There are many reasons to visit Los Angeles.

Perhaps, you hope to spot a movie star, shop along Rodeo Drive, or surf in Malibu. Then again, how about a chance to fry up several hundred pounds of frozen pollock?

Drop, count to ninety, drain. Repeat. Over and over, submerging mesh baskets into sizzling vats of vegetable shortening, until I’d produced a small mountain of golden, crispy fish. This was how I spent a morning in March of 2014, when helping cook lunch at The Midnight Mission, which is the largest, continuously-operating social service agency and homeless shelter in Los Angeles.

I was given the briefest of instructions on how to operate a Hobart Vulcan deep fryer by Rob Rice, who is executive chef in the Midnight Mission’s kitchen, where every day an average crowd of a thousand hungry people arrive for breakfast, lunch and dinner. (This adds up to nearly 100,000 meals a month, or over a million annually.) Once I’d gotten acquainted with the Vulcan, Rice flattened a few empty cardboard boxes onto the floor to absorb splatters of grease which erupted every time fish filets met hot oil. Printed on each box was advertising copy that in bright red lettering proclaimed the pollock to be “Beer-Battered!” The same might be said, I realized, for many of the homeless men and women who’d soon arrive to eat it.

As the hours passed—drop, count to ninety, drain—I chatted with a few of my fellow kitchen workers. Most of them are enrolled in drug and alcohol rehabilitation programs run at the mission, and live with 250 other men in dormitory rooms on the building’s second floor. In a typical greeting, each man would tell me his name, recite how long he’d “used,” then proudly announce the duration of his sobriety.

Noe, who appeared in his late 30’s, was addicted to speed for most of his life, but sober for seven months. He wanted me to know he was adopted from an orphanage in India, by a single woman who lived in Beverly Hills. Hyperactive as a child, Noe was put on Ritalin in the second grade. “Was I born an addict, or was this learned behavior?” he asked me.

Before I could answer, I was shaking hands with Alex, who’d smoked crack cocaine for 35 years, but was 18 months clean. “I fell into fear,” was his harrowingly simple explanation for a decades-long drug habit.

These guys clearly respect Rob Rice, who oversees all meals, but is primarily responsible for food served to the 250 residents, as well as sixty people who are paid, full-time staff members of the Midnight Mission.

A lean, attractive 42-year-old, Rice is a marathon runner who teaches yoga on the weekends. In the past, he was a “Corporate Culinary Trainer” for Wolfgang Puck, training chefs for jobs in Puck’s restaurants such as Spago, Chinois and Postrio. Rice liked to surprise new hires with a “grocery bag test.” The chef was handed a sack full of unlikely items—maybe sardines, Kiwi, and chocolate—and told to make something as tasty as possible in the next 90 minutes.

“Rarely was anything created you’d call inspired, but even being able to make something edible under pressure like that told me something,” Rice said.

He also consulted with the actor, Mark Wahlberg, and his brothers, Donnie and Paul, as they opened a chain of “gourmet burger” restaurants called Wahlburgers. Rice’s career has had its share of ups, downs, and surprising twists of fate, which makes him sensitive to attitudes he occasionally sees among privileged volunteers who drop by the Midnight Mission.

“Sometimes they’ll turn up their noses, and say, ‘Well, the people who end up here have made a series of bad choices.’ Really? Let’s take the judgment out of it, shall we? We are all human. Everyone’s capable of good and bad. Some of us were just luckier to get away with more, without getting caught.”

Rice continued, “I like to think I have a pretty good understanding of the human condition. I don’t baby the guys who work here, but sometimes people need a couple of second chances before they can get it right.”

On the day we met, Rice was coaching a few of his workers through a recipe for glazed carrots and chickpeas. He planned to serve this the following day at a special buffet lunch in honor of Persian New Year, or Nowruz. “I should probably add some rose water, but I don’t have a lot of that lying around,” he observed.

With an expected head count of 2,000 guests, Rice was assembling ingredients for chicken marinated in yogurt and Middle-Eastern spices; rice with saffron, currants, and apricots, and a mixed green salad. As he discussed recipes with Alex, Noe, and a few other guys, Rice offered impromptu lessons on the healthy benefits of turmeric, and ginger root. He explained why poultry’s dark and white meat are different in texture and flavor. And, he taught an easy way to peel shallots: “Blanche ‘em in a little hot water, and the papery skin will just slide off.”

Watching this shallot-peeling tip was a guy whose massive forearms and neck were inked with apocalyptic tattoos. He looked on with wide-eyed awe, as if Rice had done an incredible feat of magic. When I smiled at him, the tattooed guy grinned back, and said, “Hi, I’m Sam. I used to drink a liter of vodka every day, but now I’ve been clean for 64 days!”

Such refinements of cooking technique (rose water?) might seem effete, if not downright ridiculous, in the setting of a soup kitchen, yet Rice is trying to show these men how a real restaurant operates. Thanks to his past career, Rice has connections to dining spots all over Los Angeles; many have hired guys who used to work with him at the Midnight Mission. In Rice’s experience, restaurant work is often a first leg up for people with less-than-perfect criminal records, because kitchens are a meritocracy where knowledge trumps all.

“An executive chef shows up one day, and discovers one of his sous chefs has quit,” Rice explains. “He’ll go into the dishwashing pit, and ask if anyone there knows how to, say, roll ravioli. Some Mexican guy will shout, ‘I do!’ and he’ll be promoted from dishwasher to prep cook, just like that. This happens in kitchens all over L.A., every day. No one cares if you are a felon, or if you’ve been arrested. If you know how to roll ravioli, or French-Cut vegetables, that’s your opportunity to advance.”

Before he can teach these men how to cook, though, Rice must contend with unique health problems they face transitioning from life on the streets. For instance, in advanced cases of Hepatitis “C,” when a person’s liver stops functioning, their skin will take on a sickly hue. “Any time people are light green, that’s not good,” Rice said.

On a happier note, he firmly believes nutritious eating can ease some of the pain these guys feel as they “detox.”

“It’s a little like a conversion, or being ‘born again,’” Rob said. “It is one palette, one salad, at a time.”

Alex, of the 35-year crack-smoking habit, agrees. His cholesterol levels have gone down dramatically since he’s been on Rice’s diet. “Before I came here, my idea of fresh produce was opening a can of creamed corn,” he said. “Rob changed all that.”

In the process, Rice has to be endlessly flexible with his meal-planning. Perhaps as karmic payback for all those “grocery bag tests” he inflicted, Rice now contends with a chaotic food supply at The Midnight Mission: it’s feast one day, F.E.M.A. the next. Those chickpeas in his glazed carrot recipe come from the Federal Emergency Management Agency. “The beans aren’t whole, but cracked into pieces, so they can’t be sold. They’ll end up as a food drop to a refugee camp, or with me.”

The bigger challenge Rice faces this morning, however, is on the “feast” side. As frequently happens, a vegetable grower from California’s central valley has shown up this morning. This one arrived with dozens of wooden pallets, each piled with many crates of green beans. It is not only a massive quantity, but one that’s on the verge of spoiling. Green beans can last up to two weeks after being picked, Rice explains, but he guesses these will begin to grow mold in the next thirty-six hours.

“Most of our clientele? You show them a cucumber and a zucchini, side-by-side, they wouldn’t know the difference. They’ve been raised on fast food, and when I say ‘raised,’ I mean eating at McDonald’s for three meals a day, practically their whole life. If food is not fried and heavy, they won’t touch it. It’s a very big problem, because unless I smother vegetables with cheese sauce, they won’t eat them. Not to mention, a lot of them don’t have many teeth left, so it’s hard for them to chew.”

Rice and I stared at the many pallets of green beans, stacked from floor to ceiling. It would require an ocean of cheese sauce to smother all of these.

My merry mood, however, changed immediately as I headed east on Sixth, and crossed over Los Angeles Street. In the space of a few short steps, there was a distinct change in atmosphere, as if I’d passed over an invisible line dividing affluence and poverty, or through a portal between happiness and misery. Civic boosters and real estate brokers may have dubbed this neighborhood as Central City East, but everyone else calls it “Skid Row.”

The term dates back to the 17th century, when it referred to a muddy passageway through the woods along which felled timber was hauled. This artery, especially at its shore-line terminus, was the Broadway (or “main drag”) of a logging camp; most of the bars and brothels patronized by men working in such camps were built nearby. Functioning both as a latrine and boxing ring, inevitably blood, vomit, urine and shit would mix into the mud of Skid Row. By the end of the 19th century, the name was used for any locale—from San Francisco’s Tenderloin District, to the Bowery in Lower Manhattan—where men who were down on their luck would gather.

Today, Los Angeles contains the largest population of homeless people in the United States, an estimated 58,000 people. As a result, quite a lot of downtown is nearly impassable, so congested are its sidewalks with overloaded shopping carts, garbage bags full of who-knows-what, and mysterious bundles tied with rope. There’s laundry hung to dry on chain link fences, as well as buzzing swarms of flies drawn to the dirt and decay. All is jumbled and tumbled together, as if there’s been an earthquake, or terrible fire, and thousands of people have been unexpectedly dislocated, forced to grab whatever they could, and camp here, in the open.

Flimsy and improvised as things at first appear, a closer look shows these living situations to be more or less permanent installations. Pieces of blown-out furniture (sofas, chairs, dining tables, bureaus), force pedestrians to walk in the street. Inside these outdoor “rooms,” people hang out, sprawled across filthy mattresses, sitting on plastic lawn chairs, or on upturned buckets that once held sheetrock compound. They are smoking and drinking beer; talking, laughing or dozing. This vista, of strangely relaxed despair, stretches for many blocks in all directions around The Midnight Mission, which was founded in 1914.

“For nearly a century, we’ve been a beacon of light for those with no where else to turn,” said Ryan Navales, the mission’s Public Affairs Coordinator, who gave me a tour around the facility on my first morning there. “Downtown Los Angeles has long been a magnet for drifters, and people hoping for a lucky break. There’s been this persistent idea it might happen if they came west. Families drifted out here during the Great Depression. Farmers came when they were fleeing the Dust Bowl. Veterans poured in following World War I and II, Vietnam, and now Iraq and Afghanistan.”

A third of the homeless in Los Angeles have substance abuse problems, Navales estimated. “At Midnight Mission, our focus is on them. Booze is a bigger problem than drugs. It’s cheaper, and legal, so it’s much easier to get.” He then quickly corrected himself. “We shouldn’t talk about the homeless as if they are all the same. ‘Homeless’ is an adjective, not a noun. It’s a homeless man, a homeless woman, or a homeless child. There are 58,000 homeless individuals in Los Angeles, and 58,000 different stories of how they ended up this way.” (To put this number in context, Navales tells me 58,000 people would be a near-capacity crowd at the Los Angeles Dodgers’ baseball park.)

Navales then shared his story. He comes from a small town called Pilgrim, in the Eastern High Sierra in Northern California. Though he made his living as a carpenter, he was also a “Microsoft-trained tech engineer,” with a three-bedroom house in Pasadena. But he developed a taste for alcohol, and soon graduated to heroin. “I had run amok, and was living on the streets. My family, and my parents, all reached their limits with me. I burned every bridge possible.”

Three years ago, a cousin dropped him off at the Midnight Mission; all that was left of his life was in one backpack. Fifty pounds heavier than he is now, Navales said it was even hard for him to walk, as he could only shuffle his feet along like an old man. “I was swollen up like a tick from all the alcohol in my system. I had a distended liver. I was pissing blood, and addicted to librium.”

He paused, his eyes having welled-up; Navales took a few deep breaths before continuing. “I recognized this might be my last chance. I grabbed on to what was available here, and I got busy getting sober. This place saved my ass. My life now is smaller than before, but it’s manageable.”

During our time together, Navales emphasized three things.

First, the Midnight Mission does not take any government money, but is completely funded by the donations of individuals, families and corporations. Lately, some of the biggest financial contributors are wealthy Iranians who live in the Pacific Palisades.

“They wanted to give back to the community, but there really aren’t many homeless or needy people in their neighborhood,” Navales explains, allowing himself a small grin at this understatement. (Pacific Palisades is one of the most affluent areas in the United States.) “So, three years ago, they decided to hold a Nowruz celebration here at the mission. We cook up traditional Persian food, and we close down Sixth Street, and set up tables for an open-air buffet. You’ll see what it’s like tomorrow; it’s really great!”

Second, the mission is one of America’s largest organizers of 12-step meetings for the homeless. In the three days I spent there, I was frequently asked if I’m in the “program,” or if I am a “friend of Bill’s.” They were not inquiring about my kinship with former U.S. President Bill Clinton, but Bill. W., the founder of Alcoholics Anonymous.

Finally, the Midnight Mission is both non-sectarian, and non-religious. “There is no praying here, and no church,” Navales said. “You don’t have to do anything to get help, except ask for it.”

I learned some of this history from Larry Adamson, who is president and CEO of the Midnight Mission, and only the fourth director in its 100 year history. As an ice-breaker when we first met in his office, I asked how it felt to run America’s largest soup kitchen. This proved an unfortunate blunder.

“We are not a soup kitchen,” Adamson told me, his voice impatient. “We don’t serve soup. I want to banish that stereotype. Our executive chef, Rob Rice, used to work for Wolfgang Puck, so we have some very well-fed homeless people, trust me.”

What’s more, because of many donations of fresh food, Adamson estimated the average cost of these excellent meals served at The Midnight Mission is less than 14 cents each. (Later, Rob Rice will claim it is closer to 11 cents.) “But, the unexpected arrival of food each day puts major demands on Rob,” Adamson explains. “When a truck load of broccoli shows up, he has to quickly decide what to do with it.”

I think of all those about-to-go-moldy green beans.

“Which, in a funny way, brings us back to our creation a century ago,” Adamson said.

Thomas Liddecoat, or “Brother Tom,” was a broker for fruits and vegetables, who sold these perishable goods (this was before refrigeration was readily available) to “Mom and Pop” grocery stores operating along Main Street and Los Angeles Streets, two avenues that defined downtown L.A. at the beginning of the 20th century. In those years, the city’s population was growing rapidly, as was its homeless population. When Liddecoat saw how many WWI veterans, and other vagrants who were living on the edges of downtown, hungry and hopeless, he suddenly had an idea. After work, he could go back to his customers and retrieve whatever food they felt was about to spoil, and would soon throw out. Liddecoat brought this back to his house, where his wife, Mary, and he would cook it up, and serve it to homeless men—but only after they’d listened to one of Liddecoat’s sermons.

“Liddecoat was a lay preacher, of the Pentecostal faith,” Adamson recounted. “He was said to deliver a very fiery message! Not only heated, his talks were lengthy, too. By the time a meal was finally served it was usually quite late at night. Legend has it, then, people would say of Liddecoat’s operation, ‘Oh, that’s the place where you can go get dinner at midnight!’ Hoboes began to refer to the place as the ‘midnight mission’ and the name stuck.”

Intrigued by what Adamson told me, I did some more research about Liddecoat. Early accounts of his life are vague, and frequently a bit contradictory. Liddecoat eventually become quite a celebrity, and conducted many newspaper interviews. Whether because of unscrupulous journalists, or Liddecoat’s own burnishing of his past, certain stories about him which may or may not be true nonetheless became established facts over time.

Born in 1864 in England, Liddecoat immigrated to the United States, and ended up in Colorado, he said, because his father caught “gold fever.” Later in life, Liddecoat was often quoted as saying he spent his teenage years being raised by American Indians, witnessed the Wounded Knee massacre of Lakota Indians in 1890, rode with Buffalo Bill, and wild venison was his favorite meat dish. He usually completed this portion of his biography by telling of a promise he made to God. In several printed stories, Liddecoat is quoted with words that are nearly identical: “One night, when the moon and stars were shining brightly, I rode on my horse to a secluded spot and promised God I would be His worker if He would let me prosper.”

At the turn of the century, after launching a successful business of selling fruit and produce in Colorado, Liddecoat came to Los Angeles, where he expanded into a wholesale operation. Apparently God saw fit to answer Liddecoat’s horseback prayer; by the time he opened a shelter for the homeless in 1917, situated at what he called “Hell’s Half Acre” on Los Angeles Street, Liddecoat was able to pay for it with $100,000 of his own money.

Soon, he was known for carrying around specially-printed tickets in his pocket, that he would pass out to homeless people. It promised, free of charge, “one meal, bath, bed, barber, laundry, doctor visit … and salvation!” Though listed first on this ticket, in those early days, meals were pretty much an afterthought, and prepared in ways that were haphazard, at best. Food at the mission was exposed to flies and cockroaches, as well as being handled by men who were afflicted with a variety of diseases, including syphilis and tuberculosis.

“Beggars can’t be choosers,” Brother Tom often replied when people complained about such unsanitary conditions.

When, in 1929, the Los Angeles health department and other city agencies forced the Midnight Mission to “clean up or close up,” Brother Tom was unbowed and only grudgingly put more sanitary practices into his operation. He argued if city government couldn’t be bothered to make any other provision for these men, it was hypocritical for such charges to be levied against his kitchen. Above all, Liddecoat did not want his men to feel coddled. On the contrary, he called them “jailbirds, hopheads and drunkards” to their faces, and insisted they were wholly accountable for all the bad decisions they’d made. He also never failed to remind his listeners of how much worse off they’d be without him.

Despite, or maybe because of such tough love, the number of people showing up at the Midnight Mission continued to grow, and soon exceeded Liddecoat’s ability to pay for it himself. Seeking out deep-pocketed donors, among his earliest supporters were Harry Chandler, publisher of The Los Angeles Times, and Albert M. Johnson, an eccentric millionaire who was President of the National Life Insurance Company. Liddecoat frequently stepped into the pulpit on Sunday mornings at various L.A. churches, including Sister Aimee McPherson’s Church of the Foursquare Gospel. Being hailed as the savior of the unwanted by community leaders, he also took his show on the road as a chaplain for the United Fruit and Vegetable Association, raising awareness of the homelessness problem at produce conventions nationwide. “No man is safe and no citizen’s property is secure so long as any man is either hungry or unemployed,” he liked to say. “If a man has food, lodging and a presentable exterior, he will not turn to crime.”

As Liddecoat’s fame grew, he traveled widely across the United States, and even internationally, for the next three decades— often accompanied by his daughter, Mary. He seldom turned down a request for a photograph or interview and, with his well-rehearsed skill for telling heart-rending stories about the men of Hell’s Half-Acre, Liddecoat was always “good copy.” Appreciative members of the press returned the favor by bestowing upon him such grandiose nicknames as the “Bishop of the Underworld” and “Father of the Poor,” while the L.A. Realty Board dubbed him “the most useful citizen in L.A.”

Brother Tom Liddecoat died in 1942.

“I wish I didn’t have to use it, but we regularly get thousands of pounds donated to us. I can’t afford to buy anything else, so it’s actually our biggest source of protein.”

Rice spends a surprising amount of his food budget on flavorings to make this pink goop palatable. Each week, he uses ten pounds of coarse-ground black pepper, a similar amount of curry powder, oregano, and parsley, as well as 30 pounds of peeled garlic cloves. Listing all of this, lead him into an embittered rant on why MSC is “damn near toxic.”

Prior to the mid-20th century, he explained, a lot of meat scraps and tissue from cows, pigs, chickens, and turkeys went to waste because processors had no efficient means of separating it from animal carcasses after the bulk of their meat was removed. Machines developed in the 1960s automated the process, however, which made this salvage of scraps faster and cheaper. Today, what remains of a picked-clean carcass is ground up, combining bone, bone marrow, skin, nerves, and blood vessels in addition to a miniscule amount of actual meat. What results is a substance with the consistency of cake batter, which can then be formed into meat “by-products” such as chicken nuggets, bologna, or hot dogs.

Before he can put it into spaghetti, chili or curry, Rice boils the MSC, then strains it to remove most of the excess fat. At his urging, I reluctantly reached into a pan of cooked chicken and put a teaspoon or so into my mouth. I was prepared for it to taste bad; to my surprise, though, it had little or no flavor whatsover. It was like chewing a bunch of rubber bands.

“I wish I could change the way people eat,” he said, “but these guys are very aware of their stomachs’ real estate. From 8 p.m, to 8 a.m., there is no food to be found in the mission. You and I are accustomed to going this long without eating. When so much is out of their control, though, and they’re trying to impose so many rules on themselves they’ve never known before, to have nothing to eat for that amount of time seems scary. They’d rather fill up on chili and cheese, because they think this will tide them over longer, and give them more energy.”

“A big bowl of dal [Indian lentils] and rice would taste better, fill them up more, be healthier, and cheaper to produce than chili made with mechanically-separated chicken,” he said. “But this crowd will not eat dal. They want the chili.”

Rice’s posture, normally so upright, had momentarily collapsed. His shoulders, and the corners of his mouth, were sagging downward.

“This place is dark. It demands a lot. A lot of people who come here suffer from mental illness, or have been the victims of really quite extreme abuse. I think the whole first month I worked here, I would go home crying practically every night.

“But you have to make a distinction between those who are lost, and those who are wandering,” Rice said. “If they’re lost, all you can do is show them unconditional love, and treat them as nicely as you can. For the wandering, though, it’s about letting them experience success once in a while.”

At this last thought, his mood brightened. Soon enough, he was again giving directions and orders to his kitchen staff. Owing to their limited attention spans, he’s learned it is best to assign each guy with one simple task at a time. This included me. Yesterday, I’d spent hours deep-frying pollock; now I was told to peel and dice Bermuda Onions. I worked at this for several hours, by which point I’d long since stopped weeping from the onion fumes, and could finish the job dry-eyed.

The Nowruz lunch was about to begin. There were probably 100 men and women standing just outside the kitchen, all wearing gaily colored T-shirts which announced, “Nowruz—The 2014 Iranian New Year’s Festival.”

A local bakery had donated several hundred lemon meringue pies. Each pie needed to be cut into eight pieces; each individual slice then put on to a plate. Rice demonstrated his preferred technique, severing the pie clean in half, then into quadrants, then eighths.

“Got it?” he asked.

“Got it,” I replied.

When I tried to communicate this method to a few of the Iranian women, however, the lesson didn’t go over too well. Either these ladies are perpetually on gluten-free diets, or they have chefs at their houses in the Pacific Palisades who do pie-cutting for them. For whatever reason, the prospect of making individual servings of all these pies was met with raised eyebrows and much clucking of tongues.

“They’ve got it under control,” Rice said, as he pulled me by the elbow. He wanted me to accompany him out to the loading dock of Midnight Mission to see something I might find surprising.

As we walked there, he paused to inspect a delivery of cauliflower “cores.” At some distant vegetable processing plant, there is a machine which plunges a circular blade into the underside of a head of cauliflower. This apparatus, something like a hole punch, shears off all the florets, and what’s left behind is a central stalk about the size of a soda can. Crate after crate, containing hundreds (if not thousands) of these cores now awaited Rice’s attention.

“What’s most odd about this, of course, is that up to 70-percent of all the nutrients in cauliflower is found in its stalk,” he said.

The cauliflower was not the “surprise,” though. Instead, it’s still more pallets of food just arrived from L.A. Specialty, which is The Midnight Mission’s single largest donor of food. What’s come this morning is an astounding bounty of organic produce such as broccoli, snap peas, romaine lettuce, arugula, sweet peppers, fava beans, avocados, and portobello mushrooms.

“If I had a restaurant, and you sent me this, I’d have a menu for the next few nights,” Rice said.

L.A. Speciality is one of Southern California’s most esteemed purveyors of fresh fruits and produce. All the city’s finest restaurants order from them, and most of these customers have an arrangement whereby rather than throw away what they haven’t used, L.A. Specialty trucks will haul it away and bring it over to The Midnight Mission. As such, 100 years after Tom Liddecoat got the idea to cook meals from produce his customers didn’t sell, the same strategy is still at work. I can’t decide if this is wonderful, or awful.

There’s no time to ponder this, though, as Rice needs me to get busy on cutting carrots. A couple of other guys were washing and peeling them, while I was to work my way through tub after tub, slicing away. Rice ordered me to make a “French cut,” by holding the knife at a 45 degree angle so it sliced the carrot diagonally into an oval shape. The greater surface area on each oval slice, he said, would increase the amount of its natural sugars that caramelized as it was stir-fried. This was news to me.

After cutting for an hour or so, my wrists began to tingle a bit, then ache. My knife was starting to get dull. I didn’t know where a sharpening steel might be; I wasn’t even sure this kitchen had one. Because of a blunt blade, and my somewhat dulled wits, holding the knife at a 45-degree angle began to be rather a lot of work. Gradually, I shifted the knife upwards, and began to slice perpendicularly. This was much easier. I kept at it, slicing and slicing, with carrots and the color orange filling my vision. My mind wandering, I’d lost track of time, when I suddenly noticed Rice was standing at my side.

He picked up a carrot slice, which was perfectly round, not oval.

“What happened to my French Cut?”

I was about to complain about the numbing repetition of this task. Wasn’t there something more important for me to be doing? But, I thought better of it. What if I were down on my luck, in detox from many years of drug abuse, and this skill Rob was trying to teach me might be the very thing which could get me a job, and escape from Skid Row?

“I’m sorry, Rob,” I said.

He didn’t smile and say, “Oh, that’s O.K.” Instead, he glared at me for a few long seconds and, just before walking away, repeated his earlier instructions. “Keep the knife at a 45 degree angle, OK?”

I realized Rice was giving me a second chance. Whether or not I would use this as an opportunity to experience success was completely up to me.

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For nearly 200 years, London’s Reform Club has been a bastion of power, privilege, and liberal politics.

Among its most famous members were J. M. Barrie, Henri Cartier Bresson, Winston Churchill, E. M. Forster, Henry James, Lord Palmerston, Andrew Carnegie, William Makepeace Thackeray, and H. G. Wells. These men—and it was an all-male club until 1981—gathered to enjoy their newspapers, tea, lamb chops, brandies, cigars and, doubtless, quite a bit of gossip, in a building of palatial splendor, designed by Sir Charles Barry who was a “starchitect” of the Victorian era.

