The pandemic paralyzed the restaurant industry,
but a prominent Seattle chef pivoted to stay afloat.
Don't mess with your raviolis too much.
Food is a history book.
He's taken indigenous food to new heights,
sparking interest in his Native Soul Cuisine.
Seattle School District chefs create culturally diverse meals.
Leaving corndogs and pizza behind.
These stories and more next on CityStream.
I'm Enrique Cerna.
Welcome to City Stream from Food Lifeline.
(🎶)
For more than 40 years,
Food Lifeline has worked to end hunger in this region.
Each year, it provides nutritious food to hundreds of thousands of people.
It does this by diverting millions of pounds of food
from farmers, manufacturers, grocery stores and restaurants.
Food Lifeline then distributes it to more than 300 food banks and meal programs.
But it also understands food insecurity is inextricably linked to poverty
and its root causes, including racial inequity and social injustice.
Much more on that just ahead.
Famed Seattle restaurateur Tom Douglas has a 30 year relationship
with Food Lifeline, and he shares the organization's mission to end hunger.
But for Douglas and many local restaurant owners,
just staying in business the past two years has been tough.
We've all been forced to interact in creative, new ways,
and that's especially true of the food industry
He quickly realized that to stay afloat, it must adapt.
Producers Kathy Tuohey and Valerie Vozza take a look.
Remember the dark days of March 2020?
100,000 restaurants closed overnight.
6 million restaurant jobs disappeared.
How did eating establishments and cooking schools survive during COVID?
They pivoted.
(🎵🎵)
And then the Singapore seafood noodles.
Seattle's leading restaurateur Tom Douglas experienced an upheaval
he could never have predicted.
When COVID happened.
Of course, we didn't know anything what was going to go on.
None of us did.
We had let
860 of our 869 people go.
So we had nine people, which we called the pilot light team.
It was very traumatic.
(Garage door opening)
They stationed themselves at Douglas's warehouse in Ballard
and took action.
The building had access to the outside through the loading dock
and easy curbside pickup.
So they built a kitchen
and started ramping up takeout service.
We were doing about 450 a day,
and then at that same time,
we signed up with World Central Kitchen out of D.C.
and started producing 600 meals a day
for them to distribute throughout the area
because everything closed.
People forget.
Douglas estimates the To-Go business
generated more than 50% of his income during this time
and is still up 10 to 20% today.
And we'll see what happens as we rebuild our company.
Another crucial pivot for Douglas took place
at his cooking school
Hot Stove Society.
Located in Belltown,
the popular school had already been offering
in-person classes for over eight years.
When COVID hit, we went virtual within two weeks.
Had all of our cameras and everything ready to go.
Don't mess with your raviolis too much
when they float, that doesn't mean that they're done.
For the first year, they also shipped out
Pre-Portioned meal kits to clients
to go along with the lesson.
We did that for anywhere from, you know,
a small group of 6 to 600.
We love to use shallots instead of onions
because it has kind of that flavor in between garlic and onion.
Going virtual did present some challenges,
as instructor Annie Elmore discovered.
You have many different people on Zoom, right?
And they all have different skills and they all have different kitchens
and they all have different equipment.
Let me know if you are like halfway there
or almost done or give a thumbs up.
Ready to go.
But it all worked out and classes filled up quickly.
I adjusted my recipes to a little bit simpler
and focused more on technique.
I'm just going to take the tops and I'm going to rough chop.
And one of the things that hot stoves, we love to teach people techniques
so that when they leave here,
they take something permanent with them.
And I'm going to take my endive and I'm going to cut it
lengthwise in half.
Virtual classes, I would say they were probably mentally
more important than anything
for me, for the team, for the process of getting back on our feet.
Who doesn't like deep fried food? Come on.
Smaller cooking schools also had
to make critical adjustments to stay afloat during this time.
The Pantry, located in Ballard, opened in 2011
as a cooking school with an emphasis on community gathering.
When classes went dark, they quickly converted
their class recipes into beautiful takeaway meals.
There were definitely some ups and downs
figuring out what worked out well
and what didn't.
And we were, you know, trying to
also be able to give back to the community.
We were cooking for like over 100 people every day,
so it was a big change.
(🎶)
They also pivoted from in-person cooking classes to virtual ones,
a move that allowed them to stay engaged with their community.
We're gonna slap it and stretch it slowly at the same time.
All these changes made it possible for places like The Pantry
to finally open their doors to students again.
We're making three different pasta shapes,
and each gets its own filling and its own sauce.
We want this to smooth out.
We want it to get sprungy.
(🎶)
Over at Hot Stove Society
classes are also back in full swing.
I want it a little bit thicker than that,
so I'm not going to press as hard.
So there's a little bit of thicker.
Growth is happening and restaurants are opening up again.
We've been able to reacquire some of our amazing people
that we lost with the shutdown.
