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Here’s a cool café in Quezon City that more people should visit.
Puzzle Gourmet Store & Café is a family project by the Canoys to find something to do for their 20-year-old Jose, a child born with autism. It is also something to help secure his future.
“At first, they thought of a convenience store, since Jose was in the habit of arranging misplaced items on the shelves,” writes Reggie Aspiras in the Philippine Daily Inquirer.
But the idea turned into a café, where Jose can learn how to interact with other people. It was Jose himself who came up with the name for his café; completing puzzles is something Jose absolutely enjoys. “The young man can finish a two- to three-thousand-piece puzzle in seven hours,” continues Aspiras.
Up for six months already, Puzzle serves quirkily named and playfully presented comfort dishes. The earlier convenience store idea shows itself here, too: available in the café are gourmet food items that Jose himself piles up in the shelves.
Notes Aspiras, “The interaction enriches both the customer and people with disabilities. At Puzzle, PWDs and their families are welcome as customers. It is an environment created to make them feel safe, understood and accepted.”
At Puzzle, where autism is seen as a positive thing, diners can and will experience what a person with autism is capable of. And judging from Jose’s behavior and output, persons with autism is clearly capable of a lot.
1 Comets Loop, Blue Ridge B, Quezon City. +63 917 5019645. 11am-10pm.