In the spring of 2014, I spent a fascinating morning at The Reform Club, being shown about by Simon Blundell, who is librarian and resident historian there. After looking over an extensive library of 85,000 volumes (including a complete set of the Hansard books of parliamentary debate, dating back to 1780), and admiring several dining rooms, a billiards room, card room, and vast wine cellar, Blundell ended his tour by escorting me to the “Strangers” room.

An appropriate choice as, in the 19th century, when a member entertained a visitor like me, they weren’t allowed into any room in the club but this one. And here, hanging between tall windows facing out onto Pall Mall, was the thing I’d most come to see: a painting of a Frenchmen named Alexis Soyer, who was chef de cuisine when this building opened in 1841.

In this portrait, which was painted by his wife, Elizabeth Emma Jones, Soyer wears a luxurious brocade dressing gown, a silk scarf, and his sartorial signature: a red velvet beret tilted at a jaunty angle. He sits before a small dining table, a glass of red wine at the ready, about to begin eating one of his most famous dishes—Poulet à la Soyer, or chicken laced with truffles. Soyer holds up a drumstick with one hand, and points at it with the other, quite as if he can’t believe his good luck to be enjoying such a delectable dish. Smiling merrily, he appears a dining companion with whom you’d share a most memorable meal.

“Alexis Soyer was flamboyant,” Blundell said after we’d both looked at the painting. “You don’t dress like that if you are, well, retiring.”

(In the weeks before my visit, when reading about Soyer, I’d been pronouncing his name as SOY-ur. Blundell, mindful of the chef’s French origin, more correctly spoke it as Swah-YAY.)

I suggested to Blundell my hopeful fantasy that something of Soyer’s famous kitchen at The Reform Club, one of the most-publicized wonders of 19th century England, might still remain intact.

“Oh no,” he replied. “It’s been bashed about over the years. Really, all that remains of Soyer is this painting. There’s the history, too, of course.”

What a history it is!

Alexis Soyer was, most culinary experts agree, the greatest chef in the world in the 19th century. He was also an excellent singer and mimic, a famously witty raconteur, a tirelessly prolific inventor of labor-saving devices for the kitchen, and a shameless self-promoter. Soyer’s aggressive efforts to turn himself into a “brand,” set the template for our own pantheon of cooking stars such as Martha Stewart, Rachel Ray, Emeril Lagasse, and Bobby Flay. Nearly everything they’ve done, Alexis Soyer did first, and probably better.

Finally, what fascinates me about Soyer is that he was a gastrophilanthropist without peer, and essentially invented the idea of a soup kitchen. When the great potato famine of 1847 struck Ireland, he set off for Dublin, and fed his recipe for “famine soup” to many thousands of starving peasants each day. Years later, he would bring his groundbreaking ideas about what he called charitable cookery to soldiers fighting in the Crimean war, where Soyer served alongside Florence Nightingale.

When Alexis Soyer died, this is what Nightingale said. “His death is a great disaster. Others have studied cooking for the purpose of gourmandizing, that is of greed, and others for show, but none but he for the purpose of cooking large quantities of food in the most nutritious manner for large numbers of men. He has no successor.”

Who was this man? My visit to The Reform Club whet my appetite, but there was a lot more to learn. So, I ordered up a full meal of biographies and books about Soyer, and began to slowly devour them.

While still a small child, Soyer showed a natural gift for music; he had a strong, clear singing voice, and a good ear for melody. Because his uncle was Grand Vicar of the local cathedral school, when he was only nine years old, Soyer was sent here to train as a chorister. Bored by the discipline, and endless practice drills, at the precocious age of 12, Soyer decided to leave home and join his brother Philippe, who was a chef in Paris. Quite by accident, then, he fell into a culinary career, and worked for the next four years at Chez Grignon, a venerable restaurant with twenty different dining rooms.

Soyer proved himself to be a quick study. Soon, he was a sufficiently accomplished cook to have a dozen chefs working under him at Douix, another well-known Parisian dining spot. Most of these men were older than he, and no doubt found it irritating to be ordered about by a 17-year-old. Yet, his charm and good-natured personality eventually won them over. Soyer’s sous chefs were soon devoted to him, as countless others would be for the rest of his life.

In his free time, he frequented the Theatre des Varieties, often seeing the same show many times. Soyer studied the actors’ and singers’ performances with hopes of one day appearing on stage himself. He would delight his friends and co-workers by spontaneously bursting forth with songs, or doing impersonations of famous comedians of the day. Though Philippe eventually persuaded his younger brother to abandon dreams of a life in the theater, Soyer never lost his enthusiasm for attracting attention to himself. He began dressing in elaborate costumes of his own design, and arranged impromptu concerts, as well as “sing-a-longs” at the most curious times and locales. Soyer’s true genius for creating headlines lay ahead, however, in England, to which he set off in 1831, again to join forces with Philippe, who was by then a personal chef to Adolphus Guelph, The Duke of Cambridge.

Soyer could not have picked a more auspicious time or place to move than London in the 1830’s. Following the Napoleonic Wars, Britain was at the onset of its imperial century, a period of relative peace in Europe and around the world which became known as the Pax Britannica. With its victory over France, Britain now had no real international rival, and its Royal Navy proudly ruled the globe’s main maritime routes. Due to its “superpower” status, between 1815 and 1914, Britain annexed nearly ten million square miles of territory, and brought nearly 400 million people under its rule.

While British naval officers and merchants flexed their muscles around the world, back home these efforts created unimaginable wealth. This was largely spent on the construction of private castles and mansions, the likes of which had never been seen before. As lavishly-appointed homes required hospitality on a similarly grand scale, competition was keen among Britain’s aristocracy to retain the services of talented kitchen staff. In particular, no fashionable home was complete without its having a French chef de cuisine. A cook at the top of his game could ask for, and receive, not only a fantastic salary, but perks such as seeing his name printed on the menu.

Not short of ambition, or ego, Alexis Soyer found London very much to his taste. After only a short time working alongside his brother at The Duke of Cambridge’s, Soyer ventured off on his own to cook at several other stately homes, eventually landing a post at Aston Hall, a vast Georgian mansion set in a landscaped park in Shropshire. Accessible only by stagecoach, Aston Hall was regal, but rural, too. Society was limited, and newcomers were the source of keen interest. Soyer—cheerful, charming, and gregarious—was soon renowned, not only for his adorable French accent and delightfully risqué stories, but his generosity of spirit. Then, as now, most chefs jealously guarded their recipes and tricks of the trade; Soyer, however, was always willing to explain how to prepare one of his dishes. Soon, the neighboring estates were collecting his recipes, or begging to “borrow” Soyer for an evening to cook for one of their dinner parties. Soyer quickly began to develop an excellent reputation among the most powerful men and women in Britain.

A new crop of such gentleman’s clubs was established in London as a result of the Great Reform Act of 1832, a much-needed political reform intended to correct abuses in the election of MPs, or members of Parliament. Prior to this act, there was no consistency of criteria for what qualified as an election borough, or who was able to represent it in Parliament. Often enough, MPs were simply hand-picked by a wealthy patron. The Great Reform Act of 1832 was intended to end such cronyism by greatly increasing the number of districts which would be represented in Parliament, as well as nearly doubling the number of citizens who could vote. This watershed moment is now seen as the birth of truly representative democracy in Britain.

The Reform Club was not only named in honor of the 1832 legislation, but founded as a very symbol of Liberalism. Think of such gatherings as the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, or the Aspen Ideas Festival convened each year by Charlie Rose, and you have an idea of the sort of bullish optimism that attracted people to The Reform. Membership was relatively egalitarian, and welcomed individuals who came from a broader range of social and even religious backgrounds than was typical for clubs in London at this time. Not surprisingly, The Reform’s democratic attitude soon made it popular with Americans who wanted a “home away from home.”

“Around the time The Reform Club was built, many of the men’s clubs like it were devoted to gaming,” Blundell said, using a slightly archaic term for gambling. The Reform was not like this, he assured me. “It was a more serious-minded place.”

A popular one, too. In fact, the club found itself almost immediately oversubscribed. Membership quickly reached one thousand, among which were nearly 250 MPs. Needing more space and grander facilities for such large enrollment, a committee set about commissioning a new clubhouse, eventually selecting Sir Charles Barry to draw up the architectural plans. Inspired by the Farnese Palace, one of his favorite buildings in Rome, Sir Barry designed what is widely recognized as a masterpiece of Italianate architecture.

By this point in our visit together, Simon Blundell and I were standing in the club’s atrium, where an upper balcony, or loggia, surrounds a large square entry hall on the ground floor. It was Sir Barry’s intent that this courtyard be left open to the sky, as it is at the Farnese. “This might have worked in sunny Rome, but certainly not in London,” Blundell observed. Club members demanded Sir Barry enclose the courtyard, or “saloon” as its called, with a steel and wrought-iron skylight.

When the building was complete, The Reform’s development committee probably felt the problem of overcrowding was now solved. However, they’d not reckoned on the immense popularity of their executive chef. It soon became obvious the most famous aspect of The Reform Club was not any of the Neo-Classical flourishes of Sir Charles Barry, but a basement kitchen masterminded by Alexis Soyer.

Soyer threw himself into his work, and soon enough was cooking five meals a day, totaling hundreds, even thousands, of breakfasts, coffees, lunches, teas, dinners, and after-theater suppers for Reform Club members. On the morning of Queen Victoria’s coronation in 1838, Soyer had his first experience of mass cookery, when he made enough breakfast for 2,000 guests of the club who were in London to witness the young monarch’s ascension. What allowed this nearly fantastic output of food was Soyer’s altogether new degree of organization.

Working alongside Sir Barry while construction was underway, Soyer was given free rein to design the culinary space as he saw fit. His custom-built kitchen at The Reform Club was a marvel of ergonomics and cooking technology. Airy, spacious, and well-lit, it allowed for no confusion, shouting, or drama. Elevating the French ideal of mise-en-place (or “putting in place”) to previously-unknown heights, every type of meat, fish, poultry, fruit and vegetable had its ordained spot. There were cellars within cellars, and separate rooms for ale, wine, knives, and plates. All the various tasks—deboning, fileting, chopping, boiling, and baking—were arranged like members of a symphony orchestra within easy view of their conductor, Alexis Soyer, who sat in the middle of the kitchen, with a wooden spoon in his hand instead of a baton.

A massive boiler generated enough steam power to turn rotisserie spits and ventilating fans, operate dumb waiters, and heat the bain-maries. Marble slabs for the cleaning and fileting of fish were bathed with a shower of iced water to keep the seafood fresh. Roasting ovens—formerly a kind of bonfire, where chefs would be nearly singed as they cooked a joint—now had shields to redirect the heat into warming ovens. There were different types of stoves for stewing, steaming and broiling, and—for the first time—gas cooktops.

The invention of coal-extracted gas was initially brought to London’s Pall Mall in 1807, where it was primarily used for street lighting. It was Soyer’s innovation to deploy gas as a clean and quickly adjustable source of heat for stovetop cookery such as sautéing and frying. Cooking with gas, as any chef even today will agree, was nothing short of a culinary revolution.

Other innovations abounded, all sprung from Soyer’s boundless imagination. There were timed cooking clocks, plate warmers, knife-sharpening machines, and a special set of dishes with a double bottom containing silver sand which, heated beforehand, kept food warm until it was served. Cooled rooms, or larders, had weighted doors which were set at an imperceptible angle; a chef could exit, arms loaded, without pausing, as the door would close itself. Even pillars holding up the vast ceilings were outfitted to be useful, as whirling racks of spices and condiments were affixed to them. So clean and orderly was Soyer’s kitchen, he turned part of it over to a gallery space, in which he proudly displayed oil paintings done by his beloved Emma.

It’s a little hard to imagine a kitchen would create such a sensation, yet curiosity was sufficiently strong that, in one year alone, more than fifteen thousand visitors queued up for a chance to gawk at this new spectacle at The Reform Club. For those who couldn’t make it to London, or wanted a souvenir from their visit, a large, four-color poster was designed and printed. This sold many thousands of copies, including to notable customers such as the Baron of Talleyrand and Guiseppe Verdi. For V.I.P.s like these, Soyer was always willing to give a private tour. Resplendent in a spotlessly-clean white apron, his signature red velvet cap cocked over one ear, Soyer guided nobility (and members of the press) about, as an endless stream of jokes and bon-mots flowed forth.

While pointing out a design feature, his spoon might dip into a pan or pot, and Soyer would offer his guest an amuse-bouche. Visitors would leave with their taste buds tingling. Doubtless, quite a few hastened to apply for membership, so they’d be able to savor more than this morsel of Soyer’s cooking. Indeed, it became an embarrassingly open secret that nearly as many people joined for its cuisine, as for any progressive political principles the club represented. Like it or not—and many Reformers didn’t—Soyer quickly became The Reform Club’s unofficial mascot.

Ever-mindful of the power of publicity, Soyer further increased his visibility through the outlandish, some might say atrocious, manner in which he chose to dress. He spent many hours, and untold amounts of money having gloves made to the tightest possible fit; his boots were always polished to a mirror-like sheen. Partial to wearing jackets with voluminous lapels made of watered silk in unusual colors like lavender, Soyer insisted this same silk be used for stripes down the seams of his trousers, and on exaggeratedly deep cuffs. All of his attire was fashioned on what tailors call a “bias cut,” in which fabric is rotated against its perpendicular grain, thereby giving garments an exaggerated drape and swagger. This preference for things slightly askew, what Soyer termed “à la zoug-zoug,” was even displayed on his personal calling card. It was diamond-shaped, and printed, bien sûr, on the bias.

One of The Reform’s members, author William Makepeace Thackeray, was amused enough by Soyer’s affectations to create a thinly-veiled caricature of him as a French cook named Alcide Mirobolant in Pendennis, Thackeray’s novel of 1850. (In French, mirobolant means “fabulous”). Soyer was obviously in on the joke, as he remained dear friends with Thackeray, even after he’d been publicly lampooned by him.

Of course, nowhere was Soyer’s flamboyance more evident than in what he created in his kitchen. Consider this recipe for ortolans, the eating of which for many centuries has been a rite of passage for a French gourmet.

A tiny songbird, the ortolan weighs barely an ounce, and fits easily into the palm of a hand. Ortolans are captured alive with nets, then force-fed by being placed inside an enclosed box with millet where, as a reaction to darkness, they proceed to eat continuously. Once an ortolan acquires the desired degree of plumpness, the bird is plunged into a vat of Armagnac, France’s most beloved variety of brandy, where it drowns and is marinated at the same time. Roasted, an ortolan is eaten whole—bones and all. In Soyer’s version, an already decadent dish was taken a few steps further. For one dinner, he obtained twelve of the finest and largest truffles he could find. Since the bird was too small to stuff, Soyer did it the other way around, burying the bird inside the truffle. Ortolan-in-the-coffin is what he called this macabre delicacy.

He also was fond of culinary trompe l‘oeil. For instance, in fashionable dining at this time, the second course of a meal was often a joint of meat—sometimes beef, more often mutton—presented to diners whole, and carved table side. Soyer would occasionally fool his patrons by making faux joints out of sponge cake. They were cunningly shaped and iced to look like the real thing, but filled with fruits and ice cream, and surrounded by mock vegetables such as green currants for peas, and peeled apples in place of potatoes. “These dishes,” Soyer wrote, “have often caused the greatest hilarity at table.”

Simultaneously to creating such over-the-top recipes, however, Soyer also championed dishes which seem strikingly Spartan, not to mention more in line with our 21st century idea of what’s healthiest to eat. He was an early advocate of leafy greens and vegetables at a time when “meat and potatoes” was considered a well-rounded meal. Soyer was forever urging his Reform Club members to eat salads of green beans with lentils; or onions pickled with beet root; or celery, scallions, and radishes lightly drizzled with a simple mustard vinaigrette.

A mixture of high and low came naturally to Soyer. He was equally comfortable holding court upstairs with The Reform’s aristocratic clientele, as he was joking with his kitchen staff in the basement. He may have cultivated his taste for fine clothes, and box seats at the theater (he could well afford such indulgences, as with the sale of his cookbooks, posters, various sauces and condiments sold under his name, and salary from The Reform Club, he was making 1,000 pounds a year, when even the most in-demand chefs in London were content to collect 200 annually), yet he never forgot what it was like to be poor child back in France. Soyer preferred to live, as one wag put it, at the point where vermin meets ermine.

Extreme luxury and wretched poverty came to a particularly pointed juxtaposition in the winter of 1846-7. Soyer had just pulled off the most exorbitant meal of his career—a fantastically complex, multi-course banquet at The Reform Club in honor of Ibrahim Pasha, a swashbuckling Egyptian prince, that concluded with dessert in the form of a three-foot-tall meringue cake shaped like a pyramid. Had he a mind to, Soyer could undoubtedly have topped even this menu, but why? Instead, Soyer swung his inner pendulum far in the opposite direction, setting himself the task to research the living conditions of London’s poorest citizens and what they were eating.

Horrified by the living conditions he found in the city’s slums, Soyer began firing off outraged letters to the editorial boards of various newspapers. “We found in many of the houses, five or six in a small room, entirely deprived of the common necessaries of life—no food, no fire, and hardly any garment to cover their persons, and that during the late severe frost,” he wrote in one letter. In another, Soyer described a mother and her children starving, having “not tasted a bit of food for twenty-four hours, the last of which consisted of apples partly decayed, and bits of bread given to her husband.”

While Soyer understood lack of money was the main problem, he also believed such poor fare resulted from ignorance, specifically lack of knowledge about proper nutrition and general rules of cookery. He’d already published two cookbooks aimed at the middle class reader—Delassements Culinaires in 1845, and The Gastronomic Regenerator in 1846. It was quite a departure then, for him to release his next book, in 1847, entitled Soyers Charitable Cookery: or, The Poor Man’s Regenerator. In this, he set out to offer faster, cheaper and more nutritious recipes for the “poor and laboring classes.”

What’s striking about these “poor man’s” recipes is they utilize culinary techniques—such as browning meat before putting it into a soup or stew—normally associated with more refined fare. “Twenty years’ experience and practice in the culinary arts has taught me that it requires more science to produce a good dish, at trifling expense, than a superior one with unlimited means,” Soyer explained.

Not content to devise new recipes, Soyer set out to design yet another radically new type of kitchen. For all the contraptions Soyer invented at The Reform, his most revolutionary ideas utilized new ways of manipulating heat. While the club’s ovens and cooktops were immovably massive, Soyer began to tinker with more portable versions on which he intended to prepare food for poor people living in impoverished districts of London. Donating proceeds from the sale of his cookbooks to finance this effort, he furthermore opened an exhibition space with pictures painted by Emma, his late wife, and called it Soyer’s Philanthropic Gallery.

He set up his first “soup kitchen” in the neighborhood of Spitalfields in East London, where many of the residents were French Protestant (or Huguenot). Once a thriving location for the hand-weaving of silk, most of Spitalfields’ workers were driven into poverty when cheap, machine-made silk flooded the market. On the first Saturday he cooked here, Soyer claimed to have prepared and served enough meat and pea soup in an hour and a half to feed 350 hungry children. So great was his enthusiasm—as well as, it must be surmised, his need for attention and admiration—Soyer insisted on serving his charity recipes to his fancy friends at The Reform.

This bold effort on behalf of an easily-overlooked group of people created a sensation. Could it truly be that the same man who’d kitted out the most famously lavish kitchen in all of Great Britain, was now feeding many hundreds of poor people each day? Imagine if a contemporary fashion designer like Ralph Lauren suddenly announced he’d come up with a new “haz mat” suit to be worn by doctors fighting infectious diseases. Worlds don’t collide like this too often.

One of the nobility who was most impressed was the Duchess of Sutherland, for whom Soyer once worked. She was now doing volunteer work as a member of the Poor Relief Committee. After she’d tasted his soup, and toured his kitchen in Spitalfields, the Duchess approached Lord Bessborough, who was Lord Lieutenant of Ireland. The two of them asked The Reform Club to grant their chef de cuisine a leave of absence so Soyer could bring his amazing ideas about charitable cookery to Dublin where, in the summer of 1846, for the second year in a row, blight had destroyed the Irish potato crop.

Contrary to popular belief, this pestilence didn’t only affect Ireland. It plagued all of Europe, where many poor people relied on eating potatoes when they weren’t able to buy anything else. What was different about Ireland, however, was nearly all the country’s citizens were so poor, they couldn’t ever afford to eat anything but potatoes. When blight caused the sudden disappearance of their sole form of sustenance, hundreds of thousands of Irish people were starving, or already dead. Adding to this suffering, the winter of 1846-47 was one of unusual severity. No one could recall the last time snow piled this high, or temperatures fell so low.

Never content to leave well enough alone, Soyer constantly revisited and revised his inventions. If in Spitalfields he’d managed to feed 350 in an hour and a half, could he not feed 1,000 in an hour in Dublin? With this ambitious goal in mind, Soyer focussed all his gifts for efficiency, and knowledge of the most scientific methods of cookery, on to plans for a new type of soup kitchen. In a very short time, he’d managed to sketch a design, and have it produced by the leading engineering firm of Bramah, Prestage & Ball. Off to Ireland Soyer went, prepared to cook what he now called “famine soup.”

He chose to construct his kitchen directly in front of the Royal Barracks in Dublin. A temporary structure, 48 feet long and about 40 wide, its exterior was made of canvas supported by wooden boards. At the center, on wheels, was a steam-boiler large enough to make 300 gallons of soup at a time. This was surrounded by tables for sous chefs to cut the vegetables and meat which went into each new batch. Along the tent’s perimeter were long tables, eighteen inches wide, their wooden tops perforated by large round holes. Into each, a white-enameled iron basin was placed, with a metal spoon attached to it by a chain. There were 100 of these bowls which, when filed, would each hold a quart of soup.

After gathering outside the tent, visitors moved forward through a series of switchbacking partitions (again, à la zoug-zoug!), until a bell rang, whereupon exactly 100 people would be let inside. Once seated, they were allotted precisely six minutes to eat their soup. Soyer insisted on this timing, as it allowed him to brag he’d succeeded in feeding 1,000 people an hour. Before exiting through a door at the tent’s opposite end, each guest was given a quarter pound of bread, or a biscuit. Bowls were quickly swabbed clean and refilled, while another 100 people were let in.

Soyer planned to serve 5,000 rations a day, yet records show he often fed nearly twice that many. People lined up, many hundreds at a time, and waited for hour after hour, sometimes through the night. When the first bell rang each morning, there was tremendous commotion, and occasionally savage struggles would erupt, as people driven half-mad with hunger tried to cut into line.

His original goal was to get his kitchen up and running, and return to his job at The Reform in a matter of a couple of weeks. However, as frequently happens with pioneering efforts of great complexity, things took longer than Soyer imagined. The longer he stayed in Ireland, Soyer saw more that shocked him. He was aghast to learn many poor farmers would go fishing and then, instead of eating what they’d caught, would use the fish as fertilizer for their potato plants. That’s because they knew perfectly well how to prepare potatoes, but had no idea how to cook seafood.

After spending seven weeks among the poor and destitute of Dublin, it must have been quite a shock to return to his pampered clientele at The Reform. In his absence, Soyer was surprised to learn, the club decided to open its dining room to non-members on a daily basis, instead of twice a week, which meant more work for Soyer. “The club will become a mere restaurant,” he sniffed.

He wasn’t happy about other things, too. Despite his remarkable talent and international fame, Soyer knew he was still regarded as a lowly servant by many in the club. It’s not altogether surprising, then, he began to develop something of a bad attitude. While his antics and droll sense of humor continued to delight many members, others found him impertinent, and even insolent. In 1850, Soyer wrote his letter of resignation from The Reform Club, and it was accepted.

Never one to weep over spilt milk, he spent the next few years toying with other inventions and products. There were bottled mustards, chutneys, and cooking sauces to launch. Long before anyone had heard of “soft drinks,” Soyer created and marketed a beverage made of fruits, such as raspberry, quince, or apple, mixed with aerated water. He called it Soyer’s Nectar Soda Water. He created a device for hiding money in the heels of his dress boots, and an inflatable suit that could prevent drowning.

Of these, and many more schemes, by far Soyer’s most lucrative idea was what he called a “Magic Stove.” Once again, he astonished the culinary world with an early prototype of a camp stove, which could be easily assembled and used on any flat surface. Especially for a time in which everything was big, heavy, and over-engineered—think of the 19th century’s enthusiasm for locomotive trains, or steamships—part of this stove’s allure was it was so diminutive, it could be folded up and carried in one’s pocket!

Soyer’s “Magic Stove” debuted at the height of a Victorian vogue for dining al fresco. The chief amusement of such outdoor meals was the marked contrast between refinements of dining—silverware, crystal glasses, and linens—and a “wild” setting. Soon enough, a race was on to convene a picnic in the most unlikely setting possible. With his unquestioned mastery of publicity, Soyer managed to give a “Magic Stove” to The Marquis of Normanby, a peripatetic and highly eccentric figure, not unlike Phineas Fogg in Jules Vernes’ Around the World in Eighty Days. Normanby took his along on a trip to Egypt, where he had the audacity to cook a meal on top of the Pyramids at Giza—a fact Soyer wasn’t shy about sharing with his friends in the press.

From 1851 to 1855, Soyer toured Great Britain, promoting his latest sauces, cookbooks, and the Magic Stove. Once again, though, as it had with the Irish Potato Famine, a grimmer reality intruded on Soyer’s consciousness, when he became increasingly worried over the plight of British soldiers fighting in Crimea. (In March of 1854, France and Great Britain aligned themselves with Turkey which was already at war with Russia.)

While Vietnam is often cited as the first conflict to be broadcast on television, it was during the Crimean war, a century earlier, that newspaper accounts shocked the general public with excruciatingly gory details of warfare. Samuel Morse’s invention of the telegraph a decade earlier had created a smaller, more interconnected world. Daily dispatches from the battlefront, many of them telegraphed by Lord William Russell, were printed in The London Times, and they exposed the deplorable conditions of military hospitals on the Crimean Peninsula. Russell revealed how a staggering number of British soldiers were not only succumbing to wounds inflicted by their enemy, but being poisoned by the poor quality of food they ate while supposedly recuperating.

