Local restaurant feature: Lockwood Cafe

By: Morrgan Zmolek

Lockwood Cafe has an entirely vegetarian menu— one that even non-vegetarians will love.

Lockwood Café began as a desire to create an inclusive community space that promoted the arts. Sharon Stewart, owner and manager of Lockwood, said that she and her team decided on the idea for a café because of the inclusive nature of coffee shops. “Everyone feels welcome at a café,” Stewart said. “You kind of know your role. Not everyone feels welcome walking into a gallery space. By having a café that’s connected to the gallery, we’re kind of encouraging people to access and use the space and it’s been really amazing to see all the amazing things that have happened.”

Lockwood started as a seasonal pushcart serving crepes and coffee. It wasn’t until Oct. 1, 2019, that the physical brick-and-mortar building opened.

The name Lockwood originated from the original business that was on the property: Lockwood Grain and Coal. The name paid homage to what grain elevators were in a community: a gathering place.

On Thursdays, Lockwood hosts a “Kitchen Takeover.” This event gives Rama Sridhar, a vegetarian chef from India, the space to make Indian-inspired vegetarian dishes. In a new event series in partnership with The Bean Palace, customers are served an eight-course fine dining experience based around legumes. The idea behind this experience is to bring emphasis to a food that is often seen as a side dish.

Lockwood’s menu is completely vegetarian. “We built the menu with the idea that you come in and the menu doesn’t say ‘it’s all vegetarian,’” Stewart said. “Instead, it promotes the idea that you won’t miss it. We’ll make the food so good and have so many options that you won’t even think about it.” Lockwood also has vegan and no gluten added options as well.

“We wanted to make food that was healthy and affordable,” Stewart said. “One of the key concepts early on was like, price point wise, can we compete with McDonald’s? Can we be a place where you can come and get a healthy meal for the same price point that you can at McDonalds, because that’s meat-centered food.” She said that having a vegetarian menu is also cost-effective, keeping the price of their goods accessible for all. “If you want to be a space where people meet and build connections, it needs to be a space that promotes safety and inclusivity,” Stewart said. “We’ve tried really hard to keep that as a focal point in our intentions.”

Lockwood is currently working on expanding its menu to fill the niche that isn’t currently met. “It’s pretty crepe-centric right now,” she said. “We want to add, like, a soup and a salad and a grain bowl.” In expanding their menu, she said that they have to keep in mind the space they have available to work with. “It needs to be something that doesn’t stress our work environment to add that, or else I’m not being inclusive and thoughtful to the people I work with here.”

Lockwood does not promote that the menu is completely vegetarian anywhere in their website or social media. “The whole idea is that that might potentially deter people from being in this space because there are preconceived notions that aren’t true,” Stewart said. “We get people who have been coming here for months and didn’t realize it was vegetarian.”

“I think, in general, the more we expose ourselves to things we aren’t used to, the more opportunity we have to grow and expand our imagination of what could be. Exposing yourself to perspectives that are different than yours allows you to see the world in a much bigger way,” Stewart said.