Fine Dining is the Rule at Local Soup Kitchen

By Megan Gibson and Vadim Lavrusik
How does Mesopotamian meatloaf with apples, raisins and an almond cumin sauce sound? That’s the kind of entree that could cost you dearly at an Upper West Side restaurant. But at Broadway Community Inc., a soup kitchen and social service organization on 114th and Broadway, it’s just another weekday meal.

Soup kitchens tend to serve nutritious, filling meals that might not make your mouth water. Not at Broadway Community. To Michael Ennes, the chef in charge of Broadway Community’s kitchen, well-prepared food serves the body and the soul.

Faced with the task of feeding a lot of people, most soup kitchens structure their menus around canned foods. Ennes, however, said he was “constitutionally unable to do that.”

Instead, he said he focused on preparing healthy, restaurant-quality food for the center’s guests, using organic and sustainably grown foods. The soup kitchen always has a vegetarian alternative and Ennes privately calls Mondays “meatless Mondays.”

Because of the recession, Broadway Community has become very popular, Ennes said, but the social service center has been able to serve hundreds weekly and has maintained its volunteer support.

BCI offers a soup kitchen on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays, as well as a food pantry that provides several low-income families with groceries each week and other services.

Chef Michael Ennes

Ennes said while there is never a problem in getting food, the center is often strapped for cash to pay for kitchen supplies and utility bills.

Ennes, 57, is the food services, special projects and training director of BCI. He started at the center after 9/11 led him to do some soul-searching. Ennes already had years of experience working as a chef in various restaurants, including a brief stint as an owner of his own restaurant, but the terrorist attack spurred him to reach out to the community. Realizing he could use his talents to help at the organization — just blocks from his Upper West Side home — he decided he wanted to transform the way the soup kitchen was run.

He has prepared dishes such as Mesopotamian meatloaf with apples, raisins and an almond cumin sauce; five spice corn chowder; greens, jicama and olive salad with orange dressing; and canton chicken lo mein with vegetables, sprouts and bamboo shoots. Nonetheless, Ennes said that when it comes to his kitchen, “the point is not fancy, the point is nutrition.”

In addition to the soup kitchen and food pantry services, the center also has programs that demonstrate nutritious, inexpensive ways to cook the food they provide.

Ennes focuses the programs on three fundamental aspects of food preparation: nutrition education, culinary education and access to affordable, nutritious foods. The programs are designed to help people not only improve their daily eating habits but also to acquire skills that could help them find a job.

Yvonne Shields, a community chef at Broadway Community, had her life transformed by the program. Shields said she wanted to give back to the program after experiencing homelessness herself just nine years ago.

She was homeless for 10 months, but got involved in some job training programs that the city provided, hoping to change her career path as a day care coordinator for private providers, without much luck.

She decided she wanted to become a chef and was able to after stumbling across Broadway Community. She completed the Food and Nutrition Training Awareness Program, better known as FANTAP, at the center. The six-week vocational food program, taught by Ennes, trained Shields in nutrition, sanitation and meal service as well as covered the $105 cost of the New York City Department of Health and Mental Hygiene Department Food Protection test, which greatly improves the chances of getting hired in a restaurant.

Shields, who is now retired and lives in the Bronx, gives back to Broadway Community by volunteering her time, teaching others the cooking skills she learned. She recently did a cooking presentation, including all the produce that was being given out by the center that evening. The dish for the night: pan roasted corn and tomato salad.

The abundance of food given out is the reason Shirley Ashworth, 61, made her way from the Bronx, despite knee and ankle injuries. “I heard the pantry was going to be really big tonight,” Ashworth said, sitting down to take a rest from the stairs and tend to her hurting ankle.

Ashworth said that in 1999, she spent the year living in her car. Broadway helped her with food and other services provided her with housing support.

“I got back on my feet, until I fell down the stairs in my apartment and broke my ankle and hurt my knee,” she said. “Now I’m just trying to stay up.”