After reading these reports, a then-unknown nurse named Florence Nightingale was the first to act: she recruited a task force of thirty-eight other nurses and set out for the barracks in Scutari, Turkey (which is part of modern-day Istanbul). What she found was so awful, she termed it “a calamity unparalleled in the history of calamity.” Soyer, who due to his time in Dublin considered himself an expert at culinary relief efforts, volunteered to travel to the Crimea at his own expense.

His former patron, the Duchess of Sutherland, again interceded on his behalf by writing letters of introduction. Helping matters, too, was that Lord Panmure, who’d recently become Secretary of State for War, was an acquaintance from The Reform Club. Panmure agreed Soyer should be granted complete autonomy over the British soldiers’ diet.

Before his departure, he rejiggered his Magic Stove into “Soyer’s Field Stove” (a version of which proved so effective, the British Army was still using it 120 years later, up until the Gulf War.) Soyer took this portable stove with him to Turkey in March of 1855. With Nightingale’s blessing, he immediately commandeered all hospital kitchens, and instituted better ways of storing Army rations, improved cooking methods, and devised healthier recipes.

One of the first things Soyer altered was the how meat was distributed. Incredible though it may seem, prior to his arrival, weight was the only criteria considered in portion size; thus, one soldier might get a serving of filet, while another would dine on bone and gristle. Soyer immediately put a stop to this practice, insisting every man would receive an equal allotment of filleted meat, while bones were repurposed for soups and broths.

Soyer spent over two years in Crimea, during which time Florence Nightingale and he had countless adventures while they toured the front lines, as well as hospitals and sanatoriums. Unfortunately, Soyer was much more mindful of the soldiers’ health than he was his own. Eventually, he would suffer from typhoid, dysentery, fever, ulcers and certainly overwork. When he finally returned to Britain in 1857, Soyer was not a well man. Nonetheless, he managed to write a book about his Crimean experience, entitled A Culinary Campaign: Being Historical Reminiscences of the Late War, with the Plain Art of Cookery for Military and Civil Institutions, the Army, Navy, Public, Etc., Etc.

Alexis Soyer died the next year, on August 5, 1858, at the age of 48. His last few years of “charitable cookery” had left Soyer in debt. Creditors seized whatever of his assets they thought had value, and discarded the rest—including most of Soyer’s correspondence and personal diaries. For many decades, Soyer was forgotten by history.

His life, though, is too colorful and, well, too tasty to remain untold. Since his death, Soyer has been the subject of several different biographies. Among them are Relish: The Extraordinary Life of Alexis Soyer by Ruth Cowen; The People’s Chef by Ruth Brandon; and Portrait of a Chef by Helen Morris.

At his old place of employ, The Reform Club, Soyer’s memory lives on, too. Several of his recipes are still on the menu, quite unchanged since the mid-19th century, though the same can’t be said of the chefs cooking them.

Towards the end of my visit, I spoke to Lauren Barrett, a young assistant chef, whose arms were covered with tattoos. Soyer’s recipe for lamb cutlets, “Reform-style,” are still extremely popular, she said. For the record, they’re coated with plenty of bread crumbs, and drenched in a sauce in which floats chopped pieces of tongue, gherkins and hard-boiled egg.

Another perpetual favorite is Soyer’s sherry trifle. “It’s still the same old recipe, with just raspberries in it,” Barrett said. “I’m not allowed to do anything else to it.”

Eating such a rich dessert, I feel a trifle less guilty about my indulgence by telling myself I’m upholding the memory of Alexis Soyer, a great man who did a great many things for the poor.

On my way out of The Reform, I paused for one more look at his portrait in the Stranger’s Dining Room. Soyer’s welcoming facial expression seems to say, “Please, come join me! There’s plenty to eat!”

Seeing his happy gaze, I decide Alexis Soyer is the Father of Gastrophilanthropy because he understood that every human being has two main worries: a fear of being hungry, and the dread of being alone.

Food is the great equalizer. After all, no one is a stranger once you’ve shared a meal with them.

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Actually, come to think of it, this lady has no skin. She’s a living, breathing skeleton called La Calavera Catrina.

Christmas has Santa Claus; Easter, the bunny. Down Mexico way, when in late October everyone celebrates El Dia de Los Muertos (Day of the Dead), La Catrina is mascot for families and friends who gather to celebrate memories of those who have died. She was my constant companion when I traveled to Guadalajara, Mexico, to cook a Day of the Dead dinner for a group of homeless street kids, and transgendered sex workers.

This came about when a mutual friend put me in touch with Rev. David Kalke, who is a bishop in something called the Ecumenical Catholic Church. The E.C.C. has nothing whatsoever to do with the Vatican, or the Pope. In fact, Kalke’s work often pits him directly against the Roman Catholic church which, in Guadalajara at least, tends to more diligently address needs of wealthy and powerful people, rather than the poor. Relentless, at times exhausting, in his advocacy for the underprivileged, Kalke is one of the bravest and most progressively political people I’ve ever had the opportunity to meet. He may drive a smuggled red Mini-Cooper car and have a peculiar weakness for hoary old jokes, but Rev. David Kalke is a saint.

He’s also no fool. When we talked on the phone a month or so before I traveled down Guadalajara, Kalke told me he was delighted to help me arrange una fiesta, but he wanted me to be realistic about the difficulties we might face in getting a crowd to show up. “I work with a community of outcasts,” he explained. “These kids are not used to anyone doing anything nice for them, much less arranging a party in their honor. I’m sure many of them will be suspicious of what we’re doing. They may even imagine it is some sort of trick by the police. I don’t think we have to be too terribly concerned about violence, but it’s always good to be cautious. I’m willing to take the risk, if you are. Why don’t you think it over, and call me back?”

I puzzled this over. Not surprisingly, I was terribly concerned about what Kalke said we didn’t need to be terribly concerned about. But, I decided if he was game, I was, too.

Guadalajara is the second largest city in Mexico, and has a population of eight million people—about the same as New York City’s. Capitol of the state of Jalisco, this region was settled by Spaniards in the 1540’s, or only a few decades after Hernán Cortés first conquered Moctezuma, the Aztec emperor. What would eventually be called Guadalajara was an area found to be extremely rich in both silver and gold. It also had a robust water supply; surprising, as it is surrounded by desert. (The name Guadalajara derives from an Arabic word that means “water from rocks.”) Tequila is the main source of income for Jalisco today.

As we drove into town from the airport, Kalke told me about the first time he conducted a eucharist ceremony in Guadalajara. Shortly before that morning’s services were to begin, he was dismayed to discover there was no communion wine. He instructed an old man who was the church’s caretaker to hurry off to the market and buy some “vino.” Unfortunately, Kalke was unaware that in the local dialect of Spanish, “vino” can mean wine, but is more typically used to mean tequila. He was already standing at the altar, when the caretaker brought him a chalice brimming with potent juice from the blue agave plant. Nervous, flustered, and unwilling to turn the eucharist into “Margaritaville,” Kalke made a stupid decision to down the entire chalice in one sip, while ordering the caretaker to go find some vino tinto.

“I don’t remember much of the service after that,” he says, with a sly grin.

Kalke grew up on a farm in rural Iowa. He must come from tough stock; his mother is 101, and still healthy. After college, he spent several years in Chile, which was then roiled by the bloody aftermath of a United States-backed coup in 1973, which deposed President Salvador Allende. “There were human rights violations going on in Chile that no one has ever heard of,” Kalke says.

He came back to America, and tried to raise awareness of the dire political situation in Chile by going on a cross-country speaking tour, under the auspices of the International Association Against Torture. As a result of this work, he began to think about liberation theology. He attended both Union Theological Seminary in New York City, and the Hamma School of Theology, an institution for the training of Lutheran ministers, in Canton, Ohio. After graduating from Hamma, Kalke focussed on work with refugees and solidarity efforts, spending a great deal of his time traveling in Central and South America.

When I ask his definition of “liberation theology,” Kalke considers the question for a moment before he replies, “You are involved in a political process and this reflects on your actions, theologically. You are in the streets, working with people who’ve been kidnapped, battered, or ‘disappeared.’ You’re not sitting in your office, smoking a pipe, and writing books about ‘The Historical Jesus.’”

Kalke clearly relishes being in the streets. I also get the impression he enjoyed being a thorn in the side of his bourgeoise congregants more than they enjoyed being poked. Recounting his decades of parish ministry, Kalke acknowledges his activism tended to wear out his welcome with congregations. His career ended in San Bernadino, California where, true to form, he was fired for focusing too much of his energies on building a community center to minister to gang members.

He moved to Guadalajara in 2009, ostensibly to retire. Soon enough, though, he’d started a social service agency called Comunidad de los Martines (The Community of the Martins—named for St. Martin of Tours, Martin Luther, St. Martin of Porres, and Martin Luther King, Jr.)

By now, we’ve arrived in downtown Guadalajara. Kalke takes me to see Plaza Tapatia, a multi-tiered park, with fountains and covered arcades, which is directly behind the imposingly grand Catholic Cathedral. Plaza Tapatia is hub to most of the city’s sex trade. As we walk about, Kalke explains there are an estimated 3,000 female prostitutes in Guadalajara, and 500 transgendered sex workers (or individuals who were born male, but identify and dress as women.)

Many of their customers are older, white, American men who’ve come to Mexico to retire, or have traveled here as sex tourists.

“I suppose I could have been one of them,” Kalke says.

Seeing how blatantly these assignations are arranged—there are many chubby gringos talking to slim-hipped young girls and boys—is startling. The cost of living in Mexico is cheap, but it’s outrageous how little these prostitutes are paid for intimate acts. Oral sex earns anywhere between 50 to 100 pesos ($4 to $8 U.S. dollars), while the fee for vaginal or anal sex “soars” up to somewhere around 250 pesos ($20 U.S. dollars). Transgendered prostitutes, I’m surprised to learn, get paid more than do “real” women.

One of Kalke’s goals is to unionize the sex workers, as they are in Argentina and Holland. Some might question if this is a worthwhile effort for a priest; nothing seems to make Kalke happier, though, than to challenge conventional thinking.

After our brief tour of central Guadalajara, Kalke drives us about twenty minutes away to Polanco, the part of town where he lives. Polanco is a poor district, settled maybe 45 years ago by squatters who simply laid claim to the land. Most of his neighbors do not have title to their property or houses.

Kalke opened a coffee shop here, Cafe Los Martines, which operates as a “safe space” for local kids, where they can hang out and be shielded from gangs, or other dangerous temptations. There is a rack with sexual literature and a box, always in need of refilling, where he gives away free condoms. At the cafe, I meet Carla and Yvonne, two young women who Kalke says will assist me for the next couple days. (I also was accompanied on this trip by two pals from New York—Mark Ledzian and Katie Daley—and I’d arranged to bring down my niece, Amy, as well as Mia, a friend of her’s from San Francisco.) Carla is a student in culinary school; Yvonne is a single mother. Neither speaks any English or, if they do, they’re too shy to attempt its usage. My Spanish will be given quite a work-out.

The cafe’s kitchen has a small oven, with only one rack inside; two of its four burners on the cooktop are not functional. Kalke has brought a four-cup food processor from his own kitchen, as well as a couple of lasagna pans. I am disheartened by the prospect of cooking enough food for 150 people with this equipment, but do my best to hide my fears.

“Is everything what you expected?” Kalke asks.

“No, it’s better!” I boldly lie. “This will be terrific!”

The next two days race by. Shopping in the markets, in Spanish, while trying to convert things from pounds and cups into the metric system is my first challenge. (I have to keep repeating to myself, “1 kilo equals 2.2 pounds.”) Kalke, in his well-meaning way, frustrates my plans at nearly every turn.

To save time, for instance, he’d “pre-ordered” a lot of things based on a tentative menu we’d discussed a few weeks earlier. I’d specifically asked him not to shop for me, as every chef, if at all possible, wants to choose the ingredients they’re going to cook. Now, I am horrified to see how much he’s bought. There are monstrous mesh bags holding at least 50 onions, each the size of a grapefruit; dozens of heads of garlic; bunches of cilantro that resemble shrubbery; and woven baskets spilling over with tomatoes, avocados and tomatillos. Not to mention, clear plastic bags full of chicken, pork and beef that are so heavy, I can barely lift them. By my hurried calculations (“1 kilo equals …”) there is almost a pound of protein for each guest who will attend. Then, there’s rice, salad and apple cobbler.

Kalke refuses to hear me. Poor people in Guadalajara eat very simply, he says, and are accustomed to having little more for dinner each night than a glass of milk, and a piece of bread. If this is going to be a fiesta, we need to really give these folks something to enjoy! “Everything will get eaten, Stephen,” he says. “What’s not consumed at the party will either go to a school for the blind, or to my neighbors, who’ve never seen a feast like you are going to make!” I want to believe him, but I am certain this is way too much food, and it is going to take an incredible amount of work to prepare it in a tiny kitchen, with two burners at my disposal.

Thank you, Amy, Mia, Katie and Mark—oh yes, and Carla and Yvonne, tambien!

We all worked like demons. Jet lag, knife wounds, steamy temperatures, buzzing flies, upset stomachs—nothing could stop us. I felt a little unhinged at times, my mood swinging from euphoria (“these meatballs are incredibly delicious!”) to dark and all-consuming despair (“this goddamn fucking oven!”)

Late on the first afternoon, Kalke showed up again with Pedro Chavez, who is his primary contact with Guadalajara’s sex workers. Chavez is 35-years-old, quite tall, and amply built, if going slightly soft at his waist. He is training to be a lawyer, but also owns a small mortuary and funeral home in Compostela, which is a flyspeck of a village about an hour and half bus ride outside of Guadalajara.

Chavez suggests we head over to Doña Diabla, a gay bar downtown where our party will take place on the following evening.

Inside the bar, I see billboard-sized photographs of María Félix. She was Mexico’s biggest movie star in the 1940’s; “Doña Diabla” (Madam Devil) is her best-known and best-loved film. Along one wall is a painted mural where a variety of large hands are shown waving, holding cigarettes, or making the peace symbol. Several of the fingers have their flesh eaten away, with bare bones showing through. This death in life theme is also evident on an altar that’s been set up near the bar’s entrance, on which are placed memento mori such as candles, flowers, and skulls made from sugar candy, as well as photographs of several transgendered sex workers who died, or were killed, in the past few years.

As Kalke and I look at this together, he says, “Pedro was concerned I would disapprove of having figures of the devil on a Day of the Dead altar.” He then shakes his head, incredulously. “I would think, by now, Pedro would know I’m no fan of doctrinal purity.”

Chavez offers to take me on a tour of neighborhoods in Guadalajara, other than Plaza Tapatia, where transgendered prostitutes (Chavez refers to them, simply, as “trans”) ply their trade. He knows of at least thirty different locales around town, including storefronts that appear to be hair salons, but are actually brothels.

He hails a taxi, and as we ride, Chavez tells me clients sometimes become enraged when they discover they’ve ended up with something different than a “real” woman. “We’ve had trans get murdered, and they’re from out of state. Their families, even if we are able to get in contact with them, refuse to come claim the body,” he says.

Later, Kalke tells me that in several of these sad cases, Chavez has arranged for a prostitute’s funeral and burial, at his own expense, from his Compostela funeral home.

You might think it improbable a client could be this clueless about what he is purchasing. However, here’s a couple facts to keep in mind. First, the client is often drunk. Very drunk. Mexico’s is a culture, like Japan’s, where excessive consumption of alcohol is seen as a proof of masculinity, but where the ability to “hold your liquor” is not all that important. (An old joke has it that men in the U.S. will drink until they fall; Mexican men drink until they crawl.) Secondly, Mexican women tend to wear a lot of make-up. One routinely sees cashiers or waitresses who are wearing three shades of eyeshadow, heavy mascara, false eyelashes, and thick lipstick. As such, the heavily made-up trans do not look all that different from other women.

We eventually end up at the Posada San Juan, a hotel where rooms on the upper floors can be had for what a posted sign declared the “Happy Time Rate” of 150 pesos for three hours ($12 U.S. dollars), though rooms are also rented for considerably shorter amounts of time. Twenty minutes, say, or even ten. Chavez wants me to know this is a “respectable sex hotel, not some trashy place,” which is why he keeps a small office here, from where he distributes free condoms and lubricant, as well as literature about safe sex, and AIDS transmission. He also conducts “rapid” HIV tests; of several hundred given during the month of September in this office, Chavez told me 7% of the individuals tested HIV positive.

As we chat, girls drift in and out of Chavez’ office to say hello, or to grab condoms. Blessed with the compassion (and patience) of a high school guidance counselor, Chavez remembers key facts about each—what state they come from, how old they are, how long ago they got breast implants—so they feel noticed and cared for. It is chilly outside (maybe 55 degrees Farenheit), but most of the girls are dressed in low-cut blouses to highlight their cleavage, and skirts so short, you can see the lower half of their buttocks. They teeter about on high-heeled shoes.

Maybelline, who is 20, tells Chavez about spending a night in jail. Jasmine is wearing a bright fuschia shade of lipstick; when she smiles, I see braces on her teeth. I’m guessing she is 17. At 37, Fanny has a slightly tougher attitude, and is dressed like she’s just stepped off the beach at Acapulco. Fanny has on a turquoise sweater, a white mini-skirt, and a pair of platform sandals with a wedged heel made from coiled rope.

On the whole, I am impressed with how attractive these girls are. If I saw one of them on the subway in New York, I would not know they were transgendered. When I ask Chavez if most have had an operation to surgically remove their penises, he appears shocked.

“No! Why would they? That is their money maker!”

I’d mistakenly assumed these prostitutes were the passive sexual partner. Pedro explains, however, that up to 80 percent of men who hire a trans want to be anally penetrated. A lot of these clients are Roman Catholic, married, and deeply homophobic. The idea of having sex with a man is repellent to them; being fucked by a woman is not.

I ask what is the average age most of the girls start, and how long can they do this work?

“Trans usually begin at about age 15, and by the time they are 22 or 23, many of them have gotten fat.” Pedro gives his own belly an affectionate rub. “People don’t pay for fat!”

The following morning, Amy, Mia, Katie, Mark, and I were back in the cafe kitchen, working for a second day. We cooked until 5:30 p.m., when we loaded up Kalke’s van to take all the food over to Doña Diabla.

Since we were last there, the nightclub has been transformed. There are many tables set up with vases full of marigolds, the traditional flower for Day of the Dead parties. There are the votive candles I insisted we needed, and papel picado, or Mexican cut-paper streamers, which hang from the ceiling. Everything looked great; I was thrilled.

Only problem was, at 8:30 p.m., when the party was supposed to begin, there were, at most, 10 people present. At 9:00 p.m, maybe 15. At 9:45 p.m., 30.

The evening is a disaster. Pedro kept moaning that he had a “confirmed” list of 150 guests who were “definitely” coming. Yeah, right. And I’m Pancho Villa.

It’s not like Kalke hadn’t warned me. He’s been upfront from the very beginning about the challenges we were facing in throwing a party for people who life had not treated too well.

I tried to put on a brave face, but I was sad and disappointed. It was hard not to feel the last two days had been wasted effort.

That’s when I saw a group of 10 or 12 young men, who I decided looked suspiciously rough and tough. Several are wearing baseball caps with the John Deere tractor logo on them. They are skinny, and their jeans are dirty and frayed. I can’t quite figure out what they are doing at this dinner. To me, they look like the sort of kid who’s itching for trouble, who might pick a fight, and then beat up a gay, or transgendered, person. Oh great! On top of everything else, now we are going to have the violence Kalke wasn’t terribly concerned about.

I rushed off to find him, and asked Kalke what was going on these guys.

“They are farm boys, who’ve grown up poor, most of them way out in the countryside,” he explained. “Often, they are the eldest son, and their parents say to them, you need to go to Guadalajara, make some money, and send it home to help us out. These young men find themselves in the center of a city with as many people as New York. They are poor, uneducated, and without any job skills. They’re living on the street and hungry. When they run out of money, the only thing they have left to sell is their bodies.”

Hearing this, my impressions changed instantly. No. This can’t be. These boys are babies; some of them look like they are barely fourteen years old! I’d judged them as troublemakers, only to realize the trouble was in my mind. I made a decision, right then and there. Even if this is all who showed up, I’d do everything I could to make sure these 30 people—and these farm boys—would have a night to remember.

Despite the late hour, Kalke and Chavez were keeping their hopes alive. Neither wanted to serve the food until more people arrived. Instead, we’d let the show begin.

The show! This had been another sore point for me. When Kalke told me our fiesta was going to feature performances by three different drag queens, and each was going to do a set of five songs, I was worried this was too lengthy an entertainment. Though I raised my concerns repeatedly, Kalke always swatted them away.

I’d expected the drag queens to be lip-syncing to Lady Gaga or Katy Perry. However, Mexico has its own pantheon of pop divas, like Gloria Trevi, Belinda, and Thalia; it’s their music which was recycled into camp humor. The first singer was especially wild. Dressed all in leather, with boots that had six inch heels, she raced about the club tirelessly, and at one point hopped up on the bar, threading her way through all the beer bottles and shot glasses of tequila littered there. While she sang, more and more people kept appearing. I now understood those present were calling friends on their cell phones, telling them the party was fun, and they should get themselves over to Doña Diabla.

When the show was finally over around 10:30 p.m., the crowd had tripled in size, to maybe 125. Nearly every seat in the bar was now full; Chavez and Kalke determine it’s time to eat.

Amy, Mia, Katie and I were all positioned behind a buffet table. In front of us were the mountains of food we’d cooked. Kalke said a short prayer, and the word “amen” was like a gun being fired before a marathon run. Guests came charging at us from all directions! There was no protocol about lining up in a queue, or any order whatsoever. It was complete bedlam. We frantically scooped up chicken, meatballs, pork, rice and salad, as plates were shoved at us from every angle and all directions. Buen Provecho, I kept saying, over and over. People were eating like they’d never seen food before. Only after everyone had been helped to at least two plates each, did the chaos begin to subside. Only then did I allow myself to exhale.

People are circulating between tables; everyone is laughing and flirting. Over by the wall, I see one table has been taken over by a large group of trans, all sitting together. There’s maybe 40 girls, if not more. They are being watched over by Giovanni, a guy who I’d seen the evening before, working as the night clerk at the Posada San Juan, which is the “respectable” sex hotel where Pedro Chavez has his office. Giovanni is seated at one end of the table, and from what I observe of his demeanor, he is acting as if he’s a combination of Daddy Warbucks and Professor Henry Higgins. He’s gesturing to one girl to put a napkin in her lap while she eats; to another, to lower her voice a bit. The girls seem to want his attention, to please him, and gain his favor. I thought it was all very sweet, really.

When I point this out to Kalke, once more he tells me appearances can be deceiving. “I’m not sure sometimes if Giovanni is a good shepherd to his flock, or if he’s running a brothel, and acting as their pimp.” He then looked at me, and laughed. “But, if it all made sense, we wouldn’t call it the underworld, right?”

The party went on well past midnight, with still more guests arriving. Though I’d forgotten all about it, Amy and Mia were vigilant enough to put out the apple cobbler, and squirt generous dollops of whipped cream on each serving. Even after all the food we’d already dished out, they seemed to be doing a good business getting rid of the dessert.

At some point, in the early morning hours, there was a special “award” ceremony, in which Kalke asked all five of us Americans to step forward to receive special recognition. It is exactly the sort of moment I’d begged him to spare us. I’d wanted our actions to be anonymous, I said, and instead we were being handed certificates with gold foil stickers and ribbons, as well as gifts. Mine is a figurine of La Calavera Catrina; about sixteen inches high, and made out of metal. She’s a bony and ugly old hag, but it’s love at first sight.

I’m still clutching this skeleton doll in my hand, when a DJ amped up the music, and a couple of the trans pulled me into their circle on the dance floor. I boogied for a while with Fanny, and then with Jasmine. In the room’s flashing lights, her braces were glittering like sparklers. I look up at one point to see Rev. David Kalke smiling at me. He makes a two thumbs-up sign.

It was the Day of the Dead, and I was happy to be alive.

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Wharton and I first met at Terra Blues, a small, dimly-lit bar that’s a vestige of the dozens of live music clubs once operating on this stretch of Bleecker Street in Greenwich Village. Legends like Lucky Peterson, Corey Harris, and Saron Crenshaw have all played at Terra, which proudly bills itself as the only place in New York City where one can hear the Blues, 365 days a year. On the night I was present, only half of the club’s 100 or so seats were occupied, and mostly by foreign tourists. At nearby tables, I heard people speaking Japanese, Russian and Hebrew.

I’d arranged to meet Sauce Boss backstage, where I soon learn punctuality is not high on his list of priorities. I passed the time by chatting with members of Wharton’s two-man band: Justin Headley (drums), a jiggly-bellied teddy bear of a man, with pink cheeks; and John Hart, who plays the bass guitar and holds his lank dark hair off his forehead with a neatly folded bandana. Playing with Sauce Boss, these two guys do over 100 shows a year, often staying out on the road for a month at a time. In addition, they estimate they’ve fed several hundred thousand people at homeless shelters across the United States.

I ask Hart what is the difference between a club date, and one played at a shelter.

“Actually, the vibe at soup kitchens is a lot cooler,” he claims. “It’s not like a typical Friday night crowd, where people will just show up to see whoever is playing at the club. With homeless people, we come to them, which is so unusual, they’re genuinely excited to see us.”

The Blues is a feeling more than a style of music, Headley tells me. “The songs might be about not having any money, or you’ve lost your job, your ride, your phone—maybe your wife has left you. But it’s more than that. It’s uplifting, too. Singing the Blues is how you encourage yourself when you are going through a rough patch. Our soup kitchen crowds respond to that.”

Three quarters of an hour late, and only a few minutes before he’s scheduled to go on, Wharton appears. Slope-shouldered and quite slender, he sports a white goatee beard. He’s outfitted in a chef’s uniform of a white hat, white buttoned-up jacket, and black and white checked pants—a look he’s made his own by accessorizing it with black and white “Spectator” shoes. The Sauce Boss looks a great deal like Colonel Saunders, that is, if the KFC founder had foresworn fried chicken, and gone on a serious diet.

