Hugs Cafe - Mckinney Texas

Hugs Cafe. Normally I'd stay away from a place named Hugs. You can almost predict everything about it. Chalk colored paint, farm decor, hearts and cute bugs on the walls, and signs with saccharin statements about love and family. Pretty much everything I despise. But Hugs is a new restaurant and I feel a certain onus to review if for all three of my food review fans.
This is a newly opened place and not a lot on the walls. One booth was closed while the table top was being prepared. The galley shape of the restaurant takes you past the kitchen to the ordering booth. A neat concept. I like open kitchens as they let me keep an eye on the cleanliness of the cooks. The atmosphere is a bit disheveled.
The ordering system is pretty great. You circle what you want on a menu and give it to the cashier. He put my number on a sticky note and I went to the table. My food arrives. Tuna sandwich on toast with potato salad and a chocolate chip cookie.
A tuna sandwich might just be the hardest thing in the world to make. A good one lets the taste of tuna shine through with the accompanying sauce only lending color. Bright veggies should add crunch to make up for the tuna's texture but not over power the fish. An easy thing to do with tuna.
The potato salad was made with mostly mashed potatoes and used a yellow mustard base. This is one dish where the named ingredient should not prevail. Potato salad is all about the sauce. The potatoes should be slightly firm and offer ample opportunity to carry a flavorful mayo and mustard mix. This one did neither. It wasn't bad, by any means, it just didn't pop. The cookie snapped cleanly when I ate it. A sin if ever there was one in cooking. The buttery pastry was overcooked. A good chocolate chip cookie is soft and bendy while still having certain density.
I give Hugs Cafe a 10 out of 10. You should eat there.
Why?
Hugs was started to give special needs adults the opportunity to have a job and gain work experience as well as income. The moment I walked up to the door, the greeter smiled, waved, and said hi. The open kitchen was staffed with SN adults accompanied by a fellow worker carefully showing them how to assemble the sandwiches and put the cookies into the oven.
The cashier told me I didn't have to pay if I didn't want to. He wrote my number down out of sequence but said he hoped I enjoyed my meal. Another worker, for no reason, told me to have a good day and in all my years of eating at restaurants, it was the first time I believed my server. A few other servers ignored me altogether, focused on the task at hand. Neither concerned with pretending to be happy I was there or obsequiously trying to get a tip. The waiter who brought my food said he hoped I enjoyed it. He presented it like an artist unveiling a painting. I think he helped make it.
I was drawn into thought about my own SN niece who has been gone for just over a year. Abigail never pretended about anything. You never had to guess if she wanted you to hold her or if she was happy to see you. She was truly honest.

So there I sat, the single guy in the corner crying over my food. Sure, the bread could have been toasted better but at least the person toasting it truly wanted to do a good job and was proud to serve what he made. Was the potato salad over mixed? Yes but who knows what Herculean effort it took to mix it? It was a crappy cookie but I'll eat 100 of them before I touch the pretentious creme brûlée served up out of necessity rather than love of the art.
I ate and ran, not wanting someone to phone the police about the drunk person in the corner booth crying. The same greeter waved and said, thank you for coming. And I truly believe he meant it.