Open to the entire Reno community, here’s everything you need to know about Moon Rabbit Cafe, Nevada’s only pay-what-you-can restaurant.
Nevada’s only pay-what-you-can restaurant, Moon Rabbit Cafe, will return at the end of spring. The temporary bistro, where everyone eats regardless of their means, is also popping up for Reno Buddhist Center’s annual Obon outdoor festival in August.
While the volunteer-run cafe normally serves guests in the dining room at the Reno Buddhist Center, 225 3⁄4 West Taylor Street, the upcoming dinner will be held outdoors, buffet-style, in conjunction with the Reno festival. The community-wide celebration at the center’s Midtown Reno campus will include cultural demonstrations, folk dancing, Taiko drumming, martial arts demonstrations, and traditional Japanese attire.
With menu prices rising at full-service restaurants everywhere—up nearly 5 percent since 2025, according to the National Restaurant Association—families are struggling to tighten their purse strings. A place to get a quality hot meal for a price you can afford is a welcome relief in Nevada. This pay-what-you-can model exists at some restaurants elsewhere in the US, though they’re few and far between, but Moon Rabbit Cafe is the only one in the Silver State.
Read on to learn more about this caring community cafe.
Dinners only happen on occasion, so don’t miss out
Debuting in 2015, Moon Rabbit Cafe ebbs and flows in its frequency. It started monthly and grew to bi-monthly, with 285 guests in one night at its peak, before slowing down to twice a year. The upcoming dinner is currently the only one planned for 2026.
Reverend Matthew Fisher, spiritual leader at the Reno Buddhist Center, compares the sporadic nature of the dinners to his mother’s apricot trees.
“Some years, you get so many apricots, you don’t know what to do with them…all the rest of the years…you might get a few,” says Fisher. “That’s kind of the nature of growing things in Nevada. It has more of the boom-bust rhythm as opposed to the pure, sustained kind of thing.”
To stay in the know about the upcoming event and other chances to eat at Moon Rabbit Cafe, follow the restaurant on Facebook or its Instagram account @renobuddhist.
Pay what you can for a meal from a professional Reno chef
Meals at Moon Rabbit Cafe, including an appetizer, main entree, dessert, and drink, are prepared in a commercial kitchen under the direction of rotating chefs from the Biggest Little City. Cuisines vary from chef to chef and incorporate vegan options, with past dinners featuring foods from around the globe, including Japan, Italy, Thailand, and Germany.
Their first gathering, helmed by Rapscallion Seafood House chef Adam Bronson, featured dim-sum-inspired dishes, according to an article by Reno resident Paolo Zialcita.
Guests pay what they can afford, typically $5 to $10 (cash, Venmo, or PayPal), and those who can’t pay volunteer their time instead. Zialcita writes that the overall experience is “worth much more.”
When Fisher first floated the pay-what-you-can idea in 2015, some Reno Buddhist Center members were skeptical, telling Fisher, “They’ll rob you blind.”
The project, however, has never lost money. Instead, it always breaks even. Fisher attributes this self-sustaining model to the goodwill of the Reno community.
“People donate as though it’s a regular restaurant,” he says. “A few people don’t really have very much, but they still benefit from the whole community coming together.”
Moon Rabbit Cafe nurtures your spiritual nutrition
Along with addressing the nutritional needs of Renoites struggling to eat—about 14 percent of Washoe County residents face food insecurity, per Map the Meal Gap—Moon Rabbit Cafe nurtures their spiritual nutrition.
Fisher has seen it happen again and again while watching many different groups of friends and strangers eating together, family-style.
When you “actually sit down together,” he says, the “invisible boundaries between people” melt away.
“It’s one thing to just go to McDonald’s, buy a hamburger…find somebody sitting on the curb, and hand them a hamburger. They get a hamburger. You feel better for a second. Okay, great,” says Fisher. “It’s different to say, ‘I will sit and have dinner with you.’ That is the bigger part of the sustenance that [Moon Rabbit] provides.”
Most reviewers on Yelp agree that Moon Rabbit Cafe is a great opportunity to “bring a lot of people together to enjoy food and friendship.” They also praise the chefs, the food, the volunteers, and the relaxed atmosphere.
Rooted in Shin Buddhism, open to everyone
Moon Rabbit Cafe is non-denominational and open to people of all faiths and walks of life, but the concept is built on the philosophies of Shin Buddhism, a school of Buddhist practice from Japan.
The name Moon Rabbit Cafe was inspired by a well-known East Asian animal fable, or Jataka Tale, about a selfless rabbit, called “The Rabbit in the Moon.” While some cultures see the image of a face in the moon’s craters, people from Asian cultures are more likely to see a rabbit when they look up at the moon.
The restaurant’s sliding-scale pay structure honors the fundamental Buddhist practice of giving, known as dāna. Fisher describes dāna as a human value that’s contrary to the average animal in the jungle.
“No leopard is ever going to give the blue jay a piece of meat,” explains Fisher. “It’s going to eat as much as it can, and when it can’t eat anymore, it will move on. If the blue jay gets some food after that, that’s up to nature, not the leopard.”
Hundreds of volunteers, including local Boy Scouts, have helped out at Moon Rabbit Cafe over the years, and only a small percentage have been Buddhist, says Fisher, noting that pitching in and helping out is “a super Japanese way of doing things.”
To volunteer at Moon Rabbit Cafe for tasks such as cleaning, chopping produce, setting up tables, serving, and washing dishes, you can fill out a volunteer form.
