on the street · the same table as last time · no need to order
A café on the street, the same as last time
Samefood Cafe
Today’s special: your favourite.
In the window: one divided plate, with pesto pasta in the big well on the left, nooch popcorn along the top right, cheese in the well below it, and the peanut butter in a small well of its own. On the right of the plate, a mug of coffee. On the left, the apple slices in a ramekin, to go with the peanut butter on the plate; on Ryan’s list they are one thing, and they meet when whoever is eating them decides they meet, and below them Ronan’s ketchup in its own ramekin, touching nothing, which is how Ronan has every red thing. Nothing on the table touches anything else, and every food on it is off a regular’s tray further down.
A café for samefoods and safe foods, and for anybody whose plate has ever been treated as a problem somebody else had to solve. The kitchen knows its regulars: it keeps what each of them has, the way they have it, and it is ready for the day their samefood changes with the season, so the menu is whatever the regulars ask for and nothing on it changes unless somebody asks. Nobody here will ask you to try a bite of anything, nothing on your plate touches anything else unless you want it to, and the light over the table is the same at every hour, so that nothing on the plate ever looks different from last time.
House rules
- We default to structure, separation and predictability, and every guest is accommodated individually. You are never regarded as fussy, picky or too much: you are quietly and professionally accommodated. The house fits itself to you, never the other way round, and nobody’s way of eating is anybody else’s rule.
- The same again is always on. Nobody asks whether you would like to try something different today.
- Samefoods have seasons. If yours changes, or you put one down for a while and come back to it years later, the kitchen still has it, and nobody asks why.
- Nothing touches unless you want it to. Every plate in here is divided for whoever needs it, every bowl is yours to fill the way you eat it, and every plate is the same plate and every bowl the same bowl.
- And if you do not mind your food touching, nobody here minds for you. Some of us need everything apart and some of us do not care at all, and both are the same again.
- Anything can come in a ramekin of its own, if you ask. Ronan, a Stimpunk, has every condiment that way and red things always, touching nothing else, so his ketchup comes in its own — and that is Ronan’s way, not the house’s, so nobody else’s ketchup has to.
- The same brand, the same shape, the same way. We can tell the difference as well, and nobody in here will tell you that you can’t.
- Nobody comments on your plate: not what is on it, not how much, and not how often you have had it.
- Nothing is hidden in anything. What it looks like is what it is, all the way through.
- Nobody has to eat with anybody. A table for one is a whole table.
- Nobody finishes your samefood without asking. Our glossary calls that a tragedy, and in here it is treated as one.
- Nobody in here is a picky eater. Selective, sensory, hypersensory, or simply somebody who knows exactly what they need: all of it is welcome, and none of it needs explaining.
On the menu
This café gets its menu from our glossary, and the menu is three words long. Each one is on a plate of its own.
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Samefood
Eating the same food, often, sometimes for weeks or months at a time, made the same way every time and sometimes only one brand of it. It is how a great many of us eat, and plenty of us say it brings peace. Samefoods have seasons, too: one can carry you for months, get put down, and come back years later, and the kitchen here keeps every one of them. Nobody has an opinion about any of it.
A samefood often needs to be prepared in a very specific way, eaten in a ritualistic manner, or may only be a specific brand.
C.L. Lynch, 7 Cool Aspects of Autistic Culture, NeuroClastic, 2019Read against NeuroClastic's own page on 2026-09-23, byline from the page's own metadata. -
Safe food
A food you can reliably eat, especially when everything else is hard: the texture, the taste, the smell and the predictability are all right, and it asks nothing unexpected of you. Our glossary puts it plainly: safe foods are about access, and for many of us they are how eating becomes possible at all.
These foods are not boring to me. They are the reason I can sit at a table at all.
Kari Burroughs Kraakevik, Safe Foods, Thinking Person’s Guide to Autism, 2026Read against Thinking Person’s Guide to Autism’s own page on 2026-09-23. -
Food aversion
A body saying that a food is not safe, through its texture, its taste, its temperature, its smell or its colour, and meaning it. It is neurobiological rather than a mood, and nobody in here argues with it. Our glossary entry is careful about where it sits beside ARFID, and is the better place to read about that than a menu.
Food aversion is okay. It’s not something I’m trying to cure.
Matthew Broberg-Moffitt, Color Taste Texture, Penguin Publishing Group, 2023Read off our own Food Aversion entry, which quotes the book; not checked against a copy of the book from here.
On the counter
One book, because one is the right number of books for a counter to have.
Color Taste Texture
Recipes for Picky Eaters, Those with Food Aversion, and Anyone Who’s Ever Cringed at Food
by Matthew Broberg-Moffitt · Penguin Publishing Group, 2023 · ISBN 9780593538593
A cookbook that starts from acceptance rather than correction. Our glossary calls it a compassionate, validating and accessible guide, and recommends it to our community, which is why it is the one book on this counter. The recipes are for the people its subtitle names, and the stance is the one this whole café is built on: the plate is not the problem, and neither is the person eating from it.