Wharton seems unclear who exactly I am, even though we’d spoken several times on the telephone over the past few days, including earlier that afternoon. I’m fairly certain I smell marijuana smoke on his clothes.

Hart and Headley go off to complete a sound check of their amplifiers, while Wharton fusses with his mise en place. There are Zip-Lock bags full of ingredients for his gumbo (chopped onions, peppers, chicken stock, shrimp), gallons of filtered water, and a portable cooktop with a propane tank. Wharton also checks the contents of a black suitcase where he stores Sauce Boss compact discs, and bottles of Liquid Summer, which will be on sale after tonight’s concert. Imagining he’s in the midst of a pre-show ritual that shouldn’t be disturbed, I watch all this silently.

Suddenly, Wharton jerks his head up, and looks at me with a piercing stare. “G’head. Talk to me, brother,” he demands.

Startled, I ask him how he describes his type of Blues.

“I play a kind of bottleneck, Delta Slide,” he replies. “It’s ‘gut bucket’ Blues, and very improvisational. I think of myself as someone who just plays what I’m feeling at the time.”

He demonstrates his “bottleneck,” which is a metal tube, similar in size to the foil wrapped around an uncorked wine bottle. Worn on his left hand’s pinky, Wharton presses down on it with his third and fourth finger as he rapidly maneuvers the bottleneck up and down his guitar’s fretboard. Delta Slide, he says, began in country music and Blues, but has migrated into rock and roll bands ranging from The Doors to Metallica.

Wharton, who is 65, grew up in Orlando, Florida. Even as a child he wanted to be a musician; he started performing professionally at the age of 14. “I talked myself into a gig, and then I taught myself how to play.”

As a teenager, he was in a band called The Sapphires, which played covers of songs by Bob Dylan and The Byrds. Another band of his, The New Englanders, was a “Beatles knock off.” It wasn’t until a friend gave him an electric guitar, however, that Wharton found his way to the Blues.

“The Blues are incredibly poetic, yet they usually have the most basic lyrics,” he says. “Think of a phrase like, ‘I woke up this morning / I had two minds.’ Not ‘I woke up this morning / I felt schizophrenic,’ or ‘I woke up this morning / I was filled with existential anxiety.’ Just ‘two minds.’ It is simpler, and so much better.”

Wharton tells me about the “Rosie,” or a type of work song which was once used to enliven the rhythmic labors of slaves or prisoners. He thumps his chest with a fist, stomps his foot, and improvises a simple ditty, “Be my woman / (THUD!) / I be your man.”

“The music was their meter,” he continues. “Every time they pounded another spike in a railroad tie, or cracked another rock for a highway, the downbeat was what kept them going. That’s the thing about the Blues; they’re primal.”

As an “old white guy,” Wharton admits he’s something of a rarity in a musical genre dominated by black men. “But, I have an affinity, a true resonance with Africa,” he says. “I know what it is to suffer, too. Things haven’t always been easy for me. This is what allows me to righteously sing the Blues. I know this life.”

I ask what he means. How has he suffered?

Wharton fixes me with a hard glare. “Let me put it this way,” he begins. “There was a time when I was sitting in a jail on Good Friday, trying to figure out how to make a noose from a bed sheet.”

A stage manager appears, and asks Wharton if he’s ready to go on.

I find a seat out front, and Sauce Boss comes onstage.

“We’re gonna cook up a little food, play some Blues, and just hang out,” he says. “That O.K. with everybody?”

He opens with “Let the Big Dog Eat,” the closest thing he’s had to a hit (the director Jonathan Demme included it on the soundtrack of his 1986 film, “Something Wild.”) The lyrics are rudimentary. “Way down South / In the rain and the heat / Sure gets hot down there / Cook an egg on the concrete / Everybody on the city street says / Whoa! Let the big dog eat!”

Wharton’s music is fast, real toe-tapping, hip-shaking stuff. His long riffs are both muscular and agile. While he plays, Wharton wears a surprised expression on his face, as if the melody and lyrics were spontaneously generated, not a well-rehearsed act he does hundreds of times every year.

Some of Sauce Boss’ music taps into a rich vein of ribald sexual humor that runs through the Blues. (Think of B.B. King’s love song to his own penis called “My Ding-A-Ling,” or “Ain’t Got Nobody To Grind My Coffee,” a tune Bessie Smith used to feature in her act. As he sings a naughty lyric like “Big-legged woman / I can tell what you got cookin’ / I want to stir your pot,” Wharton rolls his eyes about like a crazy person, to make sure his audience gets the double-entendre.

He plays for a solid hour before he even casts a glance at a large stock pot that’s center stage. “I’ve just been having too much fun to start cookin’,” he says, with a chuckle.

As Wharton cranks open the propane tank, and lights a flame under the pot, Headley bangs the drum set with a mighty crash that makes the whole audience jump. After adding chicken stock, onions, and peppers, Wharton pops the lid off a plastic bucket labeled, “Savoie’s Old-Fashioned Dark Roux.” He scoops up a big brown blob with a metal spoon, and shows it to the audience.

“For those of y’all that don’t know, roux is just oil and flour. Oil and flour that’s been all cooked down until it looks like this. Ain’t it gorgeous? I think roux looks like molasses! Or chocolate! Roux looks like…” Rolling his eyes in that berserk way he has, Wharton teases out the inevitable response.

“Shit!” several people scream.

“That’s right, it looks like fudge!” he counters, laughing and snorting like he’s never told this joke before. He plops the roux into the pot. As the broth for the gumbo begins to heat and thicken, Wharton takes a huge gulp from a glass of red wine. “Look around you! Turn your head left; and turn right! Everyone around you looks a little bit different, right? But celebrating our differences is what it’s all about. We can put them all in a pot, stir ‘em up, and make something that tastes really, really good. And that, my friends, is the gospel of gumbo!”

I wasn’t hungry when I’d arrived at Terra Blues, but as a seductive smell begins to float across the room, I’m ravenous. It’s well past 1:00 a.m., however, and Sauce Boss is still whaling away on his electric guitar, with no ladle in sight.

A few days later, I am in Buffalo, New York, waiting for Wharton to arrive at The Matt Urban Hope Center, a soup kitchen on Paderewski Street. I’m chatting with Tom Acara, a Sales Manager for the Conference and Event Center of Niagara Falls, whose wife, Cynthia, arranged for Sauce Boss to play a free concert here.

“This was never a rich neighborhood, but back in the day, it was extremely well-taken care of by the proud Polish people who lived here,” Acara says. He then reminds me that Ignacy Jan Paderewski was a Pole who, in the 1920’s and 30’s, was a world-renowned pianist and composer.

Buffalo is laid out on a master plan designed by Frederic Law Olmsted, Acara explains, and was the first place in America to have electric street lights, because city fathers were able to harness the hydroelectric power of nearby Niagara Falls. Bethlehem Steel once had 18,000 employees in Buffalo; General Motors, Ford, and Allied Chemicals (which made indigo blue dye for denim jeans; Levi Strauss was Allied’s biggest customer) had prospering factories here, too.

Those boom times are long gone. Paderewski Street now bisects a blighted neighborhood, with many boarded up homes, and empty store fronts. Matt Urban Hope Center typically feeds 150 people a day, though a slightly smaller crowd has shown up to see Sauce Boss who, as is his custom, is running late. Wharton is not answering his cell phone, or replying to any of her texts, and Cynthia Acara is starting to freak out.

An hour late, Sauce Boss finally saunters in. When not performing, he moves with a serene confidence there’s no need to rush.

On the contrary, his bandmates, Headly and Hart, hustle to set up their sound equipment, as well as Wharton’s cooking supplies, in front of a brightly-painted wall mural that proclaims, “PATHWAY TO PROSPERITY.”

A few minutes later, Wharton launches into “Let the Big Dog Eat.”

When the song ends, a man shouts, “I’m the big dog ‘round here, and I’m already eating!” He is wearing a filthy orange T-shirt that says Partner’s Pizzeria on the back. A greasy cardboard box of pizza is open on the table before him.

“O.K., big dog,” Wharton says to this guy.

He plays a few more songs for this crowd which is receptive, to say the least. In fact, the energy and volume of Sauce Boss’ music soon has everyone quite riled up. One woman is shaking her hands with an (imaginary) pair of maracas. Another guy is loudly humming along with a tuneless back-up vocal. Some people bang on their thighs, and jiggle their feet; others toss back their heads and shout. There is a lot of heckling.

“Man? You only playing two drums?” one man hollers out to Justin Headley, the percussionist. “I got me a drum set with some thirty drums in it!”

“That sho be a raggedy-ass lookin’ guitar you got there,” someone yells, pointing an accusing finger at Wharton’s battered black Fender. (“You sho ‘nuf right there!” Wharton agrees.)

No sooner does each song end, than one woman hollers out the same question, again and again: “When you gonna start cookin’?”

Wharton appears unfazed by this commotion. “I gotta tell y’all … I like to eat! My idea of a good time is a big ‘ole bowl of gumbo, and a big ‘ole plate of biscuits, each of ‘em with a fat slice’a butter on ‘em, and drippin’ with Tupelo honey. Sound good, don’t it?”

I notice how deft Wharton is at code shifting. His audience in Greenwich Village the other night was primarily young, affluent and Caucasian, which caused him to use certain words and make certain jokes. Here in Buffalo, the crowd is older, poorer, and almost completely African-American. It’s subtle, but Wharton’s diction has become lazier for this crowd; consonants are hit softer, or disappear altogether. And, truth be told, sometimes Wharton’s patter becomes impressionistic, if not downright weird.

After he dumps an entire bottle of Liquid Summer hot sauce into the pot, he says, “We’s a gonna let it simmer down now into the primordial ooze that squishes between the toes of your taste buds.”

People are mesmerized by the gumbo’s progress. Different men and women, sometimes in groups, keep getting up and streaming forward in the middle of one of Wharton’s songs, to stare down into the bubbling fluid. In Greenwich Village, Wharton had to jump off the stage to interact with the crowd; here, the audience is joining him.

When it comes time to pray before the meal, Wharton does so in his own inimitable style.

“Can I get an ‘Amen?’” he yells. Unhappy with the tepid response, he again shouts “Is that all you got? Can I get an ‘Amen?’”

This time, just about everyone, myself included, shouts ‘AMEN!’”

“Well, thank you, Jesus, and thank you, Leo Fender!” Wharton cries, thereby equating the son of God with Clarence Leonidas “Leo” Fender, the son of orange grove owners in Anaheim, California, who in 1950 invented the first mass-produced electric guitar.

Cynthia and Tom Acara serve up lunch, while Wharton comes to chat with me.

How does he keep track of the timing of the gumbo, I ask; like when to add new ingredients, or when it’s done?

There are occasional mishaps, Wharton suggests. The drunk guy in Chicago who cracked a glass beer bottle into the gumbo, rendering it inedible. Or, a time in Toronto, when he was playing for a crowd of 9,000 people, and an enormous kettle slipped off its propane burner. “There was a gumbo tsunami all around the band! But these Canadian guys, they always have their snow shovels handy. They just squeegeed the whole mess off the front of the stage!”

Has cooking in soup kitchens changed him?

“Well, sure! I mean, before I was a pretty cool guy. I played a mean guitar. People wished they were me,” Wharton pauses, and cocks an eyebrow to mock what he’d just said. “But, when I started cooking in soup kitchens, it was a reality check. Life is more than collecting accolades, you know, and getting applause. Now, my main thrill is looking people straight in the eye, and giving them respect. It’s been bad out there, and it’s getting worse. Everyone has a story.”

Though I’m nervous to do so, I remind Wharton he’d mentioned a suicide attempt in prison … that bed sheet noose? I expected him to bristle, or clam up; instead he gives me a bright, big smile.

“I like to smoke pot, O.K.? So, I was growing some for myself, and maybe a little more that I’d share with friends.”

He pauses. “What happened to me was a sting. Someone pretended to be a friend of a friend, and I got busted. In some ways, I think of myself as having been a political prisoner. Someone went out of their way to set me up, and I’m still not quite sure why.”

Wharton was incarcerated for two months in 1983, and then put on three years probation. He took his time in prison as an opportunity to start up a new band. “We’d have concerts inside where all the players, and all the audience, were inmates. It was awesome!”

He then launches into a story about a guy named Calvin Craddock, who played bass guitar with him. Actually, the anecdote is about Craddock’s grandmother who grew okra in her garden in Alabama.

“Now, ‘round June, Grandma Craddock would go out to her backyard, and she’d cut herself a switch—a nice long and strong switch. Then, she’d go over to her okra plants and whip ‘em, just whip ‘em good. Well, don’t you know, come August, when she’d look at ‘em again, them okra plants would be bushing out all over, and just popping with okra! I think that’s a little like you and me, ain’t it? You can beat me up! You can whip me and try to keep me down. Maybe some parts of me will fall away, but those are my weakest bits. What’s left is my human dignity. You can’t take that away from me! And, long’s as I still got my human dignity, I can still blossom and grow!”

And that, my friends, is the gospel of gumbo.

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Turkey with all the trimmings wouldn’t be on today’s menu, as I was helping cook for a group of hungry senior citizens in Busan, South Korea. Correction: there was no turkey. However, since Korean cuisine is famous for the abundance of side dishes that accompany every meal, we were serving up plenty of “trimmings,” including several varieties of kimchi, what’s sometimes called “Korean ketchup.”

I’d come to South Korea to assist Shon Gyu-Ho, a man who ten years ago, founded an organization called Busan Baffer, which now feeds an estimated 3,000 people a day. Mr. Shon wears his long black hair pulled back in a ponytail, and his calm, scholarly demeanor is underscored by his customary attire, which is a collar-less Mandarin jacket. In addition to feeding the body, Mr. Shon believes his organization must also help heal minds.

“The reason homeless people have trouble interacting with society is they think they are weak,” he said. “We try to help people know that they can do something with their lives, and they can get a job.”

We were standing together on this November morning of 2012 beside a truck which was retrofitted to act as a mobile kitchen. Inside, were cookers in which vats of rice could be steamed, and a stainless steel cauldron where enormous quantities of soup simmer. Parked next to the mobile kitchen was a van holding a battered collection of folding card tables, and stackable plastic stools. Because the weather was sunny and clear, these would soon be arranged on a cobble-stoned plaza outside a Korail train station in Hae-undae. This is one of the wealthier neighborhoods of Busan, which is a coastal city, nearly at the Korean peninsula’s southernmost tip.

Hae-undae is known for its clusters of high-rise apartment buidings, as well as luxury hotels, the grandest of which is the Paradise Casino. (Posters for this casino are plastered up all over Busan, and show a photograph of the American movie star, Robert DeNiro, shuffling a deck of cards, and looking miserable while doing so.) If not quite a paradise for Busan’s poor, Hae-undae is at least something of an oasis. Those who are hungry come to this neighborhood to beg from wealthy tourists, paw about in dumpsters, or sit alone on concrete walls by the beach, staring out towards the South China Sea. They’ll also make their way to the Korail station, to get a free lunch from Mr. Shon and Busan Baffer.

The organization’s name loses something in the translation, but its meaning goes something like this. No Korean meal is complete without rice, and every Korean kitchen has an electric rice cooker. These are accessorized with a special spoon (made of bamboo, or plastic) that hangs on the cooker’s side. Koreans prefer a short grain rice, which clumps together as it absorbs moisture, and is dished out in big blobs, nearly like a generous scoop of ice-cream. Both the action of serving rice, and this special spoon are called a “baffer.” As such, for Koreans the word connotes abundance, similar to “smorgasbord” for Swedes, or a “cornucopia” for English-speakers.

I’d first met Mr. Shon, earlier that morning at the Busan Baffer headquarters.

Along with a dozen or so other men, he was sitting on the floor, at a low table, eating his breakfast of grilled fish and kimchi. It was barely 8:00 a.m., yet these men had already been working for several hours, loading up the mobile kitchen with rice and ingredients for today’s soup.

The room in which they huddled is quite cold. At first, I can’t figure out why all the men appeared comfortable in shirt sleeves and T-shirts. When I sit down next to Mr. Shon, though, I discover the room’s only heat is coming from an electrified plastic mat, which in most Korean homes replaces carpeting. I realize I’ve seen these mats touted on television by hilarious advertisements in which, thanks to computer-generated imagery, flames of heat rise up from the floor, as we see grandma settle down on her floor mat for a nap, or a naked baby roll around in toasty-warm bliss. I found sitting on one to be an odd sensation; my shoulders shivered, but my testicles were getting fried.

Mr. Shon offered me a cup of very sweet instant coffee, which I sipped while we chatted.

Noting that the weather was starting to get colder, he said Busan Baffer was gearing up for its head counts to increase markedly in the months ahead. Similar to “snowbirds” in the United States, or those elderly folks who decamp from their houses up north, to the warmth of Florida for the winter, there is a similar migration of homeless men and women to Busan.

“It is much colder in Seoul, than it is here,” he explained. “So, starting at the end of November, poor people, usually men, will get onto trains headed south. They don’t have tickets, but the railroad conductors know these homeless passengers will make a scene if they try to evict them. So, they ride for free.”

This annual migration provides an eerie echo to how Busan was first populated. During the Korean War, (which Koreans, of course, call their Civil War) in the early 1950’s, Seoul was relentlessly pummeled with bombs. Refugees, by the tens of thousands, abandoned South Korea’s capitol, and fled to Busan. Most of them settled very close to the water’s edge, in hovels around the city’s main port. Busan was South Korea’s only major city which never fell to Communist rule, a fact that the city’s citizens still take pride in.

One hears much of the economic “miracle” that is South Korea. Today, it is the seventh-largest exporter in the world, and one of the most wired societies on the planet. During the spectacular recovery South Korea made in the Civil War’s aftermath, many parents focussed obsessively on their children’s educational and professional success, expecting their offspring’s future affluence to cushion them. So strong was the Confucian ideal of “filial piety,” or the unquestioned respect a child should show a parent, that the family was considered one’s only source of social security. Indeed, South Korea neglected to create any sort of national pension system until 1988.

Things didn’t work out as planned, however. As the post-war shift from an agrarian to an industrial society scattered a younger generation to cities, or abroad, these children began to face problems of their own — especially during the Asian financial crisis of the late 1990’s — making them less willing, or able, to care for their aged parents.

Today, South Korea’s suicide rate is among the highest in the world, according to statistics released by the OECD (Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development.) Measured by suicides per 100,000 people, South Korea’s numbers rose from 13.6 in 2001, to 31.2 in 2010. Among those who are 65 and older, most disturbingly, the rate ballooned from 35.5 to 81.9. What these figures show is the end of South Korea’s traditional Confucian social contract. The result is that elderly people make up the vast majority of those who eat meals provided by Busan Baffer.

“Their children have all moved away, and forgotten them,” Mr. Shon said.

When he was a child, Mr. Shon told me, he lived next door to an orphanage for disabled children. These boys and girls became his friends, and he grew up with them. At age 18, however, these children would be declared “independent,” and summarily ejected from the orphanage and put out onto the street.

“A lot of them could not adjust to society. Several of my friends committed suicide,” he recalls. “This stuck with me, even as I started my career, and began to raise my family. I kept thinking that I have to do something for these poor people. Human beings have a right to eat, to be clothed, and to have a roof over their heads.”

For many years, Mr. Shon taught computer skills to elementary school students in the fourth through six grades. All the while, he schemed and dreamed, and finally figured out a system of two trucks that drive, as a tag-team, into Busan’s humblest neighborhoods and deliver hot meals.

While Busan Baffer now looks to be a well-oiled machine, getting it operational was not easy for Mr. Shon. As described above, he was butting up against Confucian values which held that the family was to take care of all problems; Mr. Shon’s efforts were viewed as meddling and intrusive. Yet, as the scourge of senior citizen homelessness and hunger in South Korea grew to point where it could no longer be ignored, donations and volunteers began to come
his way.

In the days I spent working alongside Mr. Shon, I helped prepare huge piles of Baechu. This is probably South Korea’s most popular form of kimchi, and made by combining Napa cabbage, garlic, ginger, salt and red pepper flakes, after which the mixture can be stored for months. Even when you wear rubber gloves while making Baechu, I discovered, the chile pepper somehow works its way through the plastic, and burns the flesh around your fingernails. It’s a slowly escalating form of torture.

I cut up many crates of persimmons, which are harvested in the fall, and are to South Korea what apples are to America. And, I cooked gallons of soup made with cabbage, onions, pork bones, potatoes, garlic and sesame leaf. Called gochugaru, it has a broth that’s
loaded with red chile paste. Fiery in flavor, the soup’s color is a glowing orange that looks nearly incendiary.

When lunch was ready, I would fall into line behind other volunteers, and take trays of food to our guests. I’ve waited upon elderly people before, but this crowd, especially the women, were really, really old. The word for “grandmother” in Korean is halmune, and it is used as something of an honorific; meaning,
it’s completely polite to use it when greeting an old lady you’ve never met. (Try that with a woman in New York City — “Hey, Grandma!”
— and she’d probably kick you in the ass.) Anyway, the halmune in Busan were incredibly aged, their faces deeply lined and creased by their years.

I’d watch them from the window of the truck, as I helped Mr. Shon cook. They’d come hobbling into the little plaza where folding tables and chairs would soon be set up. Bent low over canes, their postures stooped with age, it appeared as if their torsos were nearly parallel to the ground. Moving slowly, they’d eventually find a place in the sun, where they’d sit, chatting and gossiping with their friends, while snacking on dried seaweed.

Shortly before we are to serve lunch, a woman wearing a celadon-colored sweater and skirt comes bounding into the plaza. She’s maybe fifty-years-old, which makes her a generation younger than these other women; she could be anyone’s daughter. With excessive energy and cheer, she skips about, screaming “Hallelujah!” over and over again, in a lusty, deep voice. She passes out hard candies, while she pats heads, squeezes arms, and pinches the cheeks of the halmune. All the while, she keeps repeating that same one word: “Hallelujah!”

When we’d had breakfast together earlier that day, Mr. Shon mentioned quite in passing that he was a Christian, yet Busan Baffer is a non-religious organization, and there is no prayer said before lunch, or any religious proselytizing whatsoever.

Yet, here was this woman, perpetrating an act of guerilla evangelism. Now, she begins to belt out the song, “What A Friend We Have in Jesus!” She has a strong alto voice, and though the words are Korean, I recognize the melody. While she sings, the woman dances about, does jaunty little pirouettes, and sometimes comes to stop, only to wiggle her butt like a burlesque dancer.

“I think she must be crazy,” I say to Mr. Shon.

He smiled. “No. She is just a bit obsessed with her religion.”

Other workers began to unload the folding tables — each of which can seat four guests — and plastic chairs. This creates bedlam. The old ladies who’ve been so calm are roused now into territorial skirmishes, trying
to lay claim to certain patches
of the plaza. Those spots under trees where the midday light is dappled, are considered most desirable and worth fighting for. It’s astonishing to see the squabbling, pushing, and sharp elbows tossed. Eventually, everyone finds a place, though, and the tables are set up in a neat rectangular grid, with space in between for volunteers
to move.

Before we servers can pick up a tray, we’re given a pep talk by a chic young woman who’s dressed in a beige cashmere coat. She looks like she is about to preside over a luncheon of the Busan Junior League, not a crowd of impoverished grannies. She speaks into a microphone that is attached to an amplification system that hangs from a strap over her shoulder, and is no bigger than a purse. Understanding little of what she says, I now see, to my considerable dismay, I’m about to be outfitted in a pink and white checked gingham smock. Not a midriff apron tied at the waist, mind you, but a full-frontal affair that had me resplendent in flouncy ruffles from kneecaps to shoulders. This horror was accessorized with a pouffy hat made from the same gingham fabric.

I wasn’t being singled out; all volunteers had to wear this cutesy-poo uniform. Still, the South Koreans were used to it, I told myself. For me, a foreigner, it was especially excruciating. O.K. Fine. Maybe I was being a little vain. But one didn’t have to be Narcissus to find this costume objectionable. I felt like an American Girl doll, or the proprietess of a pie shop in Tuscaloosa, Alabama. (“Y’all want some whipped cream with that?”)

Portion control is exceedingly strict; each tray gets exactly the same amount of food. The soup has been deconstructed so it takes three people — one to place a blob of cabbage, another a few pork bones, and a third to
ladle broth over these first two items — to reassemble every serving. The trays are only complete, however, after they’ve been loaded down with a huge mound of rice, and kimchi.

Our hostess, the lady in the beige coat, now acted as a maitre’d, standing amidst the sea of folding tables, her arm in the air, waving gaily, as a signal for where we volunteers would find the next diners who needed a tray of food. It was all rush-rush, as we worked our way across a group of maybe 50 tables. By the time we got to the end, the diners in the first tables were already finished, and a new group of hungry diners was sitting down to take their place. There were only about ten of us waiters, so we had to hoof it. I tried to count the number of trays I brought out, but lost track after 25. We ending up serving over 350 people.

Only belatedly, did I realize this dreaded hat and apron served some larger purpose, as the senior citizens we were serving got the hugest kick out of seeing us dressed this way. I’d come marching up to their side, lean down and, as we were carefully coached to do, I’d sing out, “Ma Shih Ke Du Say Yo!” to each seated guest as I placed their tray of food, which is the Korean way of saying “Bon Appetit!” They’d look up at me, then begin laughing and laughing until tears sprang from their eyes. It was painful, truly, to be in this costume, but when I saw how happy it made the halmune, it was (almost) worth it.

While Thursday’s arrangement was a “pop up” picnic, with a clientele of mostly old women, on Friday, Busan Baffer served lunch inside a low canvas tent erected alongside a now-
abandoned train station in a neighborhood called Busanjin. Situated at the base of the Sujeong mountains, Busanjin is one of the poorest areas in Busan, and today’s guests are primarily homeless men. This crowd is much rougher than yesterday; these guys are dirty and disheveled.

“Hello, U.S.A.!” one man calls out to me. When I return his greeting, he stops to talk. Smoking is forbidden inside the tent, he explains, so he’ll have a quick cigarette outside while visiting with me.

