Music and Cats

I meet my friend Christina for lunch, at a restaurant I’ve been wanting to try since it opened in its new location months ago. The space is clean-lined and warm, with exposed wood columns and beams, warm white walls and black steel earthquake retrofitting.

We study the menu, mostly upscale salads and sandwiches, and decide that we’re both interested in the same two sandwiches: blackened salmon from the regular menu and a swordfish BLT on the list of daily specials. I suggest that we get one of each, and split them. When our waiter takes our order, Christina asks if he can have the kitchen cut both sandwiches in half. He pauses, then tells us that, because of their training program, they don’t do that sort of thing. They focus on presentation, on consistency, on repetition. Can he bring us a steak knife? Of course. As he walks back to the kitchen, I read the text of the back of his black T-shirt: It’s not just a french fry, it’s a civic duty.

This restaurant is the public face of FareStart, an organization aimed at reducing homelessness by providing homeless men and women with culinary training, necessary social services, and job placement in the restaurant industry upon completion of the training program. As part of their training, Farestart students work in the restaurant, where they prepare lunch each weekday for downtown workers. FareStart students also cook meals for twenty-three child care centers and eight homeless shelters around the city. And each Thursday evening, FareStart has Guest Chef Night, when one of Seattle’s top chefs works with students to prepare a 3-course fixed-price meal. Guest Chef Nights have become quite popular, and regularly sell out weeks in advance.

Since its inception 15 years ago, FareStart has provided culinary training to 1500 students, and has served 2.5 million meals to the Seattle community. Dining at FareStart is a delicious way to support its mission of transforming lives, but the restaurant and other businesses provide only 40% of the organization’s operating revenue. Foundation grants, corporate gifts and individual donations make up the remaining 60%.

Today, Holidailies’s hosts asked that participants suggest an organization for the Holidailies Charity Project. Let’s help FareStart teach another (wo)man to cook a fish. If she learns to make a swordfish BLT as good as the one that Christina and I ate, the world will be a little happier, and better fed.

To open the Advent calendar window for Day 6, click here:

No one embodies the spirit of giving more than Santa Claus. If Saint Nick were eating lunch at FareStart regularly (especially that delicious swordfish BLT!), he’d be an even jollier old fellow.

Tags: 1 Comment