LIFE

Upscale Asheville restaurants serve at Welcome Table

Barbara Blake
bblake@citzen-times.com

This is what happens when Liz Button comes knocking at the door of your upscale restaurant: you roll up your sleeves and serve a top-quality, white-tablecloth meal to 400 hungry people, many of them homeless and most living in poverty.

And when that meal is over, you sign up to do it again.

Button, who with daughter Katie Button owns Cúrate on Biltmore Avenue, is a charming and persuasive woman as well as one of the city’s leading restaurateurs.

But she didn’t have to do much of a hard sell to convince chefs and owners of other fine-dining establishments to take a turn making and serving a meal for less prosperous patrons at the Haywood Street Congregation’s weekly Downtown Welcome Table.

A year ago, Button had six restaurants on board. Now there are 16. All she really had to do was invite chefs and owners to visit the bustling dining room of the brick church on Patton Avenue and let them see the Welcome Table in action.

After that, it was pretty much, “Where do I sign up?”

“Liz very wisely took me over there one Wednesday while the lunch service was going on, and I was blown away by the concept of this very special event,” said Dave Herrington, general manager of Wicked Weed on Biltmore Avenue, which served the meal last month.

“Certainly we’re all familiar with soup kitchens, but what they’ve done is elevate this experience to a white-tablecloth, round-table meal with china and silver and people being served and drinks refilled, and it’s the opposite of being dehumanizing,” Herrington said.

“Immediately I fell in love with this idea, and I got my owner Rick Guthy to tag along with me to the next one,” he said. “And there was no way we could say no.”

Button said every chef or staff member she took to visit the Downtown Welcome Table signed on to produce a meal once during the year. “And every chef, staff member or restaurant owner who has participated has enthusiastically said the same thing: ‘You can count on us for next year,’” she said. “John Fleer, chef and owner of Rhubarb, texted me, ‘I’d do it every day if I could.’”

Starting from scratch

It all began in a boiler room adjacent to the noisy dining room at the Haywood Street Congregation on a bitter Wednesday early in 2013 after the Rev. Brian Combs approached Button with the idea of “celebrity chefs” providing a restaurant-quality meal to Welcome Table guests.

Liz and Katie Button huddled to brainstorm the challenges of preparing such a meal for 400 or more during their restaurant’s busy lunch hours; they made the commitment that Cúrate would go first, and vowed to figure out the logistics later.

Liz next invited fellow restaurateurs to join them for a visit to the Welcome Table to see how the weekly lunch operates and to hear Combs’ thoughts on the larger meaning behind the sit-down meal, served family style by volunteers.

Present at that boiler-room gathering were Liz and Katie Button; Jael and Dan Rattigan from the French Broad Chocolate Lounge; Roz Taubman from Blackbird; William Dissen from The Market Place; Molly Irani from Chai Pani; and Jacob Sessoms from Table. Brian Canipelli from Cucina 24 came on board soon after.

“Each left the church that day saying, ‘Wow, we’re in,’” Button said.

By June, the staff from Cúrate was ready to launch the project, designed to send the message to the mostly disenfranchised lunch guests that every person is valued and deserves to experience fine dining regardless of their life circumstances.

On the menu for 400 that day, straight from Cúrate’s Spanish-themed menu, were its famed tortilla Española and bocadillo serrano, along with asparagus with romesco sauce, spinach salad and almond cake with fresh whipped cream and strawberries.

It was a learning experience, to be sure.

Lessons learned

“The first thing we learned was that it was easier for us to prepare food at our own restaurant and deliver it to Haywood Street the day before,” Button said. “Katie and our chefs at Cúrate and I were working so hard to keep up with the three meal services that morning, we barely had time to come up for air.”

Button said there’s a phrase used in the kitchen: “in the weeds,” when “you’re falling behind and therefore overwhelmed. I think we all uttered it at 11:30 a.m. when we realized we only had 15 minutes before the next seating occurred, and we were still making sandwiches, prepping salad and cutting tortillas,” she said.

Button said Cúrate’s chef de cuisine, Frank Muller, wrote up Cliffs Notes-style instructions with logistical tips for the next restaurant, saying what worked and didn’t, and others have followed that lead. Button now has a folder she shares with each new restaurant, as each helps the one next to come.

“It really helps, knowing what to expect, and not having to recreate the wheel each time, and I believe this has helped us be successful with the program,” Button said.

“Whatever I can do to make it easier for a restaurant, we’ll make it happen,” she said. “Ultimately, the goal is to have more restaurants participating, so it’s important to figure out how to lessen their load.”

Moved to tears

The chefs and staff members blow off the logistical challenges and focus more on the purpose behind the meal and their own experience being part of the project.

Fig Bistro owner Traci Taylor, who partnered with John Fleer and the Rhubarb staff, said her service at the Welcome Table was “one of the best experiences of my life.”

“From the moment I pulled up to the church I was overwhelmed by the amount of help I received; those folks are the hardest workers I have ever seen — it is a well-oiled machine,” Taylor said of the army of volunteers.

“Everyone just jumped in — people that didn’t have a roof over their heads worked like they were being paid executive wages … humility is a powerful voice,” she said.

“At the beginning of the meal, there was a prayer, and anyone who wanted to, spoke. I couldn’t because I was sobbing — sobbing with gratitude to be part of such fellowship,” she said. “We all held hands, gave thanks and enjoyed a meal with friends … There were no strangers that day.”