“That’s really all I do all day. Smoke and drink. Drink and smoke!” The man laughs, with his mirth quickly devolving into a rumbling, phlegmy cough. His teeth are brown around their edges, stained by nicotine. This is Tae Ha, who is 54, but looks nearly a decade older, as living on the streets has aged him. To my surprise, he speaks perfect English.

Part of the national psychology of Koreans is they tend to cluster in groups, and to socialize in packs, Tae Ha tells me. Because Koreans don’t like to be alone, the profound isolation from other people is the hardest thing about being homeless. It’s also hard for men living on the street to make friends with each other; ultimately, they are competing for the same hand-outs, or space over a subway grating.

Tae Ha points to other men, milling about as they wait for lunch to be served. Becauses he comes to this tent to eat lunch nearly every day, he recognizes most of the other regular guests, and knows many facts about their lives. I begin to understand there is a pecking order of whose story is the saddest, or most pathetic. “See that guy? He’s an ex-Marine. Him? One of his legs is shorter than the other, and he can’t get around without those crutches. Oh, and that guy. He’s a bully. He tries to control everyone, and make them do what he wants.”

“Me?” he concludes. “I could care less about any of them.”

It’s hard to tell how much of this hard-boiled bravado is genuine.

Tae Ha says all he’s had to eat since lunch yesterday is half a chocolate bar, and a bottle of shoju. This last is a drink distilled from rice. It has a high alcohol content, which can range from 16-percent to a whopping 45-percent.

How can Tae Ha afford to buy shoju?

He appears insulted by my question. “I have a bank account!” he declares. “When I need money, I call someone in my family, and they put something into it. But I don’t spend much, as the only things I ever have to buy are shoju and cigarettes. So, fuck money!”

His father was a foreign diplomat, or so he claims. He grew up in Iran, came back to South Korea when he was in his twenties, and went to college for a couple years in Seoul, but never managed to finish his degree. Instead, Tae Ha got a job working as a silkscreen artist at a plastics manufacturer. Then, in the financial crisis of 1997, he was laid off, and couldn’t find another job. His lack of a bachelor’s degree is the single biggest problem he faces, as most employers will not even consider hiring someone unless they are a college graduate.

Another problem, though, is South Korea’s economy is overwhelmingly centered in Seoul, and most of the good jobs are only found there. There’s a local saying that work in Busan is characterized by one or more of the 3 “D’s”: Dirty, Dangerous, and Difficult.

“Unlike most of the guys you see here today, I can read and write in both Korean and English,” he said. “But I don’t tell any of them this. They’d think I was nuts.”

Again, it’s a little hard to believe everything Tae Ha says. Is it really possible that an educated, well-traveled son of a diplomat could have fallen so low? Tae Ha may be under-qualified for work, but he’s certainly overqualified to be homeless.

Inside the tent, stereo speakers have sprung to life, and the loud sounds of K-Pop begins to blast out. The aggressive cheer of this music is at marked contrast to the shadowy chill inside the tent, where long rows of tables are set up, and several hundred men are waiting to be served lunch. I now notice Busan Baffer not only provides free lunches in this tent, but also the screening of the occasional movie. When I ask Tae Ha if he’s heard of the film that will be shown tonight, he tells me the title, translated from Korean, is “I Am King,” and it stars a handsome young actor named Joo Ji Hoon, who is a matinee idol in Korea. The movie tells the story of a prince during the Joseon dynasty who does not want to become king, so he hires a beggar to take his place.

Hearing this, I am dismayed. It seems a nearly perverse act of programming to subject a crowd of homeless men, today’s beggars, to such a plot.

I don’t have long to brood on this, though. Lunch is about to be served. Lining up are teams of volunteers from some of South Korea’s largest corporations. The majority of these volunteers are men, and they wear nylon vests over their business suits, that are emblazoned with the names of their companies: Hyundai, Daewoo, and Han Jeon, which is a major provider of electricity in South Korea. It seems odd, this “branding” of social service.

I am about to get in line to start bringing trays of food inside, but Mr. Shon grabs my elbow, so I stand beside him for a while as he serves soup.

In what seems an uncharacteristic moment of pessimism, Mr. Shon complains about the difficulty he’s had in finding a permanent home for these lunches in the Busanjin neighborhood, other than this dark and drafty tent. His repeated requests to refurbish an abandoned building or unused floor of office space have been ignored. He notes that Busan is able to organize a massive fireworks display each year that is shot off from the city’s main bridge. This money could be better used, he feels, to benefit the truly needy in Busan.

Most of South Korea’s elected officials are not really interested in social welfare, Mr. Shon believes. Politicians are much more keen to serve the rich — since it is the wealthy who donate to their electoral campaigns — than in helping the poor. Such corruption is indicative of what he says is the growth of class consciousness, and the very deliberate creation of an elite, or “upper crust” segment of society.

“The economic crisis in South Korea is growing. The rich are richer; the poor are poorer. The Korean government recognizes this, but does not have any policies in place to counteract it.”

With a pang of shame, I realize that all these charges leveled against South Korea, could be said about the United States of America, too.

I want to tell Mr. Shon this, though I’m not sure it will make him feel too much better. Before I have a chance to reply, however, he waves me back into the serving line. There’ll always be time to argue about politics. As for right now, men are hungry, and waiting to be fed.

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This ambitious goal would require making fertile even the Negev Desert, a scorched wasteland which comprises much of Israel’s southern half. (Negev is a Hebrew word that means “dryness.”) As David Ben-Gurion, Israel’s first prime minister, wrote in 1954, when he moved to the Negev himself, “For those who make the desert bloom there is room for hundreds, thousands, and even millions.”

Such passion accomplished incredible things. In the late 1950’s and early 1960’s, Israelis pioneered the use of “drip irrigation”—which delivers water directly to a plant’s roots. Later innovations in desalination processes and water recycling drew the world’s attention. Soon enough, an arid coastal plain between the Mediterranean and Dead Seas was alive with vast fields of watermelons, tomatoes, olive trees, and date palms.

Since then, however, the garden hasn’t continued to bloom equally for all Israelis. This became clear when I visited Rachel Bier, a young social worker in Dimona, a poor village set hard along the Negev’s edge. Beir is a slender and pale young woman, who always wears her hair covered by a knotted silk scarf. As she tells it, most of Dimona’s economic problems, and the domestic difficulties they cause (such as husbands beating their wives), can be traced back to decisions made a half-century ago.

“When he set about to establish the state of Israel, Ben Gurion knew everyone in this country could not live in Jerusalem and Tel Aviv. So, he decided to send various groups of people to the Negev. At that time, there was nothing here. I mean, literally, nothing. Ben Gurion hoped these new citizens would bring life to the desert and, in fact, some of them did. But many more were simple people, who’d come from simple lives, and they couldn’t cope. They came to Israel because things were not good for them at home, yet they had no education, and no money, to bring with them. Some people succeeded wonderfully and have thrived here; others, totally failed.”

Today, the area’s original settlers (who came from Russia, India, Morocco, and Roumania, among other places) are mostly old people. It is these senior citizens who are fed at the Meir Panim soup kitchen in Dimona, which is also where Beir has an office and her counseling practice. Through a few emails with a man named Nissim El-Mekayes, the restaurant’s manager, I’d arranged to assist in cooking there for a few days.

Traffic was scant on my drive down from Jerusalem. For many miles, as I drove through the desert, all I saw were ramshackle groupings of huts built of corrugated tin, and blown nearly flat by the constant wind and sandstorms. These are bedouin communities, and the Israeli government would very much like to see these sad camps eradicated, and the Bedouins relocated into better housing. Bedouins are nomads, however, and prefer freedom and dwelling close to the land, even when this also means they live in squalor.

The terrain I was passing through used to be along what historians now call the “Spice Route.” It started in Yemen, where a particular tree produces sap which was dried and turned into incenses like Frankinscence and Myrrh. These precious substances, sweet-smelling when burned, were used in the temples of Jerusalem, and elsewhere, to mask the horrible odor created by all the animals sacrificed during holy rituals. On a journey that spanned nearly 2,000 miles, traders would traverse the Arabian Desert to the city of Petra (in what is Jordan today), then head across the Negev. Caravans of camels were required, maybe several thousand at a time, to carry food, water, and guards to protect against bandits. Finally, when the caravans arrived at Gaza, on the Mediterranean Sea, the incense, as well as spices such as pepper, cardamom, cinnamon, and saffron, was shipped to India, Africa, and around Europe.

My journey in an air-conditioned, four-wheel drive vehicle was altogether less arduous. I arrived in Dimona earlier than expected, and found the restaurant closed. It was barely eight o’clock in the morning, yet the sun was beating down mercilessly. I found a concrete bench in the shade of a covered porch, and waited for what came next.

Lined up on the porch to my right are a collection of cardboard boxes. Later, I’ll learn these containers hold produce that’s been deemed too bruised, molded or mashed for Albert, the restaurant’s head chef, to cook with, and so it is left here, free for the taking. A small group of solidly-built women rummage about, speaking loudly in Russian, as they salvage what they can of peppers, tomatoes, red grapes and eggplant. Obviously, they haven’t come from too far away as they wear shapeless “house” dresses, and bedroom slippers. They ignore me, and I do my best to avoid looking at them.

Instead, I pretend to be captivated by a clumsily-executed mural painted beside Meir Panim’s front door. It featured a caricature of Laurel and Hardy, a comedy team who were extremely popular in Hollywood during the 1920’s and 30’s. What are they doing here? I dimly recall Laurel and Hardy made a movie called “The Sons of the Desert,” though this film allusion seems too obscure to explain their presence in dusty Dimona. Next to the actors’ faces was Hebrew lettering, a translation of which only compounded the mystery. It read, “This is a House of Food. Be Satiated, and Be Humble.”

Nissim now arrives, and hurriedly tours me about his facility. He is a giant of a man, easily 6’ 7”, and he has fantastically large ears, hands, and feet. My neck will soon begin to ache, as I’m forced to constantly crane my head back to make eye contact with him. Nissim’s personality, however, seems somewhat dwarfed by his physical enormity. He is not, I immediately discern, a man much given to talking. This, combined with his rudimentary English, makes some of his statements seem abrupt and slightly callous. His customary response to nearly every question I ask is to laugh nervously, as if to say, “Really? You want to know that?”

Ten volunteers, mostly women, come every day to help out in the food preparation. In the dining area, I see them gathered about a long table, busily engaged in peeling carrots and pumpkin. In my week of traveling about Israel, I’ve eaten many meals at free restaurants, but this is the nicest dining room I’ve seen yet. One wall is decorated with floral-printed curtains, and a rippling swag of small Israeli flags is strung up from one corner of the room to another.

Nissim and I stand observing the workers for a few moments, and soon enough, all of them stop work and look up, not with quick, shy glances, but long, unblinking stares. I pretty quickly infer from their wide-eyed and overly-animated facial expressions that most, if not all, of these women have mental disabilities. Not knowing quite how to ask Nissim about this,
I inquire if these women are criminals, like the volunteers I’d spend time with in Tiberias
and Jerusalem.

Nissim chuckles, and replies, “No. I tried that. But I didn’t like having this type of man around. I found their energy to be overly aggressive. With these women, it’s more, how shall I say? They have problems in their heads. They are not normal. No one else would take them, so I hire them. It’s nice. At least most of the time.”

He exhales loudly. After a long silence, Nissim speaks again. “Now they are calm but, trust me, there are times when you don’t want to be around them. The littlest thing can make them upset or angry. A single word can set them off. You never know where or when it’s going to happen, but no matter what, I have to stay calm.”

Though he makes no mention of it, I will subsequently learn what extraordinary efforts Nissim makes on behalf of these women. Among countless other kindnesses, he always arranges a special Pesach feast for them, along with their families and friends. At last year’s Seder, I’m told, over 200 people came.

We leave the dining room, and head into a large and exceedingly well-organized kitchen, where Nissim introduces me to Albert, the chef. Albert is midway through one of the countless cigarettes he smokes each day. He is wearing black pants, a white short-sleeved shirt, and a black yarmulke. Albert doesn’t speak much English, but I’m made to understand that he immigrated from Morocco. I’m not surprised,
as the scent of North African spices are in
the air as Albert stirs a vat of mushrooms, peppers, tomatoes, and green peas. He offers me a spoonful.

“Taim,” I reply, using one of the handful of words I’ve learned in Israel. It means “delicious.”

Nissim takes me back to his office, as he wants to show me a scrapbook he keeps of all visitors from Israel and around the world, who’ve come to see this free restaurant. He’s especially proud of a photograph of himself with Jill Biden, the Second Lady of the United States. (I am astonished the Vice President’s wife ever found her way to this woebegone spot.) He offers me a glass of very cold, and very sweet orange juice.

Nissim is 47 and has six children, two of whom are currently serving in the Israeli army.
He opened Meir Panim here in Dimona ten years ago. Before that he worked in various factories in the Dead Sea area, which is nearby, and a rich source of chemicals and minerals, many of which end up being used for medicinal purposes. When I asked him what sorts of things he made, Nissim replies, “Magnesium, mostly. It’s used to make soda cans, and … what is the word, in English, for the thing that makes your bowels open?”

“Laxatives?”

“Laxatives, that’s right. I helped make laxatives.”

I’m quite certain this is the first time I’ve heard this job description.

Why did he decide he wanted to run a soup kitchen?

Nissim smiles, and thumps his chest. “If everyone learned to help others, there would be no problems in this world,” he said. “The future of Israel is its children. If they learn English and Math, and I give them food, they will not end up on the street.”

He then smiles, awkwardly, as if he’s not sure if he’s made a fool of himself by making such a sincere statement. I want to tell him how moved I am by his generosity of spirit, yet I know this will only further embarrass him.

Standing up, Nissim abruptly announces he must now leave, as he’s about to go deliver food to various groups of schoolchildren. While he’s gone, Nissim suggests I help make lunch with the other volunteers.

I find my way back to the dining room.
The women have finished the carrots and pumpkins, and have moved on to making a fruit salad. I’m unsure how to join into this operation. Visitors do pass through here from time to time, as Nissim’s guest book can attest, but I doubt many have sat down with the volunteers. In addition to barriers of language, there’s also
the ticklish question of how the sexes are separated in Orthodox Judaism. Handshakes, or any sort of touching, is strictly a no-no. As such, I am acutely aware that I’m a man, a gentile, and a stranger.

To my surprise, then, one of the women hands me a paring knife. Its blade was about as sharp as a piece of cardboard, but I set to work peeling mangoes and peaches, de-stemming grapes, and slicing bananas. Another woman, it’s now revealed, speaks some English. She does her best to translate a fusillade of questions that are now shot my way, as well my answers.

Talk about a captive audience! I probably could have simply opened my mouth and yawned, and still these women would have been spellbound by the sounds I made. All were staring at me, laughing excitedly, and parroting back phrases in English as soon as I’d said them. Their questions came in overlapping waves, so I could never be quite sure if my answers were matching up to any particular inquiry. As they were rendered by the high, gentle voice of the translator, too, nearly all of their questions were limited, somehow, to three words.

“You live where?”
“What you do?”
“What you write?”
“You are rich?”
“You travel world?”
“You go India?”
“You go Goa?”
“She from Goa!

At this, all fingers were pointed at one woman, who promptly screamed in embarrassment and dropped her face forward directly into a huge pile of peach peelings.

“You like Israel?”
“You are Jewish?”
“You are Christian?”
“You no Arab, right?”
“You are married?”
“You have girlfriend?”
“You want girlfriend?”

Only these last questions posed any difficulty for me. Homosexuality is not unknown in Israel, of course, though it is still frowned upon among Orthodox Jews, as Nissim had told me many of these women were. Since I’d arrived in Israel, if anyone asked about my marital status (as Israelis invariably do, and within seconds of first meeting you), I had made no attempt to hide my sexuality, or my life with James. Still. Even though they seemed highly amused by the interrogation I was enduring, hadn’t Nissim told me these women could become extremely upset about even very small things? Proof enough was the Indian woman, from Goa, whose face was still buried in the peaches, just because a few fingers had been pointed her way.

What was I to do here? I thought if I said I was gay, or married to a man, this crowd might get more excited than I would know how to handle. As it happened, though, my failure to answer the question was only making them more agitated.

“You married?”
“You have girlfriend?”
“You married?”
“You married?”

“No,” I finally replied, giving the answer that “confirmed bachelors” have probably given for centuries. “I guess I just haven’t found the right girl.”

This was met with a chorus of groans, and one woman burst into tears.

“I be your girlfriend!”
“No, I his girlfriend.”
“Me, girlfriend!”
“Me, girlfriend!”
“No, me girlfriend!”

It went on like this for quite some time. I peeled mangoes, and spoke not another word.

The next day, I arrived at Meir Panim at half-past seven. Albert told me I could help cook today’s lunch, but first I had a meeting with Rachel Bier, the social worker I’d met earlier. She tells me more about her clients in Dimona. Even those who have jobs, mostly in the Dead Sea factories, make such low wages that after paying rent and utilities, they don’t have enough money left to buy groceries.

“There is tremendous anger. There’s drug and alcohol abuse. And sudden eruptions of violence, for no particular reason. A lot of men need therapeutic treatment, but they won’t come. They say women are the cause of all their problems. Their wife deserves to be beaten because she doesn’t get dinner served on time, or keep the house clean. All problems get worse, though, when you are hungry.”

Another challenge is the fecundity of Orthodox women.

“The Haredim, or the ultra-orthodox, think having many children is a gift from God,” Beir explains. “A lot of women want these children, even though they don’t have any real way to pay for them. ‘It will be fine,’ they think. ‘God will take care of me.’ Then, when they can’t feed all these kids, they end up coming to Nissim.”

Many of these ultra-orthodox women are completely unfamiliar with the concept of birth control. And, curiously, though her English
has been excellent up to this point, Bier
herself does not have the words for what she now wants to say. I teach her the words “contraception” and “abortion.” We sound them out together, several times. Cont-tra-CEP-tion. A-BOR-tion. She knows how to speak these concepts in Hebrew, of course, though Beir feels she can’t press either alternative too
hard upon Haredim women, no matter how poor they are.

“At the end of the day, I return to my house, they go to theirs. I can teach the existence of certain tools, but only they can decide whether or not to use them.”

Listening to Rachel, I find myself wondering how soon it will be before different nations in the world begin to legislate child-bearing, and when birth control will become proscriptive. China has been pilloried for its one family/one child rules and the draconian measures they have taken to enforce this limit. In the future, will China’s stance appear forward-thinking and progressive?

I suspect it will.

It’s now time for me to join Albert in the kitchen. As a sanitary measure he instructs me to put on a white plastic laboratory coat, which is nearly the equivalent of wearing a large garbage bag. It’s close to 100 degrees outside, and no sooner do I put this body-encasing sheath on, then I begin to sweat. Moisture runs off my chest, through my underwear, and down my legs. Welcome to the Negev in summertime! I’m a son of the desert, literally sweating in my boots.

Israeli folk music blares in the background, as the perfume of roasting vegetables fills the air. Moving about the kitchen, I pass through separate clouds of pumpkin, fennel and garlic. The odors are so strong, I feel like I’m eating with my nostrils.

I am put work washing enormous piles of shredded cabbage. First one rinse, then a second, and third. I’ve never been this careful when making cole slaw at home. Usually, I’ll just slice the cabbage as thin as I can, and mix it with dressing.

Albert runs an extremely tidy kitchen. Pots are hosed down before they are washed. They are then dried, and put away at the bottom of a pile, and new ones, from the pile’s top, used for the next task. “Food that is clean tastes better,” he explains, with a shrug. This is a truth so obvious, it hardly needs mentioning. Yet, in this place, where the bar could be set far lower, it is poignant to see how fastidious Albert’s techniques are.

At work on a side dish, he mixes rice with red peppers, carrots, onion and paprika. It smells like Heaven. He’s working in a large stainless steel pan about the size of a shallow bathtub. It has electric heating coils underneath, and can rotate and be emptied by disengaging two central screws that keep it upright, and then pivoting the front downwards. When Albert is done with his recipe, he dumps out rice in huge splurts, expertly filling one stainless steel tray after the next. Making his dexterity all the more remarkable, is that he does this one-handed, while sending a text on his cell phone with the other. Now that’s multi-tasking. I am impressed.

Next he begins to heat up a melange of peas and mushrooms he’d cooked yesterday. Albert believes flavors need to meld, and dishes taste better on the second day, reheated, then they do when first made. As such, he is forever planning and preparing recipes one or two days in advance, and then leaving trays of food to “improve” in the walk-in refrigerator. Later, when I follow him into this chilly cavern, I am amazed at the exotic ingredients donated by local farmers; there are many boxes of sprouted Mung beans, Enoki mushrooms, bunches of fresh mint, Swiss Chard, and cilantro.

He sends one of the volunteer girls out to the nearby market, and she takes off at a run, soon returning with two packs of Marlboro Light cigarettes. Before she hands them over, though, much high-volume haggling passes between them. From what I can tell, their argument is over how many cigarettes he will give as payment for having completed this errand for him. Finally, I see Albert fork over exactly one smoke. The girl scurries off, waving it above her head like she’s the victor.

Perhaps because he’s embarrassed I’ve witnessed him in this stingy transaction, Albert now begins screaming at me. “Hurry with the cabbage! There are pots to be washed, too!”

“You know why Moroccans put tampons in their noses don’t you?” This question comes from a man with a South African accent. I turn around, and see a gentleman who appears to be in his mid-sixties, with a brush-cut mustache standing by my side. He’s smiling, and nodding his head towards Albert, the chef. “That’s because when they’re angry, all their blood rushes to their head.”

I smile, even though it takes me a moment to get this crude joke.

The man, who is another kitchen volunteer, introduces himself as Jay Sher. No sooner have we shaken hands in greeting, than Sher wants me to know that he’d recently had an operation on his brain that allows him to carry a medical card proclaiming he suffers from “major memory deficit.” (He gets the card out of his wallet, and proudly shows it to me.) What might have discouraged another man, was for Sher an opportunity. He insists he gets away with murder, saying anything and everything that pops into his mind, as he can later always claim he has no memory of what he just said or did.

I couldn’t tell if this was all a gag, or the truth.

Sher helped me finish washing the mountain of shredded cabbage. He’s originally from Johannesburg, South Africa, but came here as a 19-year-old volunteer to fight with the Israeli Army during the Six Day’s War of 1967. He’s full of exciting tales of skirmishes along the Syrian border, and explanations of how wealthy South Africans figured out ever-more complicated ways to smuggle money into Israel for the war effort.

“Jews will be Jews,” he said. “They are, by and large, a clever bunch.”

“I know, Jay,” I replied. “I live in Manhattan.”

He was extremely charming. If this was what it was like to have a “major memory deficit,” it didn’t seem too bad. Sher invited me to come visit him at his home at the Kibbutz Revivin, which was only a few kilometers away, and was where Golda Meir retired. (Revivin means “a light rain,” something quite desirable in this parched terrain.)

“The glory days of the kibbutzim was in the 1970’s,” Sher said. “Revivin is one of the last of the Mohicans, a real old school kibbutz. We have what’s said to be the biggest olive tree orchard in the whole of the Middle East.”

As he explained it, after Ben Gurion sent some settlers down to what became Revivin, they discovered that beneath the arid terrain of the Negev Desert sits a large subterranean reservoir of brackish water. This allowed them to plant orchards of Halutza olives, the soil and micro-climate conditions proving so ideal, Halutza Olive Oil is now revered by connoisseurs around the world.

Guests are lining up again. It’s time to serve lunch.

I will not be staying today, as I need to drive on to Tel Aviv. After I take off my plastic lab coat, I find a men’s bathroom, and do my best to mop off my sweaty skin with paper towels. Then, I say my goodbyes to Rachel, Nissim and Albert. As I pass out the front door, I look once again at the mural of Laurel and Hardy. “This is a House of Food; Be Satiated, and Be Humble.”

There’s something odd about that wording. Satiety and Humility are nearly antithetical states of being, aren’t they?

Lined up on the porch, and down the stairs, is a crowd of people waiting to be fed. I see some of the same Russian ladies from yesterday. I recognize them because of their slippers and house dresses. As I walk down the stairs, I see that my new friend, Jay Sher, is sitting in the back seat of a black Mercedes sedan, talking on a cell phone. His chauffeur is settling himself into the driver’s seat, and adjusting a pair of sunglasses.

Sher waves to me jauntily, as the car takes off, about to return him to the kibbutz.

For him, at least, the desert has clearly bloomed.

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This last surprised me most, as I stood outside a free restaurant in Tsfat, a small town to the north that’s located atop Israel’s third-highest peak. On my way from Tiberias to Jerusalem, I’d made a side trip to this mountain village, which is a center for Jewish mysticism, and study of the Kabbalah. As I wandered about, I’d discovered Beth Hiabsil (or, “House of Eat.”), a free restaurant which is mostly patronized by Tsfat’s elderly citizens. A sign outside proclaimed it was funded by a grant from The Conference on Jewish Material Claims Against Germany.

I was curious to find out more about the Claims Conference, but this research would have to wait, as my visit to Beth Hiabsil was on a Saturday morning, midway through shabbat, and the place was locked up tight. Jotting down the address, I noted this soup kitchen was adjacent to the Beirav Carlebach Synagogue on Meginei Street.

My face turned towards my notebook, I was startled to hear a voice behind me. “Tsfat is like a big circle. No matter where you start, you’ll end up coming back to the same place.”

When I turned around, I saw a bearded man in his mid-fifties. He was smiling. As we shook hands, he told me his name was Irving Ginsberg. “It’s spelled like Alan Ginsberg,” he said. “You’ve maybe heard of Alan Ginsberg, the great American poet?”

I agreed that I had.

In short order, it was established that Irving Ginsberg grew up on the Upper West Side of New York City, but is now the cantor/ spiritual leader of the Beirav Carlebach Synagogue. He pointedly demurred, though, from calling himself rabbi. Shlomo Carlebach has been dead for many years, but Ginsberg hinted, without exactly spelling it out, that through his ministrations at services, and prayers of the faithful, Carlebach’s spirit returns each shabbat. Thus, Ginsberg still considers Shlomo Carlebach to be this synogogue’s official rabbi.