That is super cool.
No doubt the food industry will continue to adapt
and will keep some of the changes they've made.
But one thing's for sure
there's no substitute for gathering in person.
Being around other people and being able to have that,
that community and conversation and, you know,
doing an activity together has been really exciting.
And, you know, it brings people a lot of joy.
If this inspires you to upgrade your cooking skills,
grab your apron
and sign up at one of the many local cooking schools.
One man who has not only upgraded his skills,
he's added a whole new twist to indigenous food.
His story next as CityStream continues.
A local chef is making a name for himself by creating unique dishes
that offer an interesting twist on classic indigenous recipes
from Jamaican curry, Navajo tacos,
to smoked salmon mac and cheese.
Chef Jeremy Thunderbird is sharing his native culture through food.
Producer Aileen Imperial has his story.
(🎶)
Throughout my life,
seeing Native Americans in any sort of spotlight was kind of rare.
You can go to a Mexican spot down the street
and get tacos
pretty much every day of the week.
But you don't get that same chance to enjoy
a fry bread or a Navajo taco.
One of my goals is to change that.
I want more people to enjoy Native American cuisine.
(🎶)
This is what we use as our taco shell.
But it's Native American fry bread.
First time I went to and they were sold out.
Like within an hour.
I've heard the story of like
the origins of fry bread and where it would have come from.
And so that was always really interesting to me,
And it's something that I've known about for a long time,
but I've just never been in an environment
to be able to have it.
No we feel really lucky that we here.
You know, go to that long house.
Yeah, that's where we had fry bread before.
And, you know, get fry bread just in our own neighborhood here, too.
Recently started following Native Soul Cuisine on Instagram.
Wanted to stop by and support.
And also, I love
fry bread tacos.
Thank you.
Here you guys you're welcome,
have a good week.
My name is Jeremy Thunderbird.
I'm the owner, Head Chef of Native Soul Cuisine.
We started off doing private chef work.
We do a lot of catering
and now we just got into doing pop ups.
Native soul cuisine at its roots.
Every one of our dishes that we offer
has some sort of Native American basis.
We also like to involve some other cultures that,
you know, as a chef influenced me.
My mom's tribe is from California, so she's Ohlone and Chumash.
My father is First Nations.
I have a family full of cooks.
My grandfather was a chef.
Then I was always watching my family cook growing up.
I was working at AT&T, ended up losing my job there.
And while I was looking for another job,
I was already cooking and stuff
and kind of just, you know, posting stuff
on my Instagram.
People would say, Hey,
I would actually buy that from you.
I don't know if they're joking or not.
We kind of turned
our kitchen window into a little drive thru.
And that's really how I started my company.
I was like the very early roots of it.
( Sounds of corn being cut)
But Native Soul Cuisine.
We focus on indigenous ingredients
and we don't just do one type of, you know, regional cuisine.
I try and include stuff that comes from all over,
like Three Sisters Stew
traditionally was a Iroquois recipe.
I also like to incorporate blue corn
things like, it's called blue corn mush,
and that's mainly the Southwestern ingredients.
My heritage comes from the West Coast.
We do a lot of fishing,
so that's like a staple in our diet and we make a smoked salmon mac and cheese.
So that's kind of combining, you know, different elements
like a soul food with a Native American staple.
Food is a history book.
I say that a lot because it's so true.
And you can learn a lot about a society by what their diet looks like.
Natives were forced on to these reservations
and reservation is a nice way to put it.
They're really prisoner of war camps.
And how fry bread came to be,
Story goes that
the government gave us these commodity ingredients
flour, sugar, salt and lard.
And that's basically what we used
to kind of sustain ourselves.
(Sounds of dough frying)
Normally the only place that you can get fry bread
is when you go to a pow wow.
(🎶 Drums and Singing)
Pow wows have always that.
That was a huge part of my upbringing.
It's just one of the places where you get to see people that
look like you.
And you know that
they also struggle with a lot of the things that you struggle with.
There's a there's a spiritual, like lift.
(🎶 Drums and Singing)
People see us as just, like, kind of mythical
and almost fairy tale that we don't exist and
with Native Soul Cuisine it kind of proves
that wrong
pow wows.
The biggest influence it had on
how I cook and what I cook is that
I wanted to give other people that same experience of,
you know, this is, this is a rare chance where you get to enjoy
Native American culture.
Food's a universal language.
So you know, what better way to share my culture
than, you know, through food?
Here you go hun.
(Laughter)
Chef Thunderbird
ultimately hopes to open a brick and mortar restaurant.
Until then, you can sample his latest creations by searching
Native Soul Cuisine on Instagram.
We'll be right back.
CityStream returns from Food Lifeline, an organization working to end hunger
by focusing on its root cause of poverty
brought on by systemic racism and social injustice.
