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A selection of items from Destination Cafe, pictured from left to right, top to bottom: chicken and dumplings, four-cheese fondue, steak sandwich, cheesecake and Bangkok Shrimp. | MABEL SUEN
[REVIEW]
Good Eats Destination Cafe serves a truly great cause — and tasty eats and sweets Written by
CHERYL BAEHR Destination Cafe 3182 Morganford Road, 314-899-0413. Tues.-Sat. 4-10 p.m.; Sun. 10 a.m.-2 p.m. (Closed Mondays.)
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o matter the size of your sweet tooth, it’s impossible to walk into Destination Cafe without being instantly mesmerized by the pastry display. Inside the glass-fronted case, gorgeous cakes
and confections beckon: Brownies, cupcakes, cookies and a gorgeous, sprinkle-covered pink birthday cake are so enticing it’s a small miracle if you can resist eating dessert first. It’s no wonder that this Tower Grove South restaurant leads with sweets. Since 2012, the people behind Destination Cafe have been running its sister concept, the Destination Desserts food truck, as a roving pastry shop, garnering a loyal following for sweet creations that are as visually stunning as they are delicious. Destination Desserts’ move into the full-service restaurant business represents much more than an expansion of its food offerings, however. Operated by the Center for Head Injury Services, both the dessert truck and the four-month-old Destination Cafe are nonprofit social enterprises, created to provide employment training and job opportunities for individuals with brain injuries, autism and developmental disabilities. With the restau-
rant, the center aims to give its clients another option for work — something that, historically, has been lacking for those with brain injuries and neurological disorders. The center’s foray into the food business began about eight years ago when it received a grant from the rehabilitation nonprofit Kessler Foundation. The New Jersey-based organization was looking for creative ways to improve employment opportunities for people with brain injuries, and they were intrigued with the center’s idea to start a bakery food truck that would use an integrated model of vocational training in which program clients work alongside industry professionals without brain injuries. The idea for the integrated environment, as opposed to a sheltered workshop, is that it would give participants realworld experience that they could then apply once they graduated from the program. The truck was a huge success, but
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the center soon found out that it was not the best fit for all of its clients. To expand its services to those who needed a less arduous work environment, the organization founded the all-natural dog treat bakery Wags in a Bag. With only five recipes and a bit more wiggle room for making mistakes, the pet concept allowed even more people, with more diverse needs, to be involved in the program. Though the center did a good job serving those clients who could easily access it, leaders at the organization, including executive director Donna Gunning, felt that those who had needs in the city of St. Louis were being left behind. City residents were welcome to participate in the center’s programs; however, doing so required lengthy bus rides to its facilities in the county. To solve this issue, Gunning and her cohort partnered with the St. Louis Office for Developmental Disability Resources to purchase a
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