ISSUE 120
NEWSLETTER
OCTOBER 2021
@home
WITH COLDWELL BANKER TOMLINSON
Feast world Kitchen: Changing Spokane deliciously
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here’s a new way in Spokane to think globally and act locally while enjoying a delicious meal: dining at Feast World Kitchen. In April 2020, they began offering no-contact takeout meals one night a week, offered by a former refugee or immigrant family to showcase the global culture they bring to Spokane. At present, they are open 5 days per week (Wednesday - Sunday), and they’ve added in-person dining on a new outdoor patio — and soon in their newly remodeled dining room as the weather turns cold in late 2021. More importantly, over the ensuing eighteen months, Feast World Kitchen has built a network of 65 families who have shared their food and culture with Spokane through their catering and restaurant programs. Each of these families and individuals has been afforded an opportunity to build connections, grow small business and career skills, and improve their mastery of English. The Spokane “foodie” community is beginning to learn Feast’s weekly rhythm. Instead of a fixed menu, each day Feast offers a different global cuisine. The week’s menu is posted online (www.feastworldkitchen.org) at 5:30pm each Monday afternoon, revealing which global cultures will be represented by the chefs Wednesday through Sunday. Feast promotes the menu via social media and email, and customers can order a meal to go online, or order on-the-spot at the window on the south side of the building. (The window used to be a drive-through window a decade ago when the building was an Arctic Circle burger and shake joint)! At press time, Feast’s hours include an 11am-2pm lunch
service Wed-Sun, with dinner service 4-7pm on weeknights, and 4-8pm on Friday and Saturday nights. For the rotating chef families who cook at Feast, each shift is an adventure in planning, shopping, prepping, marketing, cooking, serving, and cleaning. It’s a lot of work for a couple of days leading up to their restaurant shift or event catering with Feast, but it can be a handsome payday if the public responds well to their offerings. If it’s busy, Feast’s independent contractors make enough profit to pay two month’s rent. Though the financial gain is really helpful, many chefs feel that the opportunity to share something of their culture with Spokane is more valuable than money. For Feast’s full-time Chef Program Director Maisa Abudayha, herself a chef and former asylum seeker from the Middle East, the mission of Feast is very personal. Knowing what it is like to be new in Spokane from a faraway place, she is passionate about extending a warm welcome to others in that position. Maisa and her family of six built a life and Maisa Abudayha a network of connections and friends here in the Spokane community over the past 7 years, and she loves helping other families do the same. She has seen an offering of food break down barriers separating cultures. Maisa and the team at Feast see the barrier-breaking power of food as an essential ingredient to building a stronger, more unified community. When asked what her job at Feast means to her, Maisa offers one word: “Everything.” Submitted by Melissa Blaine