Intrigued by all this, I ask Ginsberg if he has a moment for a quick question.

“I have two moments! I have many more than two! Come into my office. Come! Come!” Ginsberg is practically shouting his welcome as he unlocks the temple, and insists I pass through the door before him.

We sit in his office and I describe my gastrophilanthropy project, explaining that I’m trying to find out what might be distinctive about soup kitchens in Israel. I’m curious to learn more about the Claims Conference, too. But first, can he tell me something about Talmudic tradition, when it comes to charity?

“In Judaism,” Ginsberg begins, “to share something you have with the needy is not, it is not, a question of yes or no. It is a must!”

This custom originates with the Hebrew Scriptures. In several passages in the Torah, God commands the Jewish people to perform acts of tzedakah (pronounced tseh-DUH-kuh), which is the Hebrew word for “justice” or “righteous behavior.” This definition, however, somehow misses the mark, as charity is typically understood to be a spontaneous act of good will that’s indicative of the giver’s special generosity. In Judaism, Ginsberg explains, tzedakah is no whim, but an obligation. Doing what is right towards the poor and hungry
is a central part of being a good Jew.

“If you have something, you must share it!” Ginsberg cries, his voice again getting
quite loud. “God says, ‘If you are rich, it’s only because I gave this to you. If you give
it back to others, you prove to me I was correct to have entrusted it to you in the first
place. If you don’t….”

Ginsberg raises his hands, palm up, and makes a dramatic shrug. “Well, money comes, and money goes.”

He leaned back in his chair, and smiled. “So, Jews must give, but this is all within reason. If you make 3,000 dollars a month, you can’t give away 4,000. Obviously! So, a good rule of thumb is you are supposed to give 5% from the profit. Pay your expenses. Take care of your family. But what’s left over? Give 5% of this to the poor and needy.”

In my Baptist upbringing, it was always taught you were supposed to tithe 10% of your salary (meaning, the “gross”), not 5% of the profit (or, “net”). As if he’s read my mind as I calculate all this, Ginsberg continues speaking.

“In addition to that, though, charity is something Jews are commanded to do every day. You can always find someone who needs something, even if it’s as little as a dollar, or a dime, or it does not have to be money! Maybe it’s a box of pasta, or an old pair of shoes. We are to make ourselves ever aware of needs around us, and seek to do something about them, every day. If, in the unlikely circumstance that you don’t run into someone who needs your assistance on any given day, however, there is always the pushke!”

The what?

He explained that “pushke” (pronounced PUSH-kee, PUSH-kuh, or PISH-kee) is a Yiddish word, derived from Polish, and it means a little can or container kept in the home, often in the kitchen, in which loose change is deposited. When your pushke is full, you give this money away to a charitable cause. Hearing this, I suspect that the “March of Dimes,” started by FDR in the 1940’s to fight polio, was an appropriation of this Jewish notion to fill little tins with coins.

I mention my earlier conversation with Rabbi Kalmonfsky, and his idea of the “Charity Police” who could simply demand money from the more well-off citizens to be given to the needy. Irving Ginsberg takes some exception to this.

“It’s not so much the giving was forced. Or, at least it’s certainly not that way now. It’s something rather more like, if you give, and give big, you will be greatly blessed. You get a better seat at the shul. People recognize you for your generosity. There are worse things to be known for, right?”

Indeed.

After bidding Ginsberg farewell, I went directly from his office to a store in Tsfat that sold Judaica. I bought two pushke, one for my office, and the other for my bedside table at home. From now on, I decide, all my pennies, nickels, dimes and quarters, will be collected in these boxes and donated to charitable causes. I notice my new pushke have tiny padlocks — presumably to prevent anyone (me?) poaching from the poor.

Driving on to Jerusalem, I think more about my chat with Irving Ginsberg. Among other things, he’d explained that the mission of the Claims Conference was to secure some measure of justice for Jewish victims of Nazi persecution, through a combination of negotiations, disbursing funds to individuals and organizations, and seeking the return of Jewish property lost during the Holocaust. Since 1952, the German government has paid more than $70 billion in indemnification for suffering and losses resulting from Nazi persecution. A percentage of this total has gone towards the creation and maintenance of senior centers, and soup kitchens to feed the hungry.

This seems just desserts, I think. Then, I worry that, under the circumstances, this pun is unforgivable.

Jerusalem’s Meir Panim free restaurant is located on Hatzvi Street, nearly in the shadow of the city’s Central Bus Station. Traffic in this part of town is fierce and frenetic, as buses arrive into the country’s capital every few minutes from all over Israel.

A few young men, who look nearly identical in age and demeanor to those I’d seen up in Tiberias, are mopping the floor as I enter the restaurant. Others are hoisting about tables and chairs. All are amusing themselves as they go about their work, by singing, in phonetic English, the cadences of the U.S. Navy marching song, “…I don’t know, but I’ve been told: Navy wings are made of gold…”

I approach a couple of these workers, and ask for the manager of this soup kitchen. “Excuse me. Is Aryeh here?” They look at me for a moment, and then burst into laughter. Rather than answer, they repeat some of what I just said, continuing to practice their English.

“Egg-scooze me!”

“Ek-coose me!”

I am embarrassed, but realize it will only make things more awkward if I appear bothered by this slight mockery. I smile, back away, and go sit at one of the empty tables. I am a few minutes early for an appointment to meet with a man named David (“Dudi”) Roth, who is the national director of all Meir Panim soup kitchens in Israel.

Gazing about, I see a great many signs posted on the walls, announcing benefactors.
“Meir Panim is generously supported by the Iranian-American Jewish Federation of New York.” Or, “Frances Frymet (Auschwitz Survivor) in memory of her family who perished
in Treblinka, and her friend, Rosa Robate, who perished a martyr in Auschwitz.” Or, “250 meals at Meir Panim Free Restaurant were generously contributed by the Jewish Community Foundation of Los Angeles, California.” And dozens more, worded similarly
to these.

So many tzedehahs, for just one soup kitchen!

Only now do I notice a man sitting at a table in one corner of the restaurant. I guess he must be a probation officer, checking up on these young lawbreakers who are working off their sentences. When I attempt to photograph some of the benefactor signs on the wall, he mistakenly thinks I am trying to snap his picture. The officer jumps up from his seat and waves me off vehemently. He is equally humorless and brusque with the boys. As one after another sit before him, the officer scowls mightily, doing his best to demonstrate how very, very serious he is about his job. While they talk, he makes notes on a legal pad, and occasionally checks his Blackberry.

A few more minutes pass before Dudi Roth arrives. He’s dressed as an Orthodox man, clad from head to toe in heavy black cloth, which makes him look quite a bit older than his 51 years. Roth seems harried, and announces he has only a few minutes to sit with me. That made clear, he immediately launches into what I infer is his “stump speech.” It begins with a preamble about Dudi Zilberschlag, who founded Meir Panim fifteen years ago. The two men were friends, and about 11 years ago, Zilberschlag asked Roth if he would help run the organization.

Roth was, at the time, living in Brooklyn, with his Israeli-born wife, Esther. He had a business selling electronic equipment such as televisions, stereos, and DVD players. “But we were not blessed with a family of our own, and after years of not having children, Esther says to me one day, she says, ‘let’s go back to Israel, where my family is.’”

“We had 21 years of consultation with doctors that all ended in sorrow. There was no chance, absolutely no hope for us having children of our own,” Roth recalled, shaking his head sadly. “So, after being in Israel for a couple of years, we were about to adopt. My wife, though, wondered if we shouldn’t try one more time. We talked to our doctor, and he said it was a waste of time and money. But my wife was adamant. It was on shabbat that we finally found out the test results were positive. A miracle had befallen us! My wife, my Esther, was pregnant!”

Befallen? His archaic choice of words only amplified how much Roth’s story sounded like one from Hebrew Scriptures, say, that of Abraham and Sarah?

“Here I thought all my prayers were answered, but then came the hardest part,” Roth continued. “It was September 18, 2001, and my wife, my dear, dear Esther, is diagnosed with preeclampsia.”

This, he explains, is when a pregnant woman develops high blood pressure and hypertension in her second or third trimester. Doctors advised if the baby was not taken out, either mother and child would die. Maybe both. Faced with such awful alternatives, Esther Roth underwent a Caesarian section in her 25th week of pregnancy.

“For hours I waited, praying with all my faith. Finally, I found out, my wife had survived, and I was the father of a girl! She was so small, she could have fit into the palm of my hand. How can I describe what I was feeling? Sorrow, panic, fright, hope. After decades of struggle to be parents, now it seemed like our problems were just beginning.”

The baby girl weighted slightly more than one pound, and was given only a three-percent chance to live. She stayed in an ICU at the hospital for six months, at the end of which, the medical staff told Roth and his wife they should not try to take care of the child, and she should be institutionalized.

“They said we wouldn’t want her, she would be so deformed and mentally-impaired. Yet, today, she is 11 years old, and is completely normal. She gets 90 to 100 on all her tests, and other than for sniffles or minor cuts, she has never had to see a doctor again, since coming home. In some ways, she is smarter than her father. One thing is for sure. Her English is better’n mine! I don’t speak so good, ‘cuz I’ze originally from Brooklyn.”

I suspect this is a joke Roth has told many times before, but I grinned, obligingly.

“That is what made me get involved with Meir Panim. You see, we’d been blessed, my dear Esther and I, but there are still many more children who need help, children who through no fault of their own are born into bad circumstances. I made a promise to help each child in Israel — and, it didn’t matter if the child was Jewish, Christian or Arab.”

This promise, Roth acknowledges, has not been easy to keep. With the Israeli economy in such bad shape, it is exceedingly difficult to raise money. “In Israel, people don’t usually want to give shekels; they prefer to give value.” For instance, restaurants intentionally cook too much food, and donate the extra to soup kitchens. Food is the least of his costs, though. What’s more expensive is paying the rent and utility bills for the Meir Panim locations. “I can only do this, if I have strong partners,” he says. He then gestured towards the signs and plaques I’d noticed earlier.

Aryeh Cohen arrives at the table. He runs this free restaurant, and it takes only a glance to see the job takes a heavy toll on him. Aryeh has a fretful air about him, with a forehead that is perpetually wrinkled with worry, and a posture that’s bent over by the psychological burdens he carries. Dressed in the same all-black ensemble as Roth, Aryeh’s coat and pants are not terribly clean, but splattered with food he’s been cooking already that morning. On his feet are a pair of well-worn black Nike sneakers. He has extra-luxuriant payes, which are the side curls of hair worn by Orthodox Jewish men. Aryeh’s payes dangle down to
his waist.

Later I learn he immigrated to Israel (or made “aliyah”) nearly three decades ago from England, but his voice still carries the accent of his native Newcastle. He speaks very softly, so I must frequently ask him to repeat what he’s said. He now apologizes, nearly in a whisper, that he doesn’t have much time for me this morning. Some of his workers are exceedingly “rough boys,” he says, and today they are overly excited by young women in the kitchen.

As Aryeh rushes off, Roth explains there’s another problem today — namely, a surplus of volunteer workers. Two different families, one from Canada, another from the United States, will be showing up in an hour or so, to serve lunch as part of celebrations surrounding both a bar-mitzvah and a bat-mitzvah. These volunteers, of course, are in addition to the “rough boys” who are already making Aryeh’s day difficult.

No sooner has this been explained, than pandemonium erupts. The Straus family, all fifteen of them, have arrived early! They hail from Kew Gardens Hills, which is in Queens, New York, and have traveled to Israel to honor thirteen-year-old daughter, Michal.

Dudi Roth swings into action, greeting these visitors, and making them feel welcome. “Have you ever been inside a soup kitchen?” he asks Michal. The girl blushes and smiles, but doesn’t answer.

Undeterred, Roth continues joking. “Well, you are going to have to put on plastic gloves. I bet you’ve never done that before, either, have you?”

As he leads the Straus family back to the kitchen, Aryeh says seventy-percent of the
people who show up at this free restaurant are senior citizens. Meir Panim also delivers meals to hundreds of house-bound seniors every day. He points out his dwindling store
of dehydrated soup packets. Not too long ago, he’d been given a mountain of boxes,
nearly 1,500 in total. Each carton contained over a hundred packets of dehydrated soup
in a variety of flavors made by the Knorr Company. Now, Aryeh says, he only had forty of these cartons left.

It is a peculiar thing about soup kitchens, this braggadocio about quantities and
numbers. Soup kitchen proprietors are justifiably proud of how much food they serve.
Yet, at the same time, they must be saddened and ashamed that so many people
would go hungry otherwise.

Aryeh gestures towards a series of enormous stainless steel sinks, where countless potatoes are soaking in clouded water. All need to be peeled and chopped, a daunting task which I tackle along with the Straus family. While we work, I talk with Avigail Straus, the mother. I can’t help but notice she appears confused about how to use the peeling tool Aryeh gave her.

“I brought my children here so they could see life is not all ‘No, I want sushi! We had Chinese last night!’” she says, in all seriousness. “We don’t see this sort of poverty in New York. Not where we live, at least. I always say, ‘there but for the grace of God….’”

I’ve heard this expression my whole life, and even used it more than a few times myself. Hearing it now, however, it struck me as heartless and absurd. Why is God showing grace to us, in New York City, but not to these poor people in Jerusalem? Why would God treat some people with more generosity than others?

Shouldn’t someone organize a Claims Conference on the Almighty?

Such thoughts are pushed aside, however,
by the work of the next hour. Lunch today is roasted chicken, lamb goulash, potatoes, sauteed mushrooms, and rice. Aryeh told me about an organization called Lekot, which arranges to harvest any unpicked fruits or vegetables from various agricultural centers in Israel, and then distributes this produce to places like Meir Panim.

“Every Monday someone from Lekot will call and tell me what they’ve got, and it is delivered the next day,” he said. “This week, I got plums. Lots and lots of plums.”

Just before noon, people begin to filter inside. They choose their tables, groups of three or four senior citizens all clustered together, kibbitzing, as they wait to be served lunch. It is a hot August morning, and the restaurant’s interior has no air conditioning, so the front door is wide open. Buses headed in and out of Jerusalem’s Central Station roar past every few seconds, and an Israeli flag hanging there flaps and flutters in the commotion.

Because the dining area at Meir Panim is small, seating only forty or so at once, there is no fixed hour for lunch. Instead, people are free to come in whenever they like between 12:00 and 1:30 p.m. “I don’t like it to be all one go. I could not handle everyone we serve if they all came at once,” Aryeh said.

Like Varda Sohan, the manager in Tiberias, he knows the personal history for most of his regular clients.

“He’s an Arab!” Aryeh says, in a whisper, almost as if he’s embarrassed to speak the word. He’s pointing to a very dark-skinned man, who sits alone, and is sweating profusely as he eats. He’s so overheated, in fact, that a moment later he’s taken his shirt off, and is sitting bare-chested. After finishing his lunch, he pulls out plastic containers, and asks if they
can be filled up, too. “It’s food for his kids,” Aryeh explains. “His wife used to come in
here, but she was too picky and would only take the stuff she liked to eat. The children
were starving!”

About another woman, he observes, “She has three children, and all of them are autistic. Do you know what autism is in America?”

I assure him that, yes, sadly we know all about autism in America.

The station from where food is served is barely six feet wide. To prevent congestion, volunteers act as waiters and waitresses, and today it is the Straus family’s job to bring trays of food to the assembled guests. In honor of her bat mitzvah, Michal Straus is allowed to deliver the day’s first meal. As she walks towards an old man sitting alone in the corner, she carries the tray, and herself, with all the self-consciousness of a nervous girl who hopes to be invited to sit at the “cool kid’s” table in a junior high cafeteria. With a shy smile, she places a tray down in front of the elderly gentleman. He doesn’t acknowledge her presence, but begins to eat. His hands shake quite badly, with what appears to be Parkinson’s disease. While maneuvering the fork towards his open mouth, much of what he’d scooped up falls onto his shirt front.

During the next two hours, more guests, and still more, continue to arrive. They shuffle into the restaurant, sit down, and plates full of goulash are placed down in front of them by Michal, as well as others of the Straus family. People eat, either not noticing, or not being interested, that these strangers are doing a “mitzvah” around them. I’d guessed their lack of response would discourage Michal, but I was wrong. She brings what must be her strong competitive streak to bear on even this task. She will deliver more trays, and smile at more hungry people than anyone else! No sooner does she drop off one tray, than she races back to the serving line to pick up another. Aryeh smiles fondly while observing her zeal.

Things turn briefly weird when a guy comes in who appears both mentally-ill and drunk. He’s carrying many plastic bags, the rustling bustle of which adds to a swirl of chaos he creates around himself. His shirt is buttoned wildly out of sequence and is bunched up sideways across his chest. It looks as if he’s slept for many days, and maybe even urinated onto, the grimy pants he’s wearing. His sandals reveal toenails that are swollen with dirt and fungus.

Dropping his many bags beside one of the tables, he brushes aside all offers of food, preferring to barge up to the serving line himself, where he grabs two plates of stew, and half a dozen slices of white bread. Returning to the table with these, he lays out three slices of bread. Carefully picking only meat out of the stew, he makes sandwiches with the lamb chunks, mooshing them closed with a hand so dirty, it leaves a shadowy imprint of filth on the bread’s surface. The guy shoves these moist sandwiches down into the bottom of one of his bundles.

“Aryeh! Aryeh! ARYEH!” he now began to scream.

Still behind the serving counter, dishing up food for others, Aryeh rushes out, a white plastic apron flying up about his waist. By gently squeezing the man’s arm, and whispering soothing words into his ear, Aryeh manages to calm this gentleman down, and even to make him giggle. He nods his head in agreement to something Aryeh has said. With exaggerated care, the man now picks up his bags, and makes his way out the front door.

“Dining with Dignity” is a slogan often used to describe the distinctive style of gastrophilanthropy practiced at Meir Panim’s free restaurants. Just how difficult it is to maintain decorum in such a setting is powerfully shown by the gale-force of crazy energy created by this one guy.

The lunch shift ends, and those few diners who remain come up to the serving line, and Aryeh scrapes the scant leftovers into their Tupperware containers, or even just plastic bags. He warned me it pains him deeply when anything goes uneaten, and I can see that’s true by how carefully he wields a spatula to coax every last drop of food from each pan. Nearly 300 people passed through Meir Panim today, Aryeh tells me, as he stands over the garbage can, looking at what did and did not get eaten. For that large of crowd, there are actually very few plate-scrapings here, though if the truth be told, the mushrooms were a wee bit salty and not to everyone’s liking.

“I don’t need compliments on my cooking. It’s not like I wish people would say, ‘Oh, this food is delicious!’ I just want people to clean their plates,” he says. “My father was from Poland, and was poorer than poor. I can’t stand to see any food go to waste.”

He suggests we have a cup of tea. He could now relax for a minute, but I sense that
Aryeh never truly relaxes. He seems perfectly content (or unaware) that he’s still wearing a white plastic apron, and rubberized gloves. Aryeh tells me he is 50 years old, and has ten children, two of whom now live in the United States. Before coming to work at Meir Panim, Aryeh studied the Torah full-time, and taught many students. Did he miss doing this all
day, I ask? Wouldn’t he prefer to be studying and teaching, rather than working here at
Meir Panim?

After thinking this over for a moment, he tells me how easily discouraged and angry his Torah students would become. “‘I don’t understand! I’ll never understand,’ they would cry.” Aryeh would have to stop, and back up to the point where he had lost them. “O.K. you get this, right?’” he’d say before moving on. “And, then, you understand this, yes?”

He continued, “each step builds on the next, until they are well past the point where they got confused just a few minutes earlier. It’s about patience. If a child sees you are not being patient with them, they will never understand.”

We hear a whoop of laughter from the kitchen. When Aryeh looks up, he sees a pretty young girl is once again being the cause of flirtation and distraction for some of his
young criminals.

“These boys … They didn’t get good treatment at home. They never learned how to keep themselves out of trouble.”

He now frowns and, to my surprise, mentions Avigail Straus, the mother from Queens,
New York. Earlier, he’d handed her a peeling tool, and asked if she’d start working on the potatoes. “But she didn’t know how! How is it possible a woman her age would not know how to peel a potato?”

Before I could answer, Aryeh offers his own theory.

“I guess she’s probably rich enough, she has some machine that does it for her. Bzzzt! Bzzzzt!” Aryeh was imitating the whirring sound of the blades on this fantastical appliance.

No, I assured him. Other explanations were more likely. Avigail Straus had a servant to do such kitchen chores for her.
Or, she never cooked at all, preferring the ease of restaurants and frozen entrees heated up in a microwave. Or, maybe she was so nervous about gaining weight, that she never ate carbs.

“Carbs?” Aryeh asked, his brow knotted with worry. “What are those?”

“Carbohydrates. Like in pasta, or bread, or potatoes.”

“There are many Americans who never eat potatoes or bread?”

“Many,” I said. “Especially if they are rich.”

Aryeh stared at me, dumbfounded. It was as if I’d divulged that many Americans
are vampires.

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“There is a myth all Jews are wealthy, that every Israeli is a Rothschild,” Varda told me,
the first morning we met. “On the contrary, many people in this country are in nearly desperate straits.”

These are difficult times in Israel. Nearly a quarter of the country’s population lives below the poverty line. On a daily basis, it’s estimated that one out of every four adult Israelis goes hungry, and two out of every five children.

An estimated 400,000 people gathered for a recent march along Tel Aviv’s Rothschild Boulevard; there have been angry protests in many other cities across Israel, too. So deep is the despair that at one of these rallies, two men — one of them was the son of Holocaust survivors — set themselves on fire. Both men died as a result of their injuries.

“A Buddhist monk in Saigon, maybe,” Varda said, shaking her head. “But for a Jew to pour gasoline on themselves and light a match? It’s unthinkable.”

Varda and I were seated together inside her sunny and clean restaurant, which is part of an organization called Meir Panim. Founded in 2000 to help alleviate suffering caused by poverty, Meir Panim (Hebrew for “Lighting up Faces”) is Israel’s leading relief agency, and operates over 30 food and social service centers throughout the country, including nine free restaurants. Meir Panim feeds nearly 5,000 people each day.

“We serve people with dignity and respect,” said David Birnbaum, the Executive Director of American Friends of Meir Panim, a non-
governmental organization based in New York City. Most of the funding for this N.G.O. comes from Jewish communities and wealthy individuals who live outside of Israel; Mortimer Zuckerman, the Manhattan publisher and real estate tycoon, is a major donor. “It’s not about a soup line, and a piece of bread along with a bowl. We want our guests to feel like we really care for them. This will help them gain self-confidence,” Birnbaum said.

I’d arranged to visit, and cook at, Meir Panim locations in central Jerusalem, as well as at Dimona, which is south in Israel’s Negev Desert. My first stop, however, during a few sultry days at the beginning of August 2012, was in Tiberias, which sits on the western shore of the Sea of Galilee. So-called “Holy Land” tours, which are primarily marketed to American Christian groups, tend to focus on Galilee’s eastern shore, where Jesus preached his famous Sermon on the Mount.

In Tiberias, many ancient stone columns remain that were erected two thousand years ago by Roman pleasure-seekers who came here to relax in the area’s natural hot springs. Following the exile of Jews from Jerusalem in the 1st and 2nd century AD, however, Tiberias became a center of Jewish life, and academies of Talmudic study flourished here. A Tiberian system of grammar and punctuation for the Torah eventually became standard for all Hebrew. In honor of this living history, Tiberias is today considered one of Israel’s (and so, Judaism’s) holiest cities.

The Meir Panim facade is all glass, and looks out onto Hagilil Street, one of downtown Tiberias’ best avenues; it is handsomely landscaped with palm trees and well-tended flower beds. The restaurant’s interior is a long, tall-ceilinged space, which for most of the day is so filled with sunshine, no electric lights need to be switched on. Completing the decorative good cheer is a breakfront cabinet filled with tchotchkes — stuffed animals, teapots, and other bric-a-brac — as well as vases full of silk flowers.

You’d never guess it was a soup kitchen, an observation that, when made to Varda, pleases her enormously.

“When I first opened it, I said I wanted people to feel happy, not like their coming here to eat was a shame or something to be embarrassed by,” she said. “We ask no questions. People show up by mistake sometimes, and I will have to explain what Meir Panim is. I am proud this place looks enough like a regular restaurant that people might not know the difference. Besides, I never know from how someone looks, how needy they might be. We feed whoever comes in: Jews, Christians, Arabs, Muslims. Everyone is welcome.”

Varda’s parents emigrated in 1950 to Israel from Arbil, Iraq which, she tells me, has a history dating back to 6,000 BC, and is considered one of the oldest continuously-inhabited cities in the world. Aged 54, Varda is a heavy smoker, and has a raspy voice to prove it. She has dark brown eyes, which are deep-set, and nearly lost in dark shadows. A pile of gold bangles clatter about at one of her wrists.

She’d been working as the manager of a food storage facility, which shipped ingredients
to restaurants and cafes all across Northern Israel. Then, nine years ago, a friend who is
in local government of Tiberias asked her to help open a soup kitchen for hungry people, and Varda agreed to take on the challenge. This location on Hagilil Street was already a restaurant, so the initial task was relatively easy, she said. “At first, it was one by one.
But pretty soon, we were a full house. The restaurant feeds between 150 and 250 people
a day.”

“It is very hard in Israel now. The price of bread is up! Petrol, up! Alcohol, up! Cigarettes, up! It’s all up and up and up and UP!” After Varda speaks, she smacks the table between us with her palm, and the bracelets at her wrist sound like a dropped platter of silverware. It’s one of her standard gestures of emphasis, yet in the two days I spend with Varda, I never get used to it. I jump each time.

“Some people eat here, others, especially if they have kids, will bring along some sort of plastic container, and we’ll put food in that for them to take home. There are a few street people, and a few who drink or do drugs. Most of our diners, though, are old people who just don’t have enough money to live on,” she said.

The food is free, but if someone can afford to give any money, they are charged two shekels, about 50 cents, for an all-you-can-eat meal. “For some people, giving this money is a way of maintaining their dignity.”