Chai Pani’s Molly Irani, who said she was “moved by the whole experience,” said the Welcome Table each week “serves food for everyone who wants or needs a good meal, and it is served with dignity, love and grace — something we hope everyone in our town and our world can experience on a regular basis. And we’re happy to participate in that opportunity over and over again, as often as we can.”

Irani said when Chai Pani served the meal in December, she recognized some of the guests she’d seen around downtown.

“A guy hugged me in the street the week after to thank me for the meal; I’d seen him on our street (Battery Park)for years, but never knew his name — I do now,” she said. “This experience has broken down barriers between us; that man said he’d never tried Indian food before and that meal was the best he ever had. I was moved to tears, and so was he.”

A unique perspective

Steve Goff, executive chef and part owner of King James Public House on Charlotte Street, who will partner with The Junction for the August meal, comes to the Welcome Table from a different perspective. When he came to Asheville 10 years ago, he was homeless.

“I fully understand how badly the homeless can be treated and in many ways completely dehumanized; I had been homeless on and off my entire adult life before I came here, and there’s constantly the worry of food and shelter followed immediately by the police constantly trying to arrest or harass you, just to get you off the streets,” Goff said.

“To give these folks not just a decent meal, but a damn good one, is one of the nicest things you can do for them, and not necessarily for the food but for the experience of being treated like a positive part of the community, like you’re a person, and people care about you,” he said.

Goff, who rose out of homelessness and earned degrees in culinary and baking from Asheville-Buncombe Technical Community College, said his upcoming service to the Welcome Table is personal.

“To this day, I fight the hardness I had to build around me to survive on the streets — although it has done me quite well in a professional kitchen,” he said with a smile. “To sum it up, 10 years ago I was in their shoes, and of course I want to help wherever or however I can.”

Tanya Triber, who owns The Junction with her husband, Charles, said she is excited about partnering with Goff in August and about being part of the project in general.

“When our chef, Chad Kelly, and I visited a Welcome Table several months ago, I was just blown away at the number of people directly impacted by the work they’re doing at that church, and the number of people they can actually feed in one day,” she said. “What they’re doing over there each week is a beautiful, amazing thing.”

Triber said she was “incredibly moved” by the friendly and welcoming climate at Haywood Street, where people were hugging, laughing and sharing the meal as a family.

“It seemed like a perfect fit for us as a restaurant to be able to participate in something that’s already got some structure around it, kind of been tried and tested, and to just reach out to this community that otherwise is a little bit challenging to try and help.”

Building community

The Market Place chef/owner William Dissen, who partnered with Table’s Jacob Sessoms in February, said in addition to the rewards of providing a fine meal for an appreciative culinary audience, he loves the community-building aspect within the restaurant world.

“I had a really great time collaborating with Jacob, and it’s a great opportunity to work with another great chef here in Asheville and put out some great food,” he said.

“In a lot of other cities, there’s a lot of bad-mouthing among different chefs and restaurants, but here in Asheville, it’s, ‘Oh, did you hear what Jacob’s doing over at Table,’ or ‘Look at what Katie’s doing over at Cúrate’ — that’s awesome,’” Dissen said. “That kind of camaraderie does great things for our city — the idea that rising tides sail all ships.”

The Rev. Combs, whose mission throughout Haywood Street Congregation’s programming is removing barriers between people of all walks of life and finding the spirit of Christ in each person, said the restaurants’ involvement is one more way to do that.

“What’s so powerful to me is the synthesis of integration that is so elusive the world over; to hear the restaurateurs and folks on the street say this is my little piece of the kingdom of God around this table is just beautiful to watch from around the corner,” he said.

“Restaurants come in and have some anxiety and fear at first, and then they plate the food that’s been prepared with thoughtful ingredients and serve it,” Combs said, “and it’s a sense of reciprocity that I can only describe as holy.”

Committed and involved

Button, whose staff from Cúrate will mark the first-year anniversary of the restaurant project by serving the June meal for a second time, said she is proud of Asheville’s restaurant community and would like to see even more involvement in the kitchen at Haywood Street.

“I would love to see it used for culinary training; it would be a huge service to have some of the guests at the Welcome Table learn kitchen skills by working to prepare the meal each Wednesday,” Button said. “I would love for our chefs in town to come to the Welcome Table and teach these skills, and I have no doubt they would do so.”

Meanwhile, the chefs and staffs who’ve experienced the Welcome Table are firmly involved and committed to continuing and growing the project.

Traci Taylor, from Fig, said she will never forget the feelings that passed back and forth between the people in that noisy dining room, citing a favorite quote from Maya Angelou: “I’ve learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.”

“I would do it again in a heartbeat,” she said. “When I got in my truck after a long, emotional, gratifying day, there were wildflowers all over my car … left by some secret angel.”

Restaurants serving the Downtown Welcome Table

Cúrate, Blackbird, French Broad Chocolate Lounge, Cucina 24, Chai Pani, Strada, The Market Place, Table, Rosetta’s, Fig Bistro, Rhubarb, Wicked Weed, Vinnie’s Neighborhood Italian, The Junction, King James Public House and Bouchon.

For more information, contact Liz Button at liz@heirloomhg.com.