[Sca-cooks] OOP - Not sure how to react to this NYT article

[Philip Troy]

I'm not sure if this comes under the heading of, "Another Festivus  
miracle!", a comment on the local economy, or an indication of just  
how bizarre my home town is, but there's a very interesting article  
in this morning's New York Times food section about four-star soup  
kitchens:

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/12/20/dining/20soup.html

December 20, 2006

On the Soup Line, Endive and Octopus

By KIM SEVERSON
EVEN at the soup kitchen, everyone’s a critic.

The multicourse lunch that Michael Ennes cooked in the basement of  
Broadway Presbyterian Church last week started with a light soup of  
savoy and napa cabbages. The endive salad was dressed with basil  
vinaigrette. For the main course, Mr. Ennes simmered New Jersey bison  
in wine and stock flavored with fennel and thickened with olive oil  
roux.

But some diners thought the bison was a little tough, and the menu  
discordant.

“He’s good, but sometimes I think the experimentation gets in the way  
of good taste,” said Jose Terrero, 54. Last year, Mr. Terrero made a  
series of what he called inappropriate financial decisions, including  
not paying his rent. He now sleeps at a shelter. He has eaten at  
several New York City soup kitchens, and highly recommends Mr.  
Ennes’s food.

Mr. Ennes, a former English major who reads Thomas Paine and wears a  
black and white neckerchief with a turquoise clasp, might be the best  
soup kitchen chef in New York City. On Thanksgiving, when most of the  
cooks at the city’s other 470-some soup kitchens simply roasted  
turkey, he prepared “turkey four ways,” including one with mango- 
ginger glaze and tropical fruit stuffing.

There will be no canned green beans or bologna sandwiches. Mr. Ennes  
insists on homemade stocks, oils without trans fats, organic peanut  
butter and local produce when he can get it. (That’s not to say he  
won’t stretch a meal with some frozen turkey patties or use a little  
powdered soup base in a pinch.)

Despite the care he puts into his cooking, he doesn’t mind a little  
criticism.

“They’re still customers, whether they’re paying $100 a plate or  
nothing,” Mr. Ennes said. “One thing we do here is listen to people  
and let them complain. Where else can a homeless person get someone  
to listen to them?”

Mr. Ennes, 55, cooks about 500 meals a week for people who come to  
the church on the corner of Broadway and 114th Street in search of a  
free breakfast or lunch. At night, a handful of women in need of  
shelter sleep upstairs. He feeds them, too.

The people who eat at Broadway Community Inc., the social service  
organization that employs Mr. Ennes and rents space in the church,  
are only a small slice of the 260,000 New Yorkers who every week  
visit some emergency feeding program. About 40 percent of the people  
who eat at Mr. Ennes’s table live in a shelter or take cover in the  
parks or the subways. The rest have a temporary home of some sort, on  
a friend’s couch or the roof of a building where they know the super.  
Some don’t earn enough to cover rent.

Mr. Ennes relies on the Food Bank for New York City, donations and  
grants, but he also employs the creativity of a desperate cook. When  
he’s out of wine, he uses fruit juice or borrows communion wine from  
the understanding pastor at the church upstairs. (He has to make sure  
all the alcohol is cooked off; many of his clients are trying to  
recover from alcoholism.)

The bread basket that sits on each table is filled with rolls that  
were baked at Le Bernardin the day before but never served. Le  
Bernardin is among nearly 150 high-end restaurants that regularly  
donate through City Harvest, a nonprofit that for 25 years has been  
“rescuing” extra food. The list of donors, which includes  
corporations, farms and grocery stores, totals more than 2,000.  
Without City Harvest, Mr. Ennes would be hard-pressed to present the  
menus he does.

Though the quality of the ingredients is often impeccable, he doesn’t  
always know what he’s going to get or what form it’s going to take.  
Last week brought a large plastic sack of asparagus, both white  
stalks and pencil-thin green ones. They were beautiful, except all  
the tips had been snapped off. Before that, there was a shipment of  
pineapple slices, each with a star punched out of the middle, and  
several foil trays filled with braised baby octopus. He disguised  
some of the octopus in a soup and used the rest in a salad for the  
women’s shelter.

Surprise contributions come from other sources, too. Mr. Ennes  
teaches cooking, nutrition and food service skills to homeless  
people, who in turn help prepare meals. In November, a student  
brought a leg of venison from his family in Georgia. Mr. Ennes used  
it for stock, which became the base for an Andalusian oxtail and  
lentil stew.

Before the stew was served, Mr. Ennes delivered a short food and  
nutrition lecture to a crowded dining room.

“We’re dealing with the regions of Spain today,” he said in a booming  
voice better suited to a different stretch of Broadway. “The stew has  
no potatoes. It’s served with rice and peas instead. That’s what  
makes it Andalusian.”

People dozed or babbled. Some couldn’t understand a word of English.  
Those who did, though, were amused.

“He should have his own show,” said Duwon Bryant, who drops into the  
center to shower, check e-mail and get a good meal before he heads  
back outside to find a place to sleep. No other soup kitchen has  
Broadway Community’s mix of excellent cooking and supportive  
attitude, he said.

“I’ve been to them all and this is like gourmet,” Mr. Bryant said.  
“Other places will give you slop and say it’s better than nothing.”

Some people said they prefer the food at a soul food soup kitchen in  
Harlem. Others like a slightly tonier East Side soup kitchen that has  
an automatic dishwasher and can use real plates. (Mr. Ennes hates  
serving his food on plastic-foam plates, but he says a dishwasher and  
the plumbing for it would cost about $10,000.) But as with any  
restaurant whose focus is on refined ambiance, a seat at the East  
Side place comes at a cost.

“They don’t let everybody in, so you wait on line and then you get  
turned away if they don’t like how you look,” said Patrick Garrelle,  
44. “Their door policy is almost like a nightclub with a rope.”

At Broadway Community, everyone gets to eat. There is no humiliating  
food line to stand in. Volunteers set each of Mr. Ennes’s courses in  
front of the diners.

“When you force people to queue up for food, you encourage pushiness  
and aggressiveness and hardness,” he said. “Sitting at a table and  
being served encourages community.”

At one time, Mr. Ennes dreamed of being a starred chef. He was raised  
on the Upper West Side, and initially made money building  
restaurants. He turned to the kitchen, cooking in South Beach and the  
Florida Keys in the 1980s. In 1990, he opened a restaurant on Second  
Avenue and First Street in Manhattan called Orféo, hoping to attract  
the attention of food critics. It never did, and the restaurant  
closed after four years.

Things changed for Mr. Ennes on 9/11. His consulting job with a  
restaurant downtown vanished, and, like many others, he decided to  
make good on a longstanding intention to do more volunteer work. So  
he walked across the street from his apartment to volunteer at  
Broadway Community. In no time, he was the head chef, making $30,000  
a year plus health benefits.

He no longer dreams of feeding stars or getting one.

“I could have spent my life pampering the rich, which is a fine art,”  
he said. “But I think I’ve found where I belong.”

Copyright 2006 The New York Times Company