Varda has one paid employee, Ziva Sharon, a woman who is her best friend. Ziva is in her mid-sixties, and has her still-dark hair pulled back from her face, and tied into a ponytail. She, like Varda, likes to wear Capri pants, and gaily colored sandals. Ziva has a crooked smile, that makes any expression of joy she makes look more quizzical, than truly happy. Varda and Ziva are assisted by a cadre of youngsters they call “the criminals.”

Because Meir Panim is a Kosher restaurant, a man comes from the rabbinate every few days to make sure Varda is following dietary rules as decreed by the Kashrut. Of these, the most important is a prohibition against any mixture of milk and meat. Not only should these items never be blended in any recipe, but additional rules dictate how separate a person must keep them inside their own body. For instance, those who eat meat must then wait six hours before drinking any milk. Conversely, milk drinkers must wait two hours to eat meat.

“I’m not Orthodox, but I respect the idea of kosher,” Varda said. Although she knows all the rules — no pork, no shellfish — she admits there are still some she doesn’t completely understand, but adheres to nonetheless. “For some reason, I’m not allowed to serve cauliflower. I don’t know why it’s not kosher, but I don’t cook it.”

Varda furthermore explains there are various levels of the Kashrut. “There’s kosher, and there’s Kosher, and there is KOSHER,” she said, slicing her hand horizontally in ascending heights. “The top-top-top level of Kosher is very expensive, and we can’t afford to do
that here.”

On the menu for today are chicken drumsticks, schnitzel, hot dogs, rice, roasted potatoes, pumpkin soup, beet salad, carrot salad, bread, and water. There’s usually a piece of fruit for dessert. Fresh produce is occasionally given by nearby growers; the Upper Galilee is something like the Salinas Valley of Israel, and has many farms growing fruits and vegetables, not to mention grapes for wine. Most of the prepared food, like todays’ drumsticks and schnitzel, is donated from nearby hotels.

The morning quickly passes as the Meir Panim team works to get these various menu items ready. Soon enough, lunchtime guests begin to arrive.

Many people dine here because they are lonely, Varda believes. She points out a woman who appears to be in her late sixties; she wears a brightly-colored tunic top, over a long skirt. Her hair is bundled up into a knitted cloche, a type of head covering which is popular with Orthodox women.

“See her? She looks after herself. She’s clean, but she probably gets no more than 1300 shekels each month from the government (a little more than $300), and what sort of life can you have with that?” Varda leans forward and drops her voice. Now I’m going to get the real story. “This woman has one son, and her daughter-in-law doesn’t like her, and doesn’t want her around. So, she has three grandchildren that she’s never even seen!”

An obese man waddles in the front door. He is wearing the full garb of an Orthodox Jew: a black overcoat, vest, pants, and a broad-brimmed black hat. Out of the side of her mouth, Varda muttered, “O.K., let’s see what this one wants….”

As it happens, he demands to know just how kosher the food is. When Varda tells him, he leaves, apparently not satisfied.

“It’s a funny thing. Some poor people try to maintain their self-esteem by being fussy eaters. You’ve maybe heard the expression that beggars can’t be choosers? Well, I see it all the time! People will be hungry, but they claim to be unable to eat certain things — tomatoes, say, or onions — as it might upset their stomach. I tell them, what really upsets your stomach is when there is no food there!”

Boom! She drops her hand to the tabletop again with a clatter of her bracelets. I flinch.

Varda is a shrewd judge of character. Her head jerks up as the door opens, and she gives a quick glance of surveillance to anyone who enters. She seems to know everyone’s story. And what she hasn’t yet learned, she will ascertain in the not-too-distant future. What is the secret of her rapport, that all these strangers easily share their life stories with her? My question causes Varda to let loose a snort of impatient laughter. “It’s pretty simple,” she replied. “If people look sad, I talk to them.”

Lunch is served from 11:00 a.m. to 1:30 p.m., and diners can drop in whenever they like during this time period. All the while, Varda works the room, as if she’s the hostess of an especially swell cocktail party. She gives hugs, and shoulder rubs, as well as offering words of comfort and advice. Most often, she merely listens, nodding her head with interest. Her phone rings constantly, and several times it is her four-year-old daughter, Leah, who is calling. Varda, a single mother, proudly shows me the child’s picture.

As the crowd begins to thin, she invites me to sit with her again. Varda lights a cigarette, and tells me the story of how she became pregnant. “At a certain point, I said to myself, ‘O.K., I guess I am not going to get married. So, I’ll have a baby on my own.’” From the ages of 39 to 50, Varda underwent 21 different attempts at artificial insemination, and endured 21 miscarriages. “I did not give up. I was going to be a mother! Finally, just as I was about to turn 50, God says to me, ‘here is your birthday present!’”

Varda shows me another picture of Leah. Twenty one miscarriages! The story is so improbable, nearly miraculous, I hardly know what to say.

Instead, I ask about the young men who are working as volunteers — serving up food, washing dishes, and cleaning the kitchen. They pretty much keep to themselves, I’d noticed, preferring to sit and talk only with each other. Sometimes they horse around, or arm wrestle; at other moments, they stare straight ahead, eyes blank and sullen.

“They’re criminals, all of them,” Varda replied, with a shrug.

I laughed, nervously, assuming this was just a figure of speech. This turns out, however, to be an accurate assessment. These guys are working at Meir Panim as part of a “community service requirement” because they are each guilty of some minor crime or misdemeanor. They are assigned lengths of service from one month to six months, and they have to show up here at Meir Panim (or at hospitals, police stations, old folk’s homes) where they work for seven hours each day.

“No one is a murderer — at least that I know of!” Varda said, with a scratchy chuckle. “Maybe they were driving without a license, or got into a fight with their parents or wife. A lot of them are married, and have children.”

If an Israeli youngster has any sort of criminal record, Varda tells me, they are ineligible for Israel’s mandatory draft into the Army. She feels military service is an important rite of passage for many youths, as they are forced to become responsible. “We hand them guns. They are given the power of life or death. That makes you grow up pretty fast.” But her volunteers, the “criminals,” as she calls them, haven’t been drilled with Army discipline. It falls to Varda to help them straighten our their lives.

“I tell them it is shameful to steal, it is no shame, however, to do dishes!”

She continues, “Their probation officers come each week, and we go over their cases. They each have a card. I make notes, and I record if they are late, or don’t show up, or are lazy. If they don’t do their jobs ….” Varda claps her hands together, her bracelets jangling. “….Then, they’re off to prison! Meir Panim is kind of like their jail, too, but I always tell them, they’d rather have me for their warden, than what they’ll get behind bars.”

This is tough love, Tiberias-style.

“Ziva and I care about this place, and the people who eat here. We want to keep our restaurant very clean, and we get nervous that sometimes the boys won’t do things right, but will take shortcuts. I tell the boys, if one of our guests gets sick, it will be their fault. You’ll see,” Varda says with a wink. “Ziva and I scream at them a lot.”

Varda is not exaggerating, as I will soon learn.

That afternoon, after leaving Meir Panim, I wander along Tiberias’ beach front for a while. My movements are slow, as the promenade is crowded with families, youth groups, and what seem whole temples full of Orthodox Jews who’ve come here for vacation. Their sober attire is in marked contrast to the lurid beach scene. Shops are selling scanty bathing suits in acid shades of orange and chartreuse, while blaring the latest songs by Rihanna and Nikki Minaj, yet this crowd dresses only in black and white, their bodies full covered, even when they go swimming. It is perplexing to see teenagers splashing about in the water. The boys have on long sleeve white tunics, worn over long black pants. Girls are clad in voluminous black bloomers. All this fabric appears to be something of a health hazard, especially for those who don’t know how to swim. More than once, I see a girl knocked over by the tiniest of waves, who then must be helped to stand upright again, as the sodden folds of cloth weigh her down and upset her natural balance.

I am also shocked at the size of the average family. It is not unusual to see groupings of eight or more, with toddlers pushing baby carriages which hold their younger siblings. Orthodox Jewish law commands married couples to have sex every shabbat, and frowns on the use of contraception. Is it really possible these women are happy to be forced into such non-stop fertility?

Seeing all this begged-for bounty, I’m reminded of something I’d learned from Rabbi Jeremy Kalmonofsky, who is the spiritual leader of Congregation Ansche Chesed on the Upper West Side of Manhattan. While I was planning this trip to see Israeli soup kitchens, I’d met with Rabbi Kalmonofsky, to ask about the role of charity in Judaism.

“What you need to understand,” he said, “is that for most of pre-modern Jewish history, until the 20th century in some cases, Jews tended to live together in near-complete isolation from the dominant culture, be it Christianity or Islam. Jews lived in shtetls, or ghettos, where they only associated with other Jews. As such, Jewish communities were almost like Indian reservations. They had their own elders, and their own law.”

“An important part of this set-up,” Rabbi Kalmonofsky elaborated, “was how the town’s governors acted as the police authority, or nearly a parallel judicial system. They would
visit each family regularly, sometimes every week, sometimes daily, and they would place
a charitable assessment on each household. Giving to the poor was not optional. It was mandatory. Those who were richer were expected to help support those who were
less fortunate.”

It occurs to me that a Meir Panim truck pulling up to the kitchen of a luxury hotel along Tiberias’ waterfront was something similar to this — a kind of enforced form of charity. I wasn’t sure Varda was in the mood to muse philosophically, however, so I contented myself with asking, “What’s for lunch today?”

“It’s a little like Chanukah every day,” she replied. “We never know what we’ll be given; it’s always something of a surprise. So, we open up all the packages first, to see what we’ve got. If there is fish, this must be the first thing to go. Anything with tomatoes, we can’t keep for longer than a day, as it goes sour right away.” Today, once all the foil is removed, there are many trays of roasted potatoes, others containing green beans mixed with sliced carrots, as some with pieces of poached salmon.

Varda bends over to smell the contents of every pan, taking a pinch of this, a nibble of that, to see how things have been spiced, and to make sure her nose isn’t deceiving her into thinking something might taste good, when it doesn’t. A magician when it comes to re-purposing left-overs, she deploys many tricks to cheer up food that may be a day or two old. Varda doesn’t deliberate long, but quickly decides which ingredients will be combined, or kept separate. The salmon goes into a warming oven, while she begins sauteing a large pan full of cut-up hotdogs, to blend with the roasted potatoes.

I chat for a moment with one of Varda’s volunteers, eventually working up my nerve to ask what was the crime he committed, so that he’s working at Meir Panim. He’s a good-looking man, maybe 22 years old, with long eyelashes and shining, dark hair that curls gently around his ears.

“I did funny things with Visa, selling access to stolen credit card numbers over the Internet.” He cocks an eyebrow at me, as if to say, “you probably would have done the same, if you were smart enough to know how.”

He was in prison for three years in Tel Aviv, and is now serving the last six months of his sentence with Varda. I want to ask him which was harder — jail or Meir Panim — but from the way he keeps nervously darting glances at Ziva and Varda, I already have an answer to my question.

The day is getting hotter and hotter. Through the glass front of Meir Panim, I see troops of tourists trudging past, on their way to Gai Beach, where they will pay 80 shekels to swim for the day. I suddenly realize this same amount of money would buy a poor person 40 meals — a month and a half of freedom from hunger — here at the restaurant.

Around 10 a.m., there is a lull. Ziva and I are serving up small plates of carrot salad, to have them ready for the lunch rush.

Ziva tells me she’s a second generation Israeli; Ziva’s parents came from Syria (her Mom) and Morocco (her father). She’d formerly worked selling cosmetics and “natural” skin products at a hot springs resort a few miles farther down the beach. She’d also volunteer from time to time here at Meir Panim. Ziva knew how hard Varda worked, and how difficult it was for her to be alone all day, surrounded by young men who were in trouble with the law. One day, Varda’s father asked Ziva if she would also work full-time at the free restaurant.

“He said Varda and I were not only good friends, but we were like sisters. Sisters will have fights, sure, but they will make up, too. He convinced me to take this job. That was seven years ago.”

But why did she come here, I ask. Wasn’t it much easier to sell cosmetics?

Ziva sighed, and explained more of her background. She was born in 1950, when there were worse problems for Israel and its neighbors, than exist today. Back then, she says,
the east side of the Sea of Galilee still belonged to Syria, and life around the lake, even over here in Tiberias, could be dangerous as a result. Her father was a policeman on a boat, and one day, the other cop on this boat was shot and killed by a Syrian sniper. Ziva’s mother panicked, and insisted her husband quit and find some safer line of work. He tried various things, all relatively unsuccessfully, but to keep food on the table, he moonlighted as a fisherman.

“In April, the St. Peter’s fish, which is the most plentiful kind of seafood in the Sea of Galilee, all go over to the eastern shore to lay their eggs. They become scarce here on the west side, and their price goes up. My Dad had a friend who said to him, ‘It’s Passover. Early in the morning, we will go a little bit further out into the middle of the sea, closer to the east bank, throw one net, and come back. There won’t be any problems.’”

Ziva pauses, and smiles one of her crooked grins.

“I was eight at this time,” she continued. “My Dad and this other guy, they row out. They toss one net. Then, a Syrian shot my father right between the eyes,” Ziva says, pointing a finger at her own forehead. “He fell into the boat. That was it. He was already dead.”

With five young daughters to care for, Ziva’s mother was a widow. It was a terrible struggle, each day, to keep the family clothed and fed.

“The mentality then was, you didn’t get remarried,” Ziva says. “You must also realize that in those days, the Israeli government didn’t think of the person who killed my father as a ‘terrorist.’ He died, that’s it. It wasn’t until 1973 that the government finally began to recognize the significance of deaths like my father’s, and started giving financial support to people who died from terrorism.”

Did this experience make her more sensitive to others in need? Does she think this is why she’s come to work full-time at Meir Panim?

If Ziva is insulted by my armchair psychoanalysis, she doesn’t show it. In fact, for a
long time, she did not respond at all. When she did speak again, my questions were
politely ignored.

“Sometimes, we take people in to work here that no one else will. We try to help everyone. As you can see, we don’t coddle these boys. We want them to understand that they’re coming here to WORK! For some, this message gets through. After they leave, they come back to see Varda and me. If they have a wedding, they call us. They kiss us, and show us pictures of their babies. For other people, though, they can’t learn to come on time, or to show up at all, and they are sent back to prison. I feel terrible for them.”

“They are all so young!” I exclaim.

“Yes, and that’s when you make mistakes in your life … when you are young,” she replies.

A few of the earliest diners have begun arriving. It’s now 11 o’clock, and Ziva begins serving lunch from behind the counter.

And then, completely without warning, a loud argument breaks out between Ziva and a young woman (is she a “criminal,” too?) who is ladling out bowls of vegetable soup. Whatever caused the disagreement is a mystery, as the women are yelling in Hebrew. What I can understand, however, is once the altercation starts, neither is willing to back down. Both keep trying to get the last word, which only starts the argument up again. Ziva continues to hand out plates of food; the girl, bowls of soup. All the while, they take potshots at the other. Their bickering goes on and on. It dies down. Then, reignites. Finally, it flickers out. Then, it really, really, begins to rage. Ziva and the girl are standing toe to toe, their faces quite literally inches from one another’s as they scream wildly, and at incredible volume.

One of the young men rushes to separate the women, trying to establish peace, as he interposes himself between them. But they simply scream over, through, and around him. It never becomes physical. There’s no shoving or slapping. It is strictly a war of words. But what a battle it is! This is, by a wide margin, the most raw, full-throated fight I’ve ever witnessed, and I’ve seen rival gangs of teenagers threatening each other on the New York City subway system. This skirmish was much scarier.

Finally, a delicate truce begins to settle. It feels fraught, though, as if it may not last. My heart is racing, and behind my eyes, there’s a sharp pang of pain due to the tension I’ve experienced by eavesdropping on this dispute.

What amazes me, then, is the non-reaction of the other guests at Meir Panim. There must have been thirty or so people, eating lunch, or being served food, while this shouting match raged, and no one seemed to take any particular notice of it. I guess when you live in Israel, you exist with the constant possibility of terrorists attacks, or sniper fire. When you live in Israel, your house is legally required to have a bomb shelter, which must be equipped with water, tinned food, and an air-filtration system, where you are to hide when nuclear or biochemical weapons fall on your country. When you live in Israel, you’ve seen worse than a couple of women screaming at each other.

I haven’t, though. My life is largely free from such overt hostility, and even being a bystander to it has upset me deeply.

A few minutes later, Ziva stops by my table, and asks me if I want to have some food. The salmon is very good, she suggests. I look up at her, surprised. Only a few minutes ago, her face was contorted in rage, and she was producing sounds I scarcely knew the human voice was capable of. Now, she was purring with the sweet concern of a grandmother.

“Thanks,” I said, “but I guess I’d better go.”

I gave her a hug, and went to say goodbye to Varda, too.

Then, I got in my car, and drove away. I was still shaken, and traveled for quite some distance, unaware of anything but my thoughts. Gradually, though, I began to notice a smell. Ziva had insisted on giving me a plate of food before I left Tiberias, which was wrapped in foil, and sitting on the back seat. It was baking in the afternoon sun coming through the car’s window, and beginning to stink. Seeing a trash can, I pulled off the road, and threw the plate away.

Back on the highway again, I began to feel guilty. I’d wasted perfectly good food that might have been eaten by someone who was hungry.

After the unsavory scene I’d just witnessed, however, I didn’t have much of an appetite.

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Even stepping next door to a neighbor’s kitchen will find you entering a foreign territory of unfamiliar foods, flavors, and recipes. Fly half way around the world, start cooking in a different hemisphere, and the mysteries deepen. Suddenly, how to peel a clove of garlic becomes an exercise in international diplomacy.

Or, so I discovered not too long ago when I traveled to La Grama, a tiny town nestled in a gorgeous mountain valley of Northern Peru’s Andean Highlands. It can only be reached by a road that’s called Trenta Tres Curvas, (Thirty Three Curves), a dizzying series of switchback turns winding down through the Andes, until one finally arrives in a rural village that has spotty electricity, no mail service, and seemingly more dogs than humans.

Downtown La Grama is a small grid, maybe four city blocks square, where a population of 300 live in one-story mud brick homes. The town’s roads are made of cinnamon-colored dirt that’s deeply rutted and pocked with large pot holes. In what seems nearly an absurdist touch, there are freshly-poured and quite elaborate concrete sidewalks bordering each side of these unpaved thoroughfares. It rains frequently here, though, and when streets melt into the consistency of pudding, these sidewalks are much appreciated.

A decade ago, my friend, Jordan Mallah, was a Peace Corps worker in La Grama. Every few years since, Jordan arranges a “service” trip where he convinces a group of people from the United States to come build a local library, or assist on a town-wide water project. His idea for 2011, was to plant an organic vegetable garden behind el colegio, the local grammar school.

The people who live in La Grama are poor and, as a result, eat a fairly unhealthy diet. They mostly subsist on potatoes and guinea pig. You read that correctly: guinea pig. Hordes of these cute, but clueless-looking creatures scurry about (and shit upon) the dirt floors of most houses. When it’s dinner time, people clonk one on the head, and shuck off its fur; a quick chop, and into a fry pan the pieces go. Head, tail, claws – every morsel is consumed. Guinea pig tastes like the dark meat of a not-very-flavorful chicken. Not bad, but perhaps not as good for you as green beans, or Swiss Chard. At least that’s what Jordan thinks. Hence, this garden project.

Yes, I realize this sounds benevolently imperialist: know-it-all Americans imposing their culinary values on the third world. (Zucchini, good. Guinea pig, gross.) Sure, sure, I had my hesitations, too, at first. But, I put them aside, and told Jordan I’d help him with the garden. What’s more, I found myself volunteering to cook meals for the crew he’d rounded up — meaning, lunch and dinner, every day for a week, for a dozen of Jordan’s friends coming from the United States, as well as a roughly an equal number of Peruvians who’d join us in planting, once we got to La Grama.

My base of operations was the modest but hugely cheerful house of Jordan’s friend, Nattie. Her house was a logical choice as Nattie’s kitchen was more modern that any other I saw in La Grama. She has a small refrigerator, a cooktop with four small burners, and an oven. (These last two appliances could not be operated simultaneously, however, as each ran from the same propane tank.) A key factor, too, was that Jordan convinced Nattie on a previous visit to stop breeding guinea pigs and, instead, to plant a garden in her backyard. When I landed there, Nattie immediately dragged me outside to tour this Eden. Her beets, pumpkins, lettuces, celery and strawberries, among many other plants, were all thriving and available to be used in meals I’d cook.

Nattie is the unofficial “mayor” of La Grama. Everyone knows her, since she runs a Movistar franchise (it’s one of Latin and South America’s major telecommunications companies) from her kitchen, selling time for cellular phones. She also is a part-time baker of cakes, which she sells for parties and birthday celebrations. From dawn to dusk, five minutes do not pass without someone showing up at Nattie’s door. Not only is she quite literally the link between La Grama and the outside world, but Nattie is also life coach, therapist and yenta for all residents. Nothing happens in this town without Nattie hearing about it seconds later. Never have I met someone so irrepressibly hospitable. To have a group of Americans descend on her house for a week, not to mention having me turn her kitchen upside down as I as cooked, appeared not to faze Nattie in the least.

The very first day we arrived, I got the lay of the land, as I watched Nattie quickly throw together a Peruvian lunch. She served us papas alla huancaina, or potatoes, smothered in a sauce made of milk, cheese, crackers, and yellow pepper. Then, spaghetti with a pesto made of spinach, basil and soy milk. Not only did she cook all this food in well under an hour (a time period that included her picking vegetables from her garden, and washing them), but she did so while simultaneously continuing to attend to her never-ending stream of Movistar customers, or other people needing help or advice. No one was shooed away, everyone was greeting with a smile, and a chorus of “Que linda! Que linda! Que linda!” (This means, how beautiful, or how nice, in Spanish.) It was as if each person were a best friend she’d been hoping would stop by.

Well-fed, and excited about the adventure ahead, Jordan led us off to the field behind el colegio. Here, my fears returned. It looked like the town dump. The field was choked with weeds, and ankle-deep with garbage. As we surveyed the spot, there was much discussion about the rocky soil, as well as the ground’s steep incline. And what about water? During the rainy season, there would be plenty. In the dry months, Jordan explained that he’d convinced some of the folks at Peace Corps to donate money for a small pump, which would keep things moist. Up until now, people had jury-rigged an “irrigation” system, burying empty plastic bottles among the plants, each with a pin hole at their bottom, so water inside would seep more slowly into the ground.

The school principal now arrived. He was accompanied by a few other men who had wheelbarrows, shovels, and pick axes. Jordan assigned tasks, and distributed these tools. We got to work tilling the land, breaking up hard clods into a more malleable layer of top soil. There was an incredible amount of junk mixed into this soil. My guess was that many generations of school kids have dallied back here, snacking on candy and other treats, and then simply dropped the foil wrappers, and plastic spoons and forks, when they were done eating.

An old woman worked behind us, gathering up whiskery weeds we unearthed. She then patiently arranged them into neat bundles which she would dry, and turn into brooms. Several pretty young girls from the school had showed up, too. Their idea of “work outfits” was adorably misguided, as they were resplendent in flip flops, tight jeans and halter tops. I chatted with them, trying to summon back the Spanish I’d learned when I was their age. Our shared smiles, though, and the fact we were all laboring together, side by side, was probably our best form of communication.

At one point, I was astonished to overhear these senoritas talking, and one of them asked the time. A girl gazed up at the sky, and said, “it’s probably about 4:30 p.m.”

I looked at my watch. It was 4:27. Clearly these young women live in closer harmony to the earth’s natural rhythms, than I do in Manhattan.

Before I cooked dinner that first evening, I showed up at Nattie’s house with gifts for her kitchen. Jordan had warned me Nattie’s batterie de cuisine wouldn’t be equal to mine in New York; any pots, pans, or cooking tools I brought along would be very much appreciated, both by her and me. So, I now presented her with a couple of chef’s knives, paring knives, high-quality cookie sheets, and many jars of spices – turmeric, cumin, bay leaves, curry powder, tarragon, oregano, and saffron. Nattie was overjoyed.

The biggest challenge to cooking in La Grama, I soon learned, is the water is not potable. Jordan made everyone super-paranoid about cow poop, and how easily exposure to it can lead to food poisoning. So, vegetables must first be washed in tap water to get off the dirt, then again in purified water, which is stored in unwieldy, five-gallon jugs. Thankfully, I was being assisted by one of Nattie’s friends, a young woman named Fanny. She is put in charge of washing all vegetables.

Taking a leap of faith, I gradually began to take charge of the kitchen, with Nattie and Fanny as my sous-chefs. My I-Phone has an app that instantly translates between Spanish and English, so this made our first cooking together experience much more pleasant. Nattie stands by my shoulder, watching and asking questions about everything I do. She didn’t know, for instance, to seed peppers to make them less spicy, or to de-stem herbs from their branches, as leaves alone provide a much fresher flavor. Nattie has never roasted vegetables in her oven, or used wine to deglaze a pan. I teach her how to make an apple cobbler. In the process, I learn the apples that grow on her tree in the backyard are about half the size of the ones I’m used to and (not surprisingly) about twice as delicious.

Nattie and I have a different sense of time, and what constitutes drudgery or not. For instance, each time she cooks with garlic, she laboriously peels each clove with a paring knife, then mashes it into a fine paste by crushing it under a smooth river stone. I show Nattie how easy it is to smash a garlic clove with the side of a chef’s knife, so the peel falls off. She smiles, feigning enthusiasm for my revolutionary method, but I notice Nattie continues to do it her own painstaking way.

She is in no hurry, as there seems nothing but time in La Grama. Indeed, so little occurs here, that after just a couple days, I not only recognize all the town’sinhabitants, but I’ve started to become familiar with their animals, as well. I see ladies leading their cows out to the fields each morning, and home at dusk. Certain pigs are always tied to certain trees. Day after day, dogs sleep on the same patch of sidewalk. Hens and turkeys peck away at the dirt, only a few inches from where they’ll be tomorrow. For a week,this daily consistency is calming and reassuring. To stay here any longer, however, I would wither and die. La Grama is beautiful. I can clearly see that as I gaze at the rushing river, the sun-dappled fields, the big sky, the clouds drifting over the Andes, where slopes are covered with squares of different farms, like a patchwork quilt. Beautiful, yes, but static. My spirit and soul are too city-fied. Soon enough, I will crave a quickened pulse, and the beat, bang and boom of the city.

