“We’re the anti-soup kitchen,” says Curtin of the organization housed in a honeycomb of social service organizations on 2^nd Street in Northwest, D.C. Practically speaking The Kitchen  (as it’s known in shorthand) prepares meals for area shelters and provides culinary training to individuals primarily coming from the penal system. They don’t so much serve up meals as put individual empowerment on their menu.

Even in a down economy, however, The Kitchen has championed innovative measures that many for-profit restaurants have difficulty achieving on a regular basis.

Sustainablity Equals Profitability

Darnell Herndon is a 10-year veteran of D.C. Central Kitchen. Image: Amy Loeffler

One of the major innovations instituted by The Kitchen was initiating partnerships with local farmers in the Shenandoah Valley and Mennonite farming communities in Pennsylvania (a photo of a van emblazoned with the D.C. Central Kitchen logo parked next to a Mennonite buggy hangs in Curtin’s office). “Going sustainable was an enlightened self-interest to do better food cheaper,” says Curtin who is a former local restaurateur. He says the fare served now at The Kitchen’s catering business, Fresh Start Catering and distributed to its network of homeless shelters “is clearly of a higher caliber.” And according to Curtin over 75 percent of the food used by The Kitchen during this summer was local. Using locally sourced vegetables is not only trendier, but makes for a more nutrient dense product, no small matter when most of the clients eating one of the 4,000 meals produced at The Kitchen on a daily basis are nutritionally compromised. In fact on the day that I visit the staff and volunteers are making huge cauldrons of venison chili from locally sourced meat.

Using locally sourced produce and meat is not just a mechanism to go green, but a money making venture.  Partnering with farmers who can’t sell “seconds”  (produce that can’t be sold because it does not cosmetically or aesthetically meet standards) was a way to get better quality food at better prices than boutique re-sellers according to Curtin and turn sustainability into a “revenue generating social enterprise.”  Once they started making regular food runs famers would also occasionally hand over surplus produce sitting in their barns. The Kitchen also generates revenue by making food runs for area restaurants like Zola’s and charging restaurateurs for the service. Using sustainable produce has been so successful that food supplier giants like SYSCO have actually taken note .

The Opportunity to Give Back

Despite the current economic free fall, The Kitchen’s Culinary Job Training program has also undergone improvements to make graduates of the program more employable. Aspects of the program such as exposing students to a wider range of cooking styles by bringing local chefs to the classroom have helped more students find and excel in full-time work.

Nick Alexander of Anacostia Senior High is one of the 11,000 volunteers who pass through D.C. Central Kitchen annually. Image: Amy Loeffler

Assistant Kitchen Director Gary Bullock has been working in the culinary industry in Washington, D.C. since he was 17. He is the only culinary staff member who did not come to D.C. Central Kitchen through the Culinary Job Training program. “I’ve always wanted to do something different. And this was real different,” says Bullock.

He teaches students in The Culinary Job Training program, often imparting more than the fundamentals of knife skills and learning how to flambé. “A lot of the guys and girls in this program just want someone to hear them out.” Bullock says. Over 70 percent of students are ex-offenders and 80 percent are in recovery and are recruited four times a year from the D.C. jail and a penitentiary in South Carolina.

Bullock makes a point to tells his students that he’s never been locked up, or in recovery, to demonstrate that he’s like them (he grew up in Petworth); that they have options; that cooking can be a path out of drug addiction and recidivism in the penal system. Students are taught job skills, conflict resolution skills, resume writing and they are drug tested on a regular basis.

While Gary Bullock may not enjoy the fame of a celebrity chef, he knows he is in a unique position. “I’m just a regular person,” said Bullock.  “Just to be able to say I helped that person can go a long way. As frustrating as it gets sometimes, I have the opportunity to give so much back.”

A flyer announces locally sourced produce in every meal, including today's venison chili. Image: Amy Loeffler

What makes The Kitchen run on a daily basis are the 11,000 volunteers that pass through their doors and staff members like Darnell Herndon.  Like a lot of staff who come through the Culinary Job Training Program he was a drug user living on the streets when he came here. When he ended up in front of a judge, the judge gave him a choice between going to an institution and D.C. Central Kitchen.  He chose The Kitchen. “This is like a recovery zone,” said Herndon of the atmosphere at The Kitchen. Herndon has worked as the bakery manager for The Kitchen’s Fresh Start Catering and now works as a production manager during meal production. In his 10 years on various catering jobs he has met a cavalcade of political figures and celebrities including Bill and Hillary Clinton. “Very seldom do people leave here,” says Herndon, “It’s a family.”

Back in Mike Curtin’s office, I ask if he ever misses the rush of being “on the line” in a restaurant.  He chuckles and says he probably romanticizes the good memories a bit too much and tends to forget the headaches. As a restaurateur he was always more interested in being cornerstone of his community than winning culinary awards.  “It’s one thing to know [food] has the power to change lives. It’s one thing to see it. That’s why we’re so lucky at The Kitchen.”

–Amy

Anthony Bourdain pre-"No Reservations Fame" and still a believer in print. Image: ew.com

Recently Anthony Bourdain declared that print media is gasping for its last breath. New York Magazine’s “Grub Street reported that in an interview with the Vernon Hills Review Bourdain said:

I’m not trying to be alarmist, but anyone who thinks (food-related) print media is going to survive is kidding themselves … Why am I going to read a five-page New York Times article on Singaporean food when there’s some unpaid nerd blogging about it, especially when that guy made eating his life’s work?

Not trying to be alarmist? *Snort* Let’s clarify, Tony, are you not trying to be alarmist in the same way that you are not trying to be inflammatory when you say things about other celebutante chefs like,”Alice Waters annoys the living sh*t out of me.”?

To be clear, I love Bourdain’s globetrotting to not-oft-traveled places on “No Reservations”, and think his his ribbing of the Food Network is pretty justified. (I mean seriously, does anyone who cooks with any degree of skill really believe the Kraft 30-second recipe tips are useful? Sorry but I am not going to be whipping up a Cheesewhiz casserole anytime soon.)

His statement is still irksome however. It not only annoys me as a journalist, but scares the bejeezus out of me because I feel like the more people say,”print is dead” the more this will come to pass like a Betelgeuse curse. Indeed, Bourdain himself is readying to release a sequel to his very much print work Kitchen Confidential called Medium Raw in 2010, and I’m pretty sure he’s not releasing it exclusively for the Kindle crowd. I’ll even go out on a limb and predict he will probably look forward to some hefty royalty checks from the paper copies of books he sells, you know the kind with words actually printed on paper in black and white.

Is print dead? Far from it. And I would be surprised if print ever really goes away entirely in our lifetimes. Case in point, I interviewed a wine writer, Alice Feiring, who fully accepts the print medium is declining, but she still considers it to be a medium that commands the most respect, and in Bourdain’s case hefty paychecks.

Obviously I don’t totally disagree with Bourdain. At a food writer’s conference this past summer I met plenty of award-winning journalists who were out of work because of the crumbled print revenue structure that has governed media profitability for decades.

What we’ve been learning in class over the last semester to survive in this climate is to diversify as journalists, and this is something Bourdain has done well. His portfolio is spread around t.v., the Web and print. Ma sil vous plait, Mr. Bourdain, please stop saying print is dead until the rest of us can secure a major network television gig, or at least a few Webisodes on youtube.

–Amy