An Iconic Heights Pastry Cafe is Closing After 24 Years — and its Devoted Regulars are Heartbroken: When Saying Goodbye is More Than Bittersweet

It’s been less than a week since Heights hallmark Dacapo’s Pastry Cafe revealed it is closing, and loyal customers are already calling dibs on memorabilia — that may or may not be for sale. If there’s no promise of future pieces of pie, at least they’ll try to get a piece of the storefront tucked in the corner of 11th and Studewood.

Dacapo’s devotees have until closing day, September 29, to find out. Co-owners and twin sisters Lisa and Trese Biggerstaff are moving to Oklahoma, going back to their family and going back to their roots.

It’s all in a name. After all, in Italian “dacapo” means repeat from the beginning. It means start over. That’s what the twins did when they swerved mid-career to open up Dacapo’s 24 years ago, and that’s what they’re doing now.

It’s just the public isn’t taking it so well this time.

Regulars have got their eye on some kicky kitsch. If you go before the end of the era, you’ll find classic black and white chef’s busts sprinkled throughout the charming cafe. Lisa Biggerstaff can tell you from memory which ones have been unofficially claimed. She points them out this afternoon, decked out in a white chef’s jacket and pants patterned with pomegranates.

This must be the first time she’s sat down for hours, if not all day. Just another day in the life of a busy pastry chef. That is, until she hangs up her apron.

“I come in the other day and this bust, that one, that other one over there are all sitting at the back because someone claimed them,” Biggerstaff points, laughing. “I want those!

“My family needs to get that kind of stuff. We’ll chip a piece of the floor off and sell it for $10.”

People just need to get their hands on something from the cafe. In its 24 years, Dacapo’s has built its reputation on inventive cakes — a surprising pear cake in a spiced style, a banana split cake for any occasion, no ice cream needed — and a chicken salad sandwich many have dubbed sensational.

Since the Facebook closing reveal, there’s been an outpouring of support and well, despair. The post’s already garnered 680 reactions, 600 comments and 250 shares.

It’s bittersweet — in feeling, certainly not flavor — but it comes at a good time. The summer months are notoriously slow.

“The beginning of August every year is really slow,” Biggerstaff says. “We should have announced it back then. We should have done this every year: say we’re closing then say, ‘Fake News! We’re not closing, thank you, but we don’t know how long it’s going to be so you gotta keep coming back.’ ”

Dacapo’s staff is keeping up with the crowds pouring in to pay their respects and satisfy their sweet tooth. It pains Biggerstaff to see the slightest bit of negative space in the dessert case, which is typically overflowing with cookies.

“These four weeks, I’ve got to let it go,” she sighs with a small smile.

There are customers who come in to hug her this afternoon, congratulating on her retirement, but telling her that Dacapo’s closing “is never going to be OK.” Biggerstaff’s in and out of the kitchen, elbow-deep in dough one minute and out greeting a customer the next. The cash register has become something of a receiving line.

And then there are the unexpected outbursts from regulars who’ve always been a little more distant. “Some of these people come in every day and don’t say anything. And now they’re crying,” Biggerstaff laughs.

“The sugar is addictive,” Biggerstaff says. “I didn’t know we had so many addicts! We may need to have Dacapo’s rehab.”

She’s put her finger on what the regulars will miss the most.

“It’s the life ingredients,” Biggerstaff says. “My sister made that up— I’ve got to give her credit for it. Life ingredients are what you need for life. Some people need sugar, some people need homemade soups. Some people need homemade breads. And love is the main ingredient.

“If you don’t have that, you don’t have it.”

A True Family Run Restaurant

Her sister, and family as a whole, is at the heart of Dacapo’s. The twins’ sister Debbie has been working with them off and on for at least a decade. Today, she’s working the register, comforting long-time fans and telling newcomers all about Dacapo’s, down to the name.

A black and white photo of her daughter in an article dated in the 1990s hangs on a wall, near clips and cut outs of stories about the cafe. And at the corner, there’s an image of the Biggerstaffs’ great grandfather’s bakery in Dewey Oklahoma, circa 1920.

That would be grandma Gigi’s father.

“My grandmother’s birthday, every birthday, we lined up all the tables here. She loved strawberry cream cake, that was probably her No. 1 cake. And she loved pink roses, so I’d always make pink roses. A lot of memories,” Biggerstaff says.

She starts to choke up. “It’s hard to talk about what I’m going to miss.”

So, as the countdown winds down, that means less and less sugar cookies and raspberry swirl cookies, or chocolate chip pecan, straight out of the oven. That’s her favorite.

But empty or full, she adores that dessert case. It’s not so much a sign of the times, but a sign of the Dacapo’s delightful time warp. Only one thing’s changed in the last two decades. Sure, there was a fresh coat of paint in 2010 — a rust red in place of the white she grew tired of — but that’s it.

“That case right there — a friend of ours built it out of a desk. A big desk from the company we bought the place from. It’s the same case,” Biggerstaff says.

If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it. But it looks like it’s breaking her heart.

Dacapo’s has been a Heights cornerstone, right there on the corner. “Back in 1994, there weren’t that many restaurants around here. That was a gas station over there, kind of a stop-n-go thing,” Biggerstaff gestures across the street.

That Liberty Kitchen lot was less about shucking oysters and more about pumping gas in those days. And along the way, the quirky 11th Street Café was bought out by a chain. It now bears the name bellagreen.

Biggerstaff loves the customers like family. And there’s one more sign of her family in Dacapo’s — her father’s homemade stained glass pieces that hang in the front windows. Some are watercolor floral motifs. Others are odes to the Houston Texans with a splashy, crystal-cut logo. You’d better believe those have caught the eye of would-be buyers.

“The ones in the windows over there are ours,” Biggerstaff chuckles. “You can’t have them.”