This lightness and serendipity are at the core of Tomorrow’s mission: to create not just a place to eat well, but a familiar third space where friends, artists, visitors and locals can come together at a cozy table.

Inside, Tomorrow and Tomorrow is a hybrid of European cafe, Japanese teahouse and quaint northern New Mexico home, and nearly every element is handmade. Terracotta-colored floors echo the Italian espresso machine. Italian ceramic tiles and a cherry wood chopping block, both handmade, surround the open kitchen and coffee bar, where coffee from the coffee press is served in black clay mugs sculpted by David Michael of The Arc Anewera. Paper lanterns hang over wooden tables and chairs, hand-carved and hand-charred from wood sawn by Olguin’s Sawmill.

Currently, the cafe is focusing on lighter, “minimalist” fare. Focaccia slices are served with peach, burrata and serrano or lemon, rosemary and olive oil. Sourdough slices are spread with chocolate, olive oil and sea salt. Whole sourdough loaves, cold fermented for two days, are baked several times a day.

Burns said a grab-and-go refrigerator will soon be delivered, stocking artisanal snacks such as cheeses, olives, sun-dried tomatoes, salsas, ferments and pickled foods for picnics. The cafe will also continue to expand its menu, adding meal options such as sandwiches and pizzas to its offerings.

Tomorrow aims to source as many local ingredients as possible, from heirloom tomatoes to ancient flours, and contribute to Taos’ centuries-old local food infrastructure. The team hopes to build relationships with farmers and suppliers: Chokola already provides fair-trade chocolate for Tomorrow’s menu.

“Food has always been a thread in my life,” said Burns. Burns, who most recently worked as an actor and director, grew up in South Dakota, where he first worked as a head chef and eventually helped start a national organic salsa company.

Ten years ago, Burns studied cooking in Belgium. There, in the Jardin du Luxembourg in Paris, Burns began making the sourdough that is now used to make Tomorrow’s breads. Traditional flours, water, fresh air and time created the vibrant sourdough culture – which was further cultivated on all of Burns’ international travels through Belgium, Australia, New York and Los Angeles.

“There’s a deeper, philosophical, existential level to the leavening process and the development and creation of culture, and it’s about how it thrives or dies and how we sustain it and nourish it. You’re also nourishing the leaven,” he said. “You have a relationship with this living, infinite, invisible, immaterial world, then you start to play with it, but also have it as an anchor – like culture as an anchor for a community.”

As in any traditional home, the hearth is the heart of Tomorrow and Tomorrow: Just behind the chopping block kitchen counter is the French bread oven, fired by wood and gas and set in volcanic basalt rock that I brought from a friend out of town.

As with any celebration, many hands were involved in the creation of the cafe: A team of more than a dozen bakers contributed their skills to everything from tile-making to menu development to designing the paper lantern lighting. Chris Brochu built the basalt facade of the French bread oven—which, the Taos-based actor and builder admitted, was a first for him.

The furniture in particular was a multi-layered creative achievement: the heavy, hand-carved and charred pieces were designed by New York-based artist Jesse Lee Wilson and executed by Taos-based carpenter Nash Ingram, Burns and head builder Dominic Knipfing.

Wilson and Burns met when they were living in the Catskills, when Burns hosted country dinners using ingredients from the farm. Using a small brick oven and a simple kitchen and outdoor tables, Burns prepared an “incredible feast” for 90 people, Wilson said, in a dinner series called “The Family Meal.”

“There’s something so elemental about his sense of theater with food combined with that rawness,” Wilson said. “The spirit of food – Matt is just so adept at bringing that energy to where it’s simultaneously foreign and familiar in a way that can be so refreshing.”

Since that time, when everything went straight from the farm to the table, Wilson and Burns developed a shared vision of working with raw materials – whether food or wood – and their relationship to time, place and process.

By collaborating to design Tomorrow’s wooden furniture, they transferred that vision to the cafe’s interior, which emphasizes organic and locally sourced materials, wabi-sabi, social improvisation, a sense of deeper meaning and a touch of whimsy, Wilson said.

Hana Tojo, a chef who helps the cafe develop its menu and broader vision, shared that sentiment. “We need this kind of community stage,” he said, describing the cafe as “a place where you can put down roots and feel grounded – your home. It’s your second home.”

In the world of sourdough, tomorrow’s bread depends on today’s preparation.

To that end, Tomorrow seeks to foster relationships with farmers, artists, and purveyors in Taos; stoke the fire that bakes the bread and prepares the tables; grow concrete relationships with people and places from the invisible world of sourdough culture.

The name of the café, borrowed from MacBeth’s famous monologue, is a constant reminder here.

“Of course, we are in the land of Mañana,” said Burns – a phrase with a sweet connotation of serenity and enjoyment of the present.

But more than that, “Tomorrow and Tomorrow” cultivates a sense of responsibility: the seeds sown today, the fires stoked today and the connections cultivated today form the world in which we live tomorrow, the day after tomorrow and the day after that.