what was then called Beans & Bagels in 2002, eventually buying the cafe in 2013 and licensing the name for a time until he rebranded it as Spoken. (A second location of Beans & Bagels near the Rockwell Brown Line stop was also purchased by an employee and remains open today; Goodwin and the owner still share tips and occasionally coffee beans.) 

Goodwin has slowly incorporated sustainable practices into as much of the business as he can. Coffee is sourced from the Wisconsin-based, solar-powered Wonderstate. He furnished and decorated the cafe with lumber pulled from dumpsters outside nearby homes under renovation, using it to build the tables, wainscoting, shelves, and frames for the many chalk menu boards. (It’s a big menu.) There’s even a custom bike he restored on display – and for sale. The space has the homespun, overstuffed feel of a college coffee shop, still retaining a bit of the comfortable ’90s charm from its debut as a cafe in 1996. 

Gaude framed the art that crowds the cafe’s walls, much of which celebrates Louisiana or Chicago. She worked at Spoken in addition to nannying and doing custom framing for years, but went all in on the cafe during the pandemic. 

“I’m so glad that I did,” she says. “This is a touchstone for a lot of people.” 

“When your customers bring your mom and dad here – which all of them do when mom and dad come to visit – it says a lot,” adds Goodwin. “They introduce you and let their parents know, ‘I have a place. People know me. I meet people here.’”

“‘I have a community,’” Gaude chimes back in. 

"Spoken Is Integrity"

Back at the community supper, such super-fans are evident even while newcomers enjoy the meal. Several regulars come in after Goodwin has run out of food and cheer when they learn it was all served, some still making a donation regardless.

“I’ve been dreaming about a Spoken dinner for years,” says the enthusiastic Ash, who has a cooler to carry meals to some neighbors. “The menu is integrity; Spoken is integrity. They take care of their employees” – Ash has known several of them. “They really care: just look at these free dinners.”

“This is the place that I always looked for, where I could just come in and let all the baggage go,” says Gaude, who still works at the cafe five days a week, as does Goodwin. “People here know my name. I don’t feel anonymous.” 

Spoken is participating in the ticketed Taste of Ravenswood on February 6, in the Ravenswood Event Center, serving, among other dishes, a “Chi-cadian dog” that combines Louisiana’s Acadiana and Chicago.