In the mean time, I become friendly with Cruz, a woman who lives in a house next door to mine. Each morning, I like to sit on the sidewalk in front of my house, bare feet in the dirt road before me. When she sees me, Cruz always says hello, and we talk about the weather. One day, she came out of her house, and gave me a bag full of lemons. (I’d seen her go inside with a long, bamboo pole a few moments earlier – Nattie has the same tool, to dislodge fruit from high branches.) I thank her profusely, and we attempt a longer conversation. Cruz tells me the house I’m living in is her son’s, and that he rented it to Jordan. I reply that it is “precioso,” and I am so lucky to be staying there.

I work up the nerve to ask if she will show me her guinea pigs, or “cuy” as they are called in Peru. I guessed she must have a few dozen, as I can hear them scurrying about, squeaking, in the middle of night when I can’t sleep. Cruz didn’t hesitate, and seemed very proud to show me a back room of her dark and squalid house, where there must have been forty or fifty guinea pigs scurrying around. A few were pure white, others pale brown, but most a mottled mix. There was a kind of low stone wall bisecting the room. Cruz explained the guinea pigs are not smart enough to figure out how to scamper over this mini-barricade, so it kept them from crawling all over the humans while they sleep. How they could sleep through the squeaking and writhing of these animals was a bafflement to me.

Cruz introduces me to her granddaughter. She is a gorgeous, slim-hipped girl of maybe sixteen, yet she already has a baby at her breast. This infant, also a girl, is obviously loved and well cared for, as her hair is pulled up into a little fountain at the top of her head, and fixed in place with a pink bow. Still, it’s sad. What happens to a sixteen-year-old mother in La Grama, Peru? And, when her baby daughter grows up, will she make the same mistakes?

I probably would have brooded on this more, but there was too much work to do! The garden behind el colegio slowly begins to take shape, while Nattie and I grow ever-more comfortable with our different ways of cooking. Not that there weren’t still some bumps along the way.

One evening, when I get to Nattie’s house, I see she’s busy making a cake for one of her clients. Some flour has spilled onto her painted concrete floor, and as Nattie moves about her kitchen, she’s begun to track white foot prints all over. I go get a broom and dustpan. When she sees what I’m doing, Nattie asks why I am cleaning up while she is still cooking. If we don’t get up the flour now, I say, other people will come in and out of the kitchen, and flour will be spread all over her house. Nattie looks at me, as if I am speaking utter nonsense. It is an awkward moment, as I can’t figure out what I’ve done wrong.

Later, Jordan tells me Nattie’s is one of the very few houses in La Grama that has a concrete floor, and even her’s is a recent improvement. When you are used to padding around on a dirt surface, sweeping up all the time is not part of your routine. Hearing this, I felt ashamed at how privileged my assumptions of “correct behavior” were. I can afford to be tidy, because my wealth has gotten me accustomed to high levels of hygiene. Nattie does not have this luxury.

Happily, such misunderstandings were few. Mostly, this unprecedented opportunity to pull herbs and vegetables directly from the earth has inspired me to leave aside my tried-and-true recipes, and take some gastronomic risks. How about squash, roasted with cinnamon, cloves and raisins? Lemongrass on the carrots? Beets with orange juice and walnuts?

As Nattie and Fanny help me with such experiments, they’d tell me stories about life in La Grama. For instance, I asked about the guy with only one leg, who hobbles about on crutches. Turns out he was a farmer, and he cut his toe one day when he was in his fields, digging with a shovel. Badly gashed, the toe was nearly severed from his foot. He went to the local doctor, and they amputated the toe. Unfortunately, this surgery was done incorrectly, and the wound became infected. Now the foot was cut off, too. Soon the ankle became gangrenous, and amputations continued. First at the knee, and then the whole leg was removed, up to his hip. Only on this last operation were the proper amounts of antiseptic and suturing employed, and the man eventually healed. He could not longer work as a farmer, however. He spends most days shuffling about town, begging for money so he can buy beer.

Another story concerned a baby born at La Grama’s small medical clinic. Only after the infant was out of its mother’s womb did the doctor realize they had no cloth to wrap it in. There was an old man waiting his turn for attention from the doctor. He was shivering with cold, clearly quite ill with some sort of influenza, or maybe even tuberculosis, and his whole body was convulsed with deep, rumbling coughs. The old man was wrapped in a dirty blanket. Without a moment’s hesitation, or even asking permission, the doctor snatched the blanket away from the old man, and wrapped the baby up in its filthy folds. Somehow, the baby survived. The old man did not; by the next morning, he was dead.

One day, as we were struggling to serve lunch, I said, “Nattie, tu necessitas una mesa grande en la cocina.”

She regarded me with a perplexed smile on her face. Nattie frequently looked at me this way, as I was forever using the wrong words in Spanish, and unintentionally saying something incomprehensible. Or obscene.

But, as far as I knew, I’d correctly told Nattie she needed to have a big kitchen table. The cooking area in her house was actually a good size, but there were no wide counter, or “island.” It was making me insane, trying to push out meals for 20 people, with no place to work other than a narrow ledge by her sink. To show her what I meant, I got out a tape measure, did some calculations, and drew a quick sketch of a table I thought Nattie should have. As you can see, I’d rapidly shed all qualms about my benevolently imperialist values.

Poor people are not stupid. Poor people are poor. The reason Nattie did not have such a mesa grande was not because she’d never imagined one; rather, she could not afford one. I told her I would buy it for her. I also mentioned I’d seen a guy doing carpentry work a couple streets away. What about him? No, Nattie said. He was too expensive and un borracho (a drunk). Instead, she knew another carpenter over in the next town, who she trusted and liked. Nattie suggested we go see him. It would be easy, she said. It was only a two hour walk. Each way.

Now it was my turn to have a perplexed smile. “Couldn’t we call first to make sure he’s there?” I asked.

He doesn’t have a phone, Nattie replied. He’ll be there, she assured me.

Right after lunch that day, we walked two hours, found el carpintero, Joel (for non-Spanish speakers, that is pronounced HO-elle), and I showed him my drawing. Joel named a price, which was absurdly low – I’d have paid five times as much, without question. Nattie reacted as if he’d demanded my left testicle. The two of them, Nattie and Joel, really got into it for a good long time. Negotiations between Special Ops and the Taliban are probably more congenial. Finally, to make peace, I stepped in, trying to save face for everyone involved. I told Joel I would somehow manage to pay his exorbitant price, the equivalent of $80, and I would even give him half the money up front. But the only way he was getting the rest was if he delivered the table on Friday morning (this was Tuesday afternoon). Saturday, you see, was December 25, which was also Nattie’s birthday, so a midnight dinner was planned on Christmas Eve. Dozens of townspeople had said they planned to drop by and wish Nattie a Feliz Navidad and Feliz Cumpleaños. Having a table would make all the difference in being able to host a crowd this size.

Joel agreed to my terms. I gave him the deposit. Our business settled, Nattie and I walked the two hours back to La Grama. I was feeling pretty goddam proud of myself – that is, until I saw Jordan and told him what I’d done.

“You just threw away your money,” he said. “This is Peru, Stephen, not Manhattan. I would be surprised if someone in this country could make a table like that in two months, and you gave him two days? Are you smoking crack?”

“Joel said he could do it,” I replied. Even to me, my voice sounded small and annoying, kind of like a guinea pig’s squeak. Jordan wasn’t being mean. He was realistic. I, on the other hand, was an idiot. An imperialist idiot.

Nattie kept the faith, though. She began to tell everyone about la mesa grande. I’d redrawn my sketch to give a carefully-ruled copy to Joel, but Nattie thumb-tacked the first draft I made up on her kitchen wall, right next to a garish color illustration of the Blessed Virgin Mary. (Peru is an exceedingly Catholic country.) Other ladies began to drop by, and gaze expectantly at the empty space in the center of Nattie’s kitchen, where the table would go. It seemed this was the most exciting thing that had happened in La Grama in months. I couldn’t even look at Jordan. I tried to forget the whole mess, and redoubled my efforts on the organic garden.

After several days of preparatory work – clearing away large rocks,and creating a series of raised, rectangular beds – it was time for seeds! Several dozen children showed up for planting day, and I asked three boys to help me: Carlos, Franklin, and Angel. They were probably 14-years-old, and full of smirks and squiggles. Indeed, nearly everything I did or said caused them to react with exaggerated shock, and then to collapse into fits of laughter. It was hilarious, I’ll admit, as my Spanish vocabulary for describing spatial considerations – depth, distance,orientation – was quite limited. I relied heavily on pantomime. Angel, Franklin, and Carlos were clever young men, however. They took the seed packets from me, and quickly showed me how it was done. Um, who was helping who here?

When we were ready to water our beds, the pump, for some reason, was nowhere to be found. So, a chain of hoses were stretched from the garden back to the school building, where there was an outdoor spigot. These hoses, alas, were old and worn, and not spliced together with screw-together junctions. Rather, the end of one hose was simply pinched, and shoved into another. Every time we stretched it even a foot longer than it wanted to go, the different sections of hose would slide apart. Water gushed everywhere, except into the garden. This caused still more shrieks of laughter from the children, and much head-scratching for the adults.

Just then, however, dark clouds appeared on the horizon, rolling quickly towards us over the top of nearby hills. Skies quickly changed from blue to black, the air temperature dropped just as rapidly, and … Boom! Rain was rocketing down around us. The Peruvian kids scattered at the first drop, but we Americans were too grateful to move. If there is a God, She or He seemed to be giving a (green) thumb’s up.

Back at Nattie’s house, I discover there is no electricity. Apparently, this is a frequent enough occurrence in La Grama, and there’s no knowing when it may come back on. Maybe it was the romance of cooking by candlelight, but suddenly I had the great idea to make a carrot cake for Nattie’s birthday. Some substitutions were required, since I couldn’t just dash over to Whole Foods for box of Macadamia nuts, or cream cheese. While I was out in the garden, digging around for zanahorias (carrots), Nattie came rushing out her back door.
“Ven aqui!” she cried. “Ven aqui, ven aqui, ven aqui!” Said once, “ven aqui” means “come here!” When it’s rapidly said three times, however, it roughly translates as, “Get the fuck in here, NOW!”

Because I’m a worrier, I immediately assumed the worst. Some guy had been stabbed in a drunken brawl, or a girl had died from a botched abortion. For all the natural beauty of its location, horrible things happen in La Grama. I’d only lived there for one short week, but already I’d had ample opportunity to learn that.

I rushed into the house, and there was Joel, huffing and puffing his way through Nattie’s front door, with la mesa grande on his back.

I couldn’t believe it. He’d finished a day early!

I’m not a decorator, and this piece of furniture I’d designed was no work of art. However, it was well-made, appeared solid and strong, and Joel had even thought to give a wax finish to the wide planks of wood on its top surface, to repel fluids and grease. It was a true work table, a thing honest and proud, and I could tell at a glance it would serve Nattie well for many years to come.And so could she. The expression on her face! It was as if Nattie had just been informed that she would never die, but live forever in a perpetual state of youth, beauty, and health. You’ve sometimes heard it said a person’s face will glow? Nattie’s was a beacon.

I’d long since given up all hope for this moment. As such, it felt nearly like a dream to help move la mesa grande into the kitchen where, I was relieved to see, it fit perfectly. I paid Joel the balance of what I owed, and then I made a pantomime, bowing to him as if he were a King, or a deity. This tickled Joel no end. He laughed and swept me up into a lung-crushing hug. As I was catching my breath, in walks Jordan.

We all began to laugh, scream, and hop about the kitchen in silly, spontaneous celebration. The happy, happy noise Nattie, Joel, Jordan and I made was loud enough for my soul to hear.

On the face of it, the four of us were all so very different: Nattie and Joel are Roman Catholics; Jordan is a Jew; and I’m a former-Baptist-converted-to-Episcopalian-turned-agnostic. We were three men and a woman. Two Peruvians, two New Yorkers. English-speakers, Spanish-speakers. Yet, all our many differences were absolutely meaningless in this moment of unified, transcendent joy. Why are we alive, other than to share love with others? Why are we alive, other than to find ways to connect, not separate?

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Though this is a very poor region, ruins of once-majestic Mayan cities such as Palenque, Yaxchilan, Bonampak, Tonina and Chinkultic are here, and this proud heritage still exerts an influence. I was intrigued to learn of unique gastrophilanthropic customs that endure among Chiapas’ large Mayan population, including tribes called the Tzotzil, Tzeltal, Zoque, Chol, and Tojolabal.

Much of Chiapas’ history involves the subjugation of these native peoples, and their occasional rebellions. For instance, the city where I spent most of my time, San Cristobal de Las Casas, is named for Father Bartoleme de Las Casas, a Dominican priest in the late 1500’s and early 1600’s who tried to protect Mayans from the ravages of Spanish Colonialism. More recently, the state suffered through the 1994 Zapatista uprising, through which revolutionaries eventually succeeded in obtaining new rights from the Mexican government for citizens of Chiapas.

When he learned I was headed to San Cristobal, a Mexican friend urged me to stay at a small hotel called Casa Na Bolom. A former Catholic monastery, Casa Na Bolom was purchased in 1951 by a Dutch archeologist Frans Blom, and his Swiss photographer wife, Gertrude (who everyone called Trudi). Frans was born in Copenhagen in 1893, earned a degree in archeology from Harvard, and was a professor at Tulane University in New Orleans, when he first began traveling to Mexico in 1919, as a consultant to U.S. oil companies. Trekking through the rain forest of Chiapas, he met Gertrude Duby, who was there taking photographs while researching and writing a series of articles on women who had fought with General Emiliano Zapata’s army during the Mexican Revolution of 1910.

Once married, the Bloms spent the next half-century studying a particular Mayan tribe called the Lacondon. Frans and Trudi were among the first outsiders to come into contact with these people who, until then, had lived isolated and unknown, hidden by the dense La Selva Lacandona rain forest. The Bloms turned their home into a haven for these indigenous peoples when they came into town to sell their handicrafts or produce. Frans, who had the chiseled features of a matinee idol (he resembled Kirk Douglas), died in 1963. Trudi lived another thirty years, presiding over dinners at her almost comically long dining table where guests, visiting anthropologists, and Lacondon all gathered together. She was always ready to “trade” a home-cooked meal for news of what was occurring in the jungle.

Today, Casa Na Bolom is a hybrid of research center, museum, hotel and restaurant. Its exterior is painted a gorgeous orange-yellow; inside, wide stone patios are surrounded by covered colonnades, flowering trees, and pots of bougainvillea. On display are facsimiles of Frans’ field notebooks and diaries, in which he carefully documented all he saw on his journeys into the rain forest. Hallways are decorated with photographs of Lacondon Indians taken by Trudi, from the 1950’s through the 1980’s.

Also called Hack Winik, or “True People,” the Lacandon believe God created men out of clay, and then taught them how to live in the rain forest. Plants and animals are sacred gifts. Each Lacandon man is his own priest, and he builds a “God House,” or a temple area inside his dwelling. Worship centers around a “God Pot,” or incense chalice in which they burn offerings of corn, as well as chunks of tree resin called copal. As smoke from the God Pot carries their prayers up to the heavens, the Lacandon consume balché.

This inebriating beverage is made by mixing water and honey with roots from the balché tree, and allowing it to ferment. Thought to have magical powers, the faithful in ancient Mayan ceremonies administered balché by way of an enema to maximize its potent effect. Perhaps due to this unusual manner of consumption, Spanish invaders saw the devil lurking in balché, and quickly outlawed it.

This prohibition, and others, caused the Lacondon to flee ever deeper into the jungle, where they remained isolated from the outside world until after World War II. At this time, their peace was disturbed by the extraction of rain forest reserves, the discovery of Mayan ruin sites, and new agrarian land reforms dictated by the Mexican government. Some experts feel, though, that the single biggest factor in transforming the Lacondon was the arrival of the Summer Institute of Linguistics, in 1948.

Now called SIL International, it is an evangelical Christian organization that’s based in the United States and whose main purpose is to translate The Bible into tribal languages. While some admire the group’s work in cultural anthropology, SIL has also attracted criticism and controversy. Its activities are seen as a thin cover for a secret agenda of proselytizing for Christianity, and fostering a more pro-U.S. stance around the world. Rare is the hotel that provides a guest with an eye-opening lesson in geopolitics and theocracy, but the small museum at Casa Na Bolom was just such a place.

The cultural anthropology I engaged in during my stay in Chiapas was of a decidedly more agnostic cast. And so, the following morning, I took a trip to the south of San Cristobal de Las Casas, where I spent the day at La Abarrada, a kind of camp-college that’s funded by the Mexican government. Poor people from anywhere in Chiapas can apply to come here and learn different trades, while they live, eat, and receive childcare if needed, for free. La Abarrada is a Spanish word that translates roughly as a defense to keep water off, or a barrier that holds something else back. In other words, by teaching people how to make a living, they’ll not be swept away by poverty.

Juan Mendez, age 30, who is a professor of textiles and weaving techniques, showed me about the campus. There is room for 200 students, who range in age from 16 up to 60. I was amazed at what a cheerful and well-kept spot this was. Simple one-story cinderblock buildings, painted in vibrant shades of green and yellow, are spread out over many acres of meticulously-landscaped flatland. Tall ficus hedges are clipped precisely, then embellished with topiary designs of birds, cows, cats, and monkeys.

Long-dormant artisanal techniques are being revived here, as well as forgotten knowledge from this area’s nearly 5,000 years of agriculture. These ancient methods are combined with modern ideas such as the use of solar energy, building environmentally-friendly stoves, and composting. Another of La Abarrada’s goals is to encourage the participation of women in trades and activities once considered only for men, such as iron-working, carpentry, and electrical engineering. There were studios and out-buildings dedicated to the study of baking, leather work, sewing, and weaving, too.

This last is Juan’s speciality, and with obvious pride he showed off the various looms, explaining how different Mayan tribes around this valley in Chiapas each have their own special techniques. Most of the women work on “backstrap” looms, held in their laps, but braced by being lashed about their waists. Handicrafts like these, I realize, are no mere hobbies. On the contrary, they are a matter of life or death. Only if the weaving is good enough to sell, will its creator be able to eat.

Unfortunately, my visit coincided with the weekend of Mexican Independence Day, so most of the students were gone. However, Juan introduced me to two young women who had stayed on campus for the holiday. Both had the shy, giggling demeanor of village girls who were not much exposed to talking with strangers, much less a white man from America.

Chanuk Kimbor Chambor, age 27, was at the school for a three-month course to study typing. She wore a bright pink T-shirt that was clearly a reject from some part of the English-speaking world. Under the words “LOVE TEAM” was a misspelled gibberish that read, “Call-to-arms-for-chunkily-pebused her right to do good still mist definant.”

Chambor is from the village of Lacanjá Chansayab, where she grew up speaking Mayan, but she was also fluent in Spanish. Hearing the name of this town, I remembered what I’d learned from Casa Na Bolom’s museum, and I found myself wondering if her parents or grandparents had been converted to Christianity by missionaries from the Summer Institute of Lingustics. Chambor had a rosary in one hand, and a cell phone in the other. She nervously fingered both, seemingly with equal reverence.

Her friend, Blanca Amelia Perez Sanches, age 20, was at the school for a three-month course in pastry making. Blanca speaks Tzeltal, and is from an even smaller village, Altamirano, which she told me was occupied by Zapatistas during the uprising of 1994 against the Mexican army. I wanted to learn more about the Zapatistas, but Juan hurried me off to meet one of the chefs in La Abarrada’s kitchen.

This woman’s name was Estella Martinez-Lara, and she works in a light and airy kitchen decorated with hand-painted Mexican tiles. Nearby was a garden, and much of the vegetables and herbs used in her cooking are grown right here on the campus. Neatly planted rows bulged with acelga (a type of lettuce), carrots, red tomatoes, corn growing tall, big bunches of cilantro, and many varieties of chile peppers. Neither Juan or Estella made any particular fuss over this, not like an American chef who’d doubtless blather on about “think global, eat local.” Chiapas is too impoverished to indulge in such righteous rhetoric. Estella grows her own vegetables because she can’t afford not to.

I tell her how disappointed I am that the school is closed today, or I’d have loved to help her cook lunch for the students.

“Proxima vez,” she says with a smile. Next time.

What will we cook? I ask. “Que vamos a cocinar?”

“Mole verde,” Juan pipes up, his face beaming with a broad smile.

Mole Verde, or just “Verde” for short, is one of the lightest and freshest-tasting of Mexico’s sauces. A puree of green herbs like epazote, marjoram, cilantro and parsley, Mole Verde is only added at the last minute to cooked meat, seafood, or vegetables. Juans now tells me a story I’ve heard before, which credits mole’s original recipe to the Convent of Santa Rosa in Puebla, a town two hour’s drive south of Mexico City.

As the legend goes, sometime early in the colonial period, an archbishop showed up unannounced to dine at Santa Rosa. The convent nuns were distraught because they had no food prepared that was special enough to serve such a dignitary. After seeking God’s help through prayer, the sisters were led to invent a mixture of everything they’d been able to scrounge together: stale bread, nuts, chocolate, chile peppers and spices. Poured over cooked turkey, the archbishop was overjoyed. Mole was invented! There are more gruesome theories. Among these is a possibility that strongly-flavored mole was necessary to make the taste of human flesh palatable. Mexico is infamous for its history of human sacrifice, of course, as I would be reminded the following day when I headed off to see the Mayan ruins at Tonina.

This complex of buildings flourished from 200 to 900 a.d., and was notorious (and feared) for its elaborate rituals of decapitation. Such butchery took place at a central pyramid, built of stone, where a central staircase of 260 steps led up to 8 platforms, and 30 temples, the grandest of which was called the Temple of the Smoking Mirror. Nearly all Tonina’s iconography is devoted to images of captives and captors, the latter invariably depicted as bound, with their arms tied behind their backs.

A supernatural association was believed to exist between the moon, stars, and human slaughter. Blood spilt at Tonina kept the earth spinning properly, and to this end, hundreds (maybe thousands) of prisoners of war were decapitated here each year. Scant consolation for this sorry fate was the assurance their severed heads would eventually become stars. “They battled darkness here, and nurtured and watered the stars with human blood, thus assuring the smooth operation of the celestial machinery,” is how signage rather poetically phrases it in Tonina’s archeological museum.

Perched at nearly 7,200 feet above sea level, Chamula is home to a Mayan tribe called the Tzotzil. Chamula is less than ten miles from San Cristobal de las Casas, but several centuries removed in its near-complete disengagement with modern times.

Sunshine was just starting to fall on the town’s main plaza when I arrived, but people were still walking around in outfits that kept them warm in the morning’s chill. Tzotzil men wear furry ponchos, belted at the waist with red woven sashes, jeans and cowboy hats. Women have fabric piled up on their head, in what seems a combination of sun screen, hat, and “it might get cold later” second layer.

I found my way to the cathedral of San Juan which, at first glance, appeared much like any other Catholic church in a rural Mexican village. Once inside, however, remarkable differences became obvious. Pine boughs – and only the soft, green “whiskers,” not thick wooden branches – were spread over the floor, as a kind of aromatic carpeting. The walls were decorated with fan-shaped palm fronds; long, dangling strands of bromeliads; and masses of white dahlias, carnations, gladioli and tuberose. Around the sanctuary’s perimeter were many statues of saints, all housed in glass vitrines. Large mirrors hung from ribbons around the saints’ necks, dangling before their chests like medallions. These mirrors are thought to ward off evil, but also, as the faithful pray, they can see themselves (and by extension, their prayers) inside the saints’ heart.

Countless numbers of lit candles were lined up, row upon row of flickering soldiers marching across every flat surface, including much of the floor. Like almost all Mexican buildings, however, there was no furnace or heating system inside this sacred space. Quite the only thing generating warmth were these flames, signifying all the hopes and prayers that caused them to be lit.

A band of perhaps eight musicians, all men, sat along one side of the church, near its center. Guitars took up the slow, nearly dirge-like melody established by a lone, somber accordion. There was no singing, only these instruments. Incantatory and lulling, the music put one into a sort of trance, where time seemed to stand still.

Rather than a God House, this was a God Hotel. Everyone finds their own particular place to set up a spot for worship. Parents and their little children unwrap paper folders in which were nestled several dozen (and sometimes many dozens) of candles. The father would then dip each candle into the flame of a votive, softening its base before plunking the candle directly on to the tile floor in an area he’d swept clear of pine needles. Working quickly, he could line up row upon row.

Children, especially the boys, were fascinated by this sacred ceremony, and watched, wide-eyed, as their father quickly laid out his pattern. Then, it was their turn to light all these candles, and what young man is not thrilled to have a chance to play with fire? Mom and Dad would perch up on their knees, eyes closed, and begin to chant their praises and prayers to God, in the Tzotzil language.

Near the entrance to the church, single men (or men unaccompanied by their wives) stood around smoking cigarettes, and offering each other refreshments, such as tortilla chips and bottles of Coca-cola. These men were also taking long pulls from bottles of balché. Before sipping, they’d wave the bottles above and through banks of lit candles, as if to bless the liquid. Liquor was being consumed, but the men weren’t getting drunk; or if they were, they were being low-key about it. It seemed a Mayan equivalent of the eucharist, with tacos and Coke substituted for bread and wine.

Standing nearby, I’d hoped to be inconspicuous, but clearly I was not.

One of the men, an old farmer with a face that was deeply tanned and wrinkled from years spent working in the sun, came over to my side and handed me an open bottle of Coca-Cola. I understood he was not a wealthy man and that, for him, even a bottle of soda was not a casual, or everyday thing. On the contrary, it was a real gift, and one to be savored.

I bowed to him to express my gratitude.

And there we remained together, this Tzotzil man having welcomed me into his fraternity, and his way of worship. I sipped my Coca-Cola, which was warm and sweet. All around me, people were burning copal in their God Pots, and the air was heavy with smoke rising up to the heavens. What hopes and dreams could I send along with them?

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