How Restaurants Offer a Helping Hand During the Holidays

Lille Allen

From Refettorio Harlem in NYC to Truth BBQ’s partnership with Houston’s Sky High for Kids, chefs are in the spirit of giving

Next week, couple Amanda and Issac Toups will leave their Mid-City restaurant, Toups Meatery, load up a few vehicles, and make some deliveries to the surrounding New Orleans communities. Boxes filled with whole chickens, collard greens, apple pies, cranberry sauce, macaroni and cheese, and cornbread will reach roughly 2,000 people.

“Food is a right,” Amanda says. “It’s not a ‘maybe’ — it’s a right, a human right. If the government’s not going to step in, then we’re going to step in, because that’s our business. We care about our fellow citizens here in New Orleans.”

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For restaurant owners like the Toups, who strive to combat food insecurity year-round through their non-profit, Toups’ Family Meal, giving back during the holidays is just as important as the job of serving others at their restaurant. Across the country, restaurants have taken strides to use their buildings and craft to support those in need, and the holidays are an especially apt time to support local communities. For many, including the restaurant experience is part of that mission.

“Restaurants are places where people can both celebrate and grieve, and come together in community,” says Katie Button, Asheville chef and co-owner Cúrate. “That becomes especially true during the holidays.”

As North Carolina began to recover from the disastrous effects of Hurricane Helene, the pintxos expert, who was forced to temporarily close Cúrate due to hurricane damage, was determined to help others in need by way of community engagement. She began hosting pintxos parties to gather folks in a joyful setting, eventually teaming up with local Asheville chef Ashleigh Shanti, owner of Good Hot Fish (which was also impacted by the hurricane), to raise funds for those in need. In early December, she and Shanti led a collaborative pinxtos dinner at the re-opened Cúrate, using the proceeds to assist employees impacted during the restaurant’s closure.

“Restaurants are critical to economic recovery in a community,” Button says, citing the importance of supporting other local businesses, too. The fall release of Shanti’s cookbook, Our South: Black Food Through My Lens, inspired the chef to collaborate with local bookseller, Malaprop’s Bookstore, who came by the restaurant to sell some of Shanti’s cookbooks. The team sold out of their copies, and the effort inspired many guests to donate to a relief fund for Shanti and Button’s workers — all of whom were impacted by the storms — through a QR code placed on each dining table.

“We are a community of small Asheville businesses and entrepreneurs,” Button says. “People don’t have large, deep pockets, so we help each other however we can.”

Carrie Turner

Chefs Ashleigh Shanti (right, in baseball cap) and Katie Button cooked up plenty of pintxos to support restaurant workers in need.

In Houston, the holidays are also an extension of constant work to combat issues like poverty and food insecurity. Pitmaster Leonard Botello and his wife, Abbie Byrom-Botello, are best known for their Michelin-recognized smokehouse, Truth BBQ. “A restaurant or chef can always cook you something,” Byrom-Botello says. “Before we really got into this work I [didn’t] believe that something like a barbecue sandwich would change anybody’s day, but it actually does. It becomes very personal to them, which in turn becomes personal to us.”

In August, Sky High for Kids, a Houston-area nonprofit, launched with the goal to provide comfort to vulnerable communities, fund research, and save the lives of those fighting pediatric cancer and other life-threatening conditions. (As a hub for medicine and cancer treatment, numerous people from around the world relocate to Houston each year to seek treatment in the city’s renowned medical center.) Botello and Byrom-Botello participate in a series of “Sunday Suppers,” which allow patients and their families to enjoy fresh meals from some of the city’s best restaurants. Many patients in the cancer ward, as Byrom-Botello explains, are food insecure, and the couple, along with other local restaurants like Eunice and Hungry’s, use their culinary gifts to support them during a remarkably difficult period. During early December, they spent several hours delivering meals that received the Truth BBQ holiday treatment: dozens of deliveries include smoked prime rib with horseradish sauce, Brussels sprouts, the restaurant’s beloved tater tot casserole, and a brownie.

“It’s all about constantly asking the question: What can we do to help people in need?” says Botello.

At Refettorio Harlem, underserved communities are the primary target for the institution’s dining goals. The “only free restaurant in New York” focuses on creating dining experiences that reinforce dignity and beauty, and addresses an important and growing challenge during the holidays: loneliness.

“The top line mission is to address social isolation, food waste, and food scarcity at the same time,” says Bob Wilms, director of the restaurant’s parent organization, Free Food Harlem.

Repurposing 2,000 pounds of food per week, Refferito Harlem operates food pantries and hosts regular three-course dinners catered to lower-income communities. During this year’s annual Holiday Soiree fundraising event, the Harlem Brewing Company and neighborhood chefs JJ Johnson, Russell Jackson, and Contento’s Asia Shabazz, all of whom have taken various steps to support their surrounding Harlem community throughout the year, served dishes like oxtail and grits and triple chocolate cake. The event was ticketed, and proceeds from the event benefitted Free Food’s community food and social justice programs. “The chefs are really aware of what we’re doing and the impact that we’re making” Wilms says.

While chefs and restaurants aim to serve a wide range of people, children remain the focus of efforts, especially during the holidays. The child poverty rate in the United States more than doubled in recent years, increasing from 5.2 percent in 2021 to 12.4 percent in 2022, according to the U.S. Census Bureau. Black, Native American, and Latinx children are three times more likely to experience poverty than white children, making the efforts at Houston’s Original Ninfa’s on Navigation all of the more important. An extension of the charitable efforts put in place by the restaurant’s founder, Maria Ninfa Rodriguez Laurenzo, the Houston institution is a mainstay in the city’s prominent Latino community. During Christmas time, it’s decorated with ornaments handmade by students at nearby Our Lady of Guadalupe School, a predominantly Latino elementary and middle school. Ninfa’s supports the tuition needs of lower-income children each year around the holidays (recent years have included $25,000 donations in the month of December), an intentional effort by way of the team to support the specific needs of the Latino community.

Sergio Trevino

During the holidays, students from Our Lady of Guadalupe School create ornaments to decorate the Original Ninfa’s on Navigation.

“There are a lot of underprivileged young Hispanic students that needed help and over there on the East End,” says Ninfa’s director of operations Justin Solomon. “And at Our Lady of Guadalupe, they know that at any point, if they need anything, they can reach out to us, and we’re going to do everything that we can to help out.”

In New Orleans, the Toups are packing more packages for children in their community. After spending years standing up to politicians enacting problematic policies that devastate the poor, and cooking Creole and Cajun fare for those in need, the holidays provide a renewed sense of energy to support others, especially children.

“We are one of the greatest food cities in the world, and one in three of our children are sitting below the poverty line — that’s just unacceptable,” Amanda Toups says. “So we’re going to do whatever we can to change that.”

During Thanksgiving week, the duo served 1,500 people; during the week of Christmas, they’ll serve 2,000. At the heart of the restaurant industry is service, and it remains the center of the team’s local efforts, in and outside of their eatery.

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