If you only eat a specific brand of frozen breaded chicken nuggets, you find comfort in the knowledge that what you are going to eat is both familiar and unproblematic.
Matthew Broberg-Moffitt, Color Taste Texture, Penguin Publishing Group, 2023Read off our own Samefood entry, which quotes the book; not checked against a copy of the book from here.
The regulars
Our community’s own samefoods, each person’s on a tray of their own and each food in a well of its own, with a bowl of whatever is their samefood of the moment. They are written down exactly as they were given — lowercase, brands and all — and they are being collected a few at a time in our community’s Discord, so there are more people to come and more trays to set. A tray changes whenever its person says so, because samefoods come and go and come back.
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Ryan
Samefood of the moment ramen with fresh green onions In the bowl: a bowl of ramen, with the green onions floating in among the noodles, which is how Ryan likes it. - ramen with fresh green onions
- nooch popcorn
- mushroom and garlic broth
- tofu scramble
- vegan quesadillas
- vegan cheese flat bread
- dark chocolate pretzel bars
- peanut butter and apples
- coffee
Given in Ryan’s own brief for this café, 2026-09-23.
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Helen
Samefood of the moment pesto pasta In the bowl: a bowl of pesto pasta, all of it together, which is how Helen has it. - pesto pasta
- cheese
- coffee
Given relayed by Ryan in the brief for this café, as Helen gave it, 2026-09-23.
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Ronan
Samefood of the moment chicken nuggets In the bowl: a bowl of chicken nuggets, touching each other as much as they like; the ketchup is on the table in its own ramekin. - chicken nuggets
- fries
- bacon
- turkey and cheese sandwiches
- plain hamburgers
- ketchup in its own ramekin
Given relayed by Ryan in the brief for this café, as Ronan gave it, 2026-09-23.
Nobody’s list is tidied, corrected, sorted or ranked, nothing is added up across the trays, and nothing on one tray is compared with anything on another. Every list comes down the moment the person whose it is asks, and coming down means gone rather than hidden. If you would like a tray of your own, tell us in our community.
What is not on the menu
- No calories, no nutrition labels, and no sorting of anybody’s food into good and bad.
- No ‘just one bite’, and no ‘they will eat when they get hungry enough’. Our Food Aversion entry says what that second one can do, and it is not nothing.
- Nothing smuggled into anything else. A plate you cannot trust is a plate you cannot eat from.
- No recipes and no tips about eating. There is a book on the counter by somebody who knows, and a menu that does not change.
- Nothing counted: not how many of us drink coffee, and not how many times anybody has had the same again.
- No surprise dish. A new one goes on the menu only when somebody asks for it — a regular, or somebody walking in for the first time — and the kitchen keeps it from then on, the way that person has it. Nothing is ever put in front of you that you did not order, and nothing comes off the menu because somebody else got bored of it.
Whose these are
Every quotation belongs to whoever wrote it, and is credited to them rather than to our glossary, which is where we found most of them: C.L. Lynch at NeuroClastic, Kari Burroughs Kraakevik at Thinking Person’s Guide to Autism, and Matthew Broberg-Moffitt, whose book is on the counter. The lists on the trays belong to the people whose names are on them, and the way about red things and ramekins is Ronan’s own. The words round all of it, and the drawing of the table, are ours.
Every quotation in this café is 30 words or fewer, names who said it, where and when, and says beside it how it was checked. tools/make-samefood.py refuses a longer one, and refuses the vocabulary of correcting somebody’s plate, a tally, and advice about eating, in the room’s own voice. It also walks every coordinate of the drawing of the table and refuses anything on it that touches anything else.
Further, and better than a menu: Samefood · Safe food · Food aversion · Bodily autonomy · Neuroception and Sensory Load
The type is Fredoka, by Milena Brandão and Hafontia, for the café’s name and headings, and Inclusive Sans, by Olivia King, for everything you read: a face drawn so that no letter can be taken for another, which is this room’s rule about plates arriving at the size of the alphabet. Both under the SIL Open Font License. More in the liner notes.
Job marker — a little plastic grass divider, dropped from a tray
You have found a job marker. The Adventurer’s Guild is a shopfront on the street, and it posts jobs that send you round these rooms. Take the code below to its board and that job is done. Nothing here is scored, nothing expires, and one is a perfectly good number of jobs to do.
The job: Same again
Before the code: Samefood Cafe’s specials line says what today’s special is. What is it?
Hint 1
It is the line directly under the café’s name.
Hint 2
It is not the same dish for everybody, and it is the same answer for everybody.
Last hint
Two words: whose, and how much you like it.
Give me the answer
The answer is Your favourite. Today’s special is your favourite, whoever you are. The kitchen knows its regulars and keeps what each of them has, so the special is never one person’s dish put in front of everybody else — it is the same promise to every guest at once.
Taking the answer is a real way through this, not a lesser one. Nothing is watching and nothing is written down.
Quest code: DIVIDER
That is the one.
Today’s special is your favourite, whoever you are. The kitchen knows its regulars and keeps what each of them has, so the special is never one person’s dish put in front of everybody else — it is the same promise to every guest at once.
Quest code: DIVIDER