Lost Springs café adds Sunday brunch
Staff writer
After 54 years, a change has come to Al’s Café in Lost Springs: The restaurant is now open on Sundays, likely for the first time in its history.
The Sunday hours aren’t long — 11 a.m. to 3 p.m. — and Al’s won’t be open every Sunday — only the first and last of each month.
But it still is an exciting change for a widely-known county restaurant.
Co-owner Ryan Makovec, whose grandmother, Delora Alvarez, opened the café in 1970, said he thought it was the first time Al’s has been open on Sundays.
“If it’s not, it was a long time ago,” he said.
Dani Hatfield Makovec, Ryan’s wife and fellow co-owner, said the idea to offer Sunday brunch came from the couple’s family.
“We had some family members suggest we open on Sundays because there’s a lot of people that go to church, and there’s not a lot of options after,” she said. “We reached out to the community to ask them if that was something that they’d be into. And they said that they’d love to come on Sundays.”
The café’s first brunch was Sept. 29. Its next will be Nov. 30.
The usual menu, which features Mexican fare like burritos and enchiladas, is offered, as well as a few special dishes.
“There’s a classic breakfast platter that we’ve done a couple times now, where you get your choice of meat,” Dani said. “We have these really good sausage links. You can have bacon or ham steak and then a choice of bread. We have white toast, wheat toast, or tortillas. And there are jams to go with your bread.”
Sunday brunch also is a time for the café to experiment with seasonal items.
Recently, staff baked a pumpkin maple loaf to serve with raspberry preserves and blackberry jam.
Dani said she and Ryan were “playing around with different ideas.” She teased a sweet and savory bubble waffle, as well as French toast.
“We’ve never been a breakfast restaurant, so there’s a little bit of a learning curve, but it’s been fun,” she said.
Dani said the decision to open Sundays was not financially motivated but will be a “benefit” for the café.
“Some of our other nights have been a little bit slower,” she said.
The brunches have not been extremely busy, but Dani considers that a good thing.
“It’s not stressful or anything,” she said. “It’s enough business that we can handle.”
Delora Alvarez died in January 2020, after which Al’s Café was shuttered.
Ryan and Dani purchased and reopened the restaurant in May of 2022.
It’s the only registered business left in Lost Springs, a town of just 55.
“It meant a lot to be able to reopen the café and see it come back to life,” Dani said.
Although the Sunday brunches represent a change in the restaurant’s historic schedule, Dani said Delora Alvarez had experimented with different hours in the past.
“I think people do like to go out and eat more often, [rather] than staying home and cooking for the family like they used to,” she said.
The brunches retain the congenial feeling many appreciate about Al’s Café.
“It’s felt really family-oriented,” Dani said. “We kind of want to go get some of our old grandma dishes. [We’ve been] joking that it tastes better when you’re eating it off the old ’70s ceramic.”