Trinity Square Cafe
19 Trinity Square
416-599-9315
Open to the public Monday to Friday from 11:30 to 2:30
(find it by entering Trinity Square off of Bay Street, south of Dundas, or by exiting the Eaton Centre through the western doors at the north end of Sears, by the elevator to Mr. Greenjeans)
Tucked away near the southeast entrance of the Church of the Holy Trinity at Bay and Dundas is a hidden food gem. The Trinity Square Cafe is both a haven for nearby office workers looking for lunch, and a not-for-profit charity working to build employability skills of those recovering from mental illness.
The program’s focus is on both food and mental health recovery. Participants, who work in all aspects of running the cafe, are either not quite ready to enter the world of work and need to rebuild their skills, or unable to work in a conventional setting. Whatever the reason, they are given the opportunity to take on new responsibilities and learn new skills at their own pace, explains executive director, David Greig. “Part of recovery is having something meaningful to do all the time,” he says.
The idea for the program was born 31 years ago when the Church of the Holy Trinity partnered with the Redirection Through Education program at George Brown College to create a place where people with mental illness could go to develop skills, both practical and social.
There are currently 50 to 60 participants who work a minimum of one 4-hour shift a week, but many come in more often, with 10 to 12 participants at work in the cafe each day, along with three or four staff members. Ranging in age from their 20s to their 60s, participants come from a variety of different countries, and have varying health and financial backgrounds. They are asked to make a one year commitment to the program, and the average stay is two to four years, Greig says.
While learning the many aspects of running a cafe, program participants are also learning work-related skills, such as appropriate workplace wardrobes, what’s appropriate to talk about in a work setting, and the importance of being somewhere on time, explains cafe manager, Lesley Norton. “We mimic a regular food-related workplace, with the exception that we run a kinder, gentler kitchen,” she says.
Norton has worked with Trinity Square Cafe for almost 11 years. A chef by trade, she always had an interest in social work, which makes her position at the cafe a particularly fitting one.
Everyone at the cafe works as a team, something continually emphasized by Norton. She aims to ensure all participants know that they are all part of the beginning to end process, whether they’re cooking, baking, clearing tables, washing dishes or chopping onions. This builds confidence and makes everyone feel important, she explains.
What each participant is tasked with is based on what they’re ready to handle when they enter the program, and what they are hoping to achieve by being there. “We don’t push people, but we do encourage,” Norton says. They also try to keep the system from being too clinical, even though it is a mental health program. “We want to keep things relaxed,” she says.
Along with building employability skills, the program gives participants a hands-on education about food. With everything made from scratch with fresh ingredients, the opportunities to learn are boundless. Norton also points out that being in the program is often the first real experience with cooking many participants have. “We just had someone the other day peel their first carrot,” she says. “It was a proud moment. He was a happy man.”
The food on offer is simple, homemade fare served up in large portions for either eating in or taking to go. Though the program is one aimed at helping those with mental illness, there is a real focus on food here. “We like to refer to ourselves as the alternative to McDonalds,” Greig laughs. On our visit, the cafe is bustling, with a lengthy queue, but the line is handled efficiently and with ease. There is ample seating and abandoned tables are cleared quickly.
They keep a stable menu because it allows the participants to learn it well, although the menu is changed seasonally. There are three types of sandwiches (egg salad, tuna, tomato and cheese, all priced at $3.81 before tax), three salads (tossed, caesar, Greek which range in price from $2.81 for a small, up to $4 for a large, depending on the type), a roster of five or six soups daily ($3.09-small/$3.57-large), including one cold soup in the summer and a choice of two entrées (normally around $6.19 each). On our visit some of the soups included Moroccan tomato, curried lentil and potato cheddar. The day’s entrées were Spanakopita and broccoli cheddar quiche. Other entrées in the rotation include meatloaf, jerk chicken and vegetarian chilli.
Everything made at the cafe is from scratch, other than the bread, which they have delivered fresh daily from Silverstein’s Bakery. Everything else, from cookies, cakes and piecrusts to salad dressing, croutons and even a cream cheese icing on the carrot cake, is made in-house, with the freshest ingredients they can find. The food is hearty, homey and simple - there are no pretensions here of being haute cuisine, but Norton is conscious of having a well-balanced menu and prides herself on ensuring items on offer are nutritious.
To get the word out about their program, they do outreach with social workers and place phone calls to organizations who work with people who may benefit from the program. In terms of getting the word out to customers, Greig says they really haven’t had to. “We haven’t had to do any advertising in ages because we’ve never had a shortage of people,” he says. So their customer base mostly comes from word-of-mouth and people who discovered the cafe years ago and have become regulars. “It’s a hidden gem, that’s for sure,” he says.
Both Greig and Norton are proud of the program and how it’s been able to help people. Norton sums it up well by explaining: “I wouldn’t have stayed here for almost 11 years if it wasn’t a really rewarding thing to do.”
