The film was created and co-written by Stephen Sayadian, under the name "Rinse Dream",[4] and journalist Jerry Stahl, under the name "Herbert W.

[12] Scholar Bradford K. Mudge has said of Café Flesh, that it, "Like all great satire...stands in parodic opposition to the very generic forms out of which it evolved.

"[13] Jacob Smith noted that "Sayadian's stylistic choices regarding performance--in large part pragmatic responses to the logistical imperatives of porn production--ended up shaping an aesthetic that ran parallel to a punk subculture that took an unsentimental, jaded view of sex and rejected the 1960s countercultural assertion of the liberating potential of free love.

Cafe Flesh offers a metaphoric depiction of changing sexual mores in the Reagan era, when AIDS, punk, and a conservative cultural backlash would drive a stake through the heart of the free love ideals of the counterculture."

[14] Erotica author Hapax Legomenon's notes that Cafe Flesh includes themes which were typically taboo in 1980s porn movies (Violence, Family Structures and Rules, Impotence, Illness and Morality).

[16] Café Flesh won the 1984 AVN Award for Best Art Direction - Film and has been inducted into the XRCO Hall of Fame.