Food Lifeline's reach extends
from this facility in Seattle to all of Western Washington.
Now, one group that benefits greatly is seasonal workers.
In Skagit County.
Food Lifeline is partnering
with local food banks to meet the needs of the Hispanic community
by investing resources to purchase more culturally appropriate foods.
At the Tri Parish Food Bank,
these funds support new farm creation.
Farms that employ local workers
to grow culturally appropriate foods
that the Hispanic community needs.
Having familiar foods makes a huge difference.
Food Lifeline is committed
to expanding its capacity and network
to meet the increased need
to celebrating the dignity and diversity of all clients,
to partnering with communities determined to find their own solutions
and engaging people just like you
who believe food should be a basic human right.
(🎶)
Joining us now
is Mark Coleman, Food Lifeline.
Mark, thanks for joining us, appreciate it.
My pleasure Enrique,
thank you for visiting us.
We just saw a video in which we,
one group that really depends on Food Lifeline
are Latino seasonal workers.
If there wasn't your organization, what would happen to them?
You know, that's hard to say.
And what would happen is
what has been happening for a long time.
There's been a struggle in that community.
And we really want to work with those communities
to find out what the answer is and help them achieve that.
How difficult is it for you to serve them knowing that their needs
might be a bit different?
Well I think Enrique, the key is listening
to these organizations because they know what the answers are.
And once you can listen to them
and then find a way to help them respond to that, you can create solutions.
Tell me about where the bulk of your food comes from.
Who's supplying?
Well, every company in the food industry creates surplus.
You can't sell what you don't have.
So what we do is we pick up those surpluses
from farmers, manufacturers, grocery stores and restaurants,
and that allows us to serve 350 food banks, shelters and meal programs
across Western Washington.
That's a lot of people
that depend on you.
We'll serve over a million people this year.
You see the volunteers behind me there sorting and repacking food
that's going to go out in the next 24 hours.
Every day, Food Lifeline creates the equivalent of 282,000 meals.
Wow.
How has COVID and the pandemic impacted
what Food Lifeline does and what they provide?
When COVID hit, we had problems finding food.
You know, the supply chain issues.
And we also had twice as many people looking for help.
We did public distributions where the majority of the people
coming to pick up food
had never visited a food bank before in their lives.
So that was a huge challenge.
One of the things that Food Lifeline has done
is to take a deeper dive in looking at poverty
and its impact on hunger.
What did you find?
What we discovered
is that if you're hungry, it's a financial problem.
So most of the hunger comes from the root cause of poverty.
And poverty comes from systemic racism, inequality, inequity.
So we're looking to approach those root causes and try to remove them
or modify them to make sure that more people have the food they need.
What do you tell the public about what your needs are?
What we tell the public is we need them to join us on this.
We need them to learn about the problems,
learn what the solutions are,
and then engage with us to make a difference.
One last thing.
You have volunteers that help you.
How important is that to the existence of this organization?
We couldn't do without the volunteers.
We have about 18,000 volunteers every year because as you can see
in the warehouse, we get food by the truckloads and by the pallets.
You can't drop a pallet on a small food bank.
We need to break that food down, warehouse it,
and then put those orders together for the food bank.
So without the volunteers, we couldn't do this.
So if you want to volunteer, how do you go about doing it?
Couldn't be easier. Go to FoodLifeline.org.
When you get to the homepage, there's a big button that says Volunteer.
You click on it. It'll bring up a calendar.
All the dates and times you can sign up online
and then just show up here and give us a hand.
Thanks a lot, Mark, and good luck.
Pleasure, thank you for being here.
Next on CityStream.
See how Seattle school district chefs fed families during the pandemic
and created meals that appeal to all cultures.
During the pandemic,
the Seattle school district ramped up quickly,
devising an impressive plan
to feed students studying at home and their families.
For some students, the breakfast and lunch they receive at school
are the most substantial meals they receive all day.
At the same time, the district was determined
to make lunches healthier
and more culturally diverse.
Producer Ian Devier explains.
One thing I noticed when I moved here
is that Seattle is completely different from Chicago
and so, and it's more diverse.
In Seattle, we have like so much diversity
people, all different backgrounds
where food is really important to all these different cultures.
I have 26 countries represented in my school
at Denny International.
Chief Sealth also.
Not all of these kids are going to go for hamburgers, fries and pizzas.
They want other things.
I immediately started to reach out
to different community groups, student organizations,
parent groups just so I could get a better understanding of the city.
Like the type of spices, type of dishes.
You know, what type of food do you know your kids eat when they're home?
You know, what would they like to see in the lunchroom?
From there I just started a game plan, how can we start
incorporating the different type of cultures in the food?
So a kid, no matter what their background is,
when they come into that cafeteria, they feel like they're at home.
When I came in, we actually cooked.
We cooked everything by scratch,
and then we changed over to where more things started to come to us.
