Cafe Bids to Add Alcohol to Menu

Visitors who wander into the sleepy, Los Rios neighborhood seeking centuries-old adobes and rustic farm animals may soon be enjoying Chardonnay beneath the mulberry trees.

Last week, the City Council voted to amend the 20-year-old Los Rios precise plan--the law that governs the historic neighborhood--to allow the owners of the Ramos House Cafe to serve wine and beer with their lunch menu, a first for the area. Since the 1970s, the neighborhood has been off-limits to the sale of alcohol.

However, the move has sparked a quiet tiff in the area. Some residents fear that it could change the bucolic character of the 200-year-old street, which is listed in the National Register of Historic Places.

“You’re trying to make a theme park [on Los Rios Street],” David Chorak, who lives next door to the cafe, told the council. “You do not have the right to legislate alcohol here.”

Others have voiced support for cafe owners John Humphreys and Lisa Waterman, the young couple who arrived in town two years ago with a vision to create an intimate cafe, then sunk everything they had into restoring the 115-year-old house--including the money they had saved to get married.

“The Ramos House Cafe is exactly what should be representative of San Juan Capistrano,” Les and Julia Bunge said in a letter to the council. “Don’t look this gift ‘house’ in the mouth.”

For Humphreys, 29, a chef who was trained at the Culinary Institute of America in New York, and his fiancee, Waterman, 25, the council’s action was a welcome relief.

For seven months, they have been seeking the council’s approval to serve wine and beer at the cafe, which is sandwiched on Los Rios Street between the historic Capistrano Depot and the 200-year-old Montanez Adobe.

Once they get that final approval from state Alcoholic Beverage Control, Waterman said, they will be careful about how much alcohol they serve.

“For us to serve a third glass of wine and risk losing all we’ve worked for just doesn’t make sense,” said Waterman, who with Humphreys lives and works at the house, grows herbs and personally serves such contemporary American cuisine as scrambled eggs with creme fraiche and fresh blackberry tarts.

After approval from the state, the council will closely watch the operation, officials say.

The couple will be limited to serving beer and wine only with food from 10:30 a.m. to 3:30 p.m. daily, except for Sunday brunch, when they can begin serving alcohol at 8 a.m.