This café where customers and waiters seem to be gesticulating a little more than usual is born with the aim to create and favour a leisure venue where the deaf and the hearing can interact on an equal basis. And in fact the people running the café have gone a step further conceiving the place as a " café-teatro " by offering live shows: story-tellers, short plays, humour and magic shows will be organized, thus creating an offer for the deaf community scarcely available for them on regular bases.

More than food and drinks.

As they express in their website "the show is the hands". Shows will be interpreted in sign language and with voice (in case that there are people who do not know it). But spoken shows will be held too, providing, of course, sign language translators. At El Café de los Signos deaf artists will have the chance to offer their works to all (paintings and sculptures are planned to be exhibited, too).

More than 75% of the staff are deaf people specially trained for their position in the business (waiters, barmen, cooks, maitre.) Menu cards also contain pictures of all the main signs needed to communicate an order.

The managers have designed a two-day visit to the Café for groups of no less than 50 people; the package includes 6 tickects for drinks, welcome cocktail, entrance to the story-teller show, a casual dinner, and a subtitled movie session. Special prices in a nearby hotel have been arranged too for those wishing to stay in the area. Bookings for this package must be made at least two weeks before the intended trip.

Mind that the Café is not adapted for wheelchair users: there's a step to get in (about 15 cms high) and though a level little area is next to the entrance, there are several steps to access the dining room.

El Café opens from 10 a.m. to 2 a.m. daily.

Café de los Signos
Paseo de Santa María de la Cabeza , 75
Madrid
Tel: (+34) 91 474 97 43
info@cafedelossignos.com
www.cafedelossignos.com

 

Rebecca Arce