Alfred Astl is Trinity Cafe’s five-star chef. He displays tremendous commitment to Trinity Cafe everyday. He strives to serve the absolute best meal possible for our guests.

By Alexandra Zayas, St. Petersburg Times, September 14, 2006.

Hundreds of homeless people line up every day on a ramp outside the Salvation Army. They’re hungry, and Alfred Astl feeds them - with garnishes, on china.

It’s just his style.

The 56-year-old chef’s resume reads like a menu of the country’s greatest kitchens. The Four Seasons Hotel in New York. Hotel Jerome in Aspen. The Hershey Country Club in Pennsylvania.

From his childhood in Austria spent baking strudel and black forest tortes at his parents’ mountain inn, Astl fed the silver spoon crowd in Europe and America for 35 years. But the long hours began to burn him out. When he saw a position open for a lunch chef at Trinity Cafe, he applied. It has been five years.

Astl and two part-time kitchen staff members cook 1,000 meals a week at the Trinity Cafe in the Salvation Army building on Florida Avenue.

Their nonpaying guests sit at tables set with glassware and silverware and wait for their volunteer servers to bring out Astl’s dishes, course by course.

One recent Thursday, Astl cooked chicken rice soup with Chinese vegetables, smoked sausage with tomato-mushroom salsa, oven roasted new potatoes with onions, and sweet kernel corn with bell peppers.

”It could be very easy to say, Okay, we’re feeding homeless people. Who cares?” Astl said. “If I ever say that, I’ll quit.”

Lunch crowd regulars frequently visit the kitchen to deliver compliments to the chef, who always sports a white coat and neck scarf. They tell Astl they notice the slivers of crunchy tortilla shell he adds to their taco soup and appreciate the detail.

”Some of these people have problems out there they can’t do anything about,” Astl said. “By the time they leave, they’re in a whole different frame of mind.”