We just would heat it up.
One of the very first things I did was improve quality.
You know, try to get away from processed foods, bringing more fresh fruits,
more fresh vegetables.
But then I brought in a district chef,
So I really
was very on board with the mission of
presenting more culturally relevant food.
And I feel like that's how people learn different cultures
through food the best, especially young children.
I am an immigrant.
I came from Brazil
and so I started here at first grade and I just remember the corn dogs.
I'm like, What is this thing on a stick?
Nachos and just the cheese sauce.
It just didn't feel to me like a meal,
like a comforting meal that I was used to, like a home cooked meal.
I think that whenever we do, do items that are made from scratch,
we really see like the benefits of that.
Our kitchen is pretty big.
It has a lot of like industrial equipment. So it's here.
So it's, let's put it to use.
Like we did a Somali chicken stew.
We served salmon chowder.
And that was like smoked salmon from Lummi Island.
Delicious.
That was a big hit.
The salmon chowder, the wonton soup.
I really want to do more of those
because I think the kids will really go for that.
We work with students.
We had a student from Haiti.
Hi, I'm Emme Collins, District Chef at Seattle Public School.
And I'm here with Angel Doss, Seattle Skill Center, culinary student
at Rainier Beach.
And she's going to be teaching us how to make her family's recipe
for Haitian chicken stew, which I'm then going to take.
And we're going to be serving it up to the students
at all the Seattle schools.
I think a lot of people underestimate kids and their palates.
And at first, like, some people were like, oh,
what kid is going to eat lentil stew, you know?
And it was like, let's try it out.
I'm always like, let's try it out, see how it does.
And we did it and it was like probably the most popular thing
that we put on the menu last year was a lentil stew.
That's really good.
Thank you.
It was March 12th,
my 60th birthday,
and I was done with work.
What we thought was three weeks.
We came back on that, I believe it was the 16th that Monday,
and we were open for business
because we had to make sure the kids got fed.
When the pandemic started, you know, we knew that families
who was already in need, you know, they need even more support.
And then we're going to get a bubble of families
who haven't struggled before,
that's going to start struggling.
So how can we maintain what we already started
and create a welcoming environment
so people don't feel embarrassed or ashamed
to come and pick up a meal?
When this first started, we weren't doing hot food because it's like,
how do you serve hot food?
Everybody, like, I feel like all the school districts
around the nation was, you know, doing prepackaged stuff,
doing box, like just boxing things up for people to take for the week.
And that's kind of like what we started as well.
It's just like sandwiches and cold meals and stuff.
(Sound of palates being moved)
So right now we have 40 meal sites.
We have direct home delivery.
These two schools
are one of the largest food distribution sites in Washington state.
Amazon is delivering to over 3000 families daily.
They make the boxes really fun.
There's good meals in there. There's fun things.
They got cereal, they got milk.
They got fresh fruit, vegetables.
I think we started out with about 375.
Now we're up to 615 to 637.
We average around 30,000 meals a day.
We're also delivering to housing units
and shelters directly from our central kitchen.
Fare Start donated meals, extra supper meals.
City of Seattle have set up meal sites
at different housing units so we can distribute meals to them.
No matter where you live,
there should be a meal in close proximity for you to be able to pick up.
I've seen many times, like families coming in
and parents coming in like in tears, like just very thankful
that we're able to provide food for their family
because they either lost their jobs, they're desperate.
They don't know what to do.
At least they can come to one of these 40 sites
and make sure that their children are fed.
Thank you have a great day.
Thank you, you too.
We've done a really good job during the school year on
making sure we represent different cultures through our food.
And, you know, we took a step back for a couple of weeks
and then came up with a game plan on how we can continue to do that.
Like, let's get back to like our goals and what we wanted to do
and we still can do it even through this situation that we're in.
And we've proven that we were able to do that.
You know, serving.
Yeah, we have like sandwiches and salads as options, but
we're also still cooking from scratch, making culturally relevant food.
I try every month.
We've done like a special.
We did gumbo last month. We're about to do.
One of our supervisors is of Eritrean background
and there's a lot of like Ethiopian Eritrean families in our community.
So I'm working with her
and members of the community to make their typical food injera
with like a stew, like a lentil stew that they do.
So I think that they're going to make good food
that the kids can come in and grab,
and they're going to they're actually going to be eating
instead of just taking the fries out, throwing the rest in the garbage.
We're just going to continue to grow and continue to be creative.
I can't wait to get back in service so they can really show us
what they're going to do.
That's what's going to be good.
Seattle Public School students
have since returned to class, and the district is continuing
to create nutritious and culturally diverse meals.
We'll be right back.
That wraps up this episode of CityStream from Food Lifeline.
If you'd like to learn how you can volunteer here,
just visit the website FoodLifeline.org.
I'm Enrique Cerna. Thank you for watching.