Taking it to the Street

The Fairmont's stew is made with love

by SPRING GILLARD

A crowd has gathered on Granville Street at Helmcken, in front of a vacant store. There is a shopping cart with large buckets in it and a serving cart that holds cups, bowls, and spoons. There’s juice and water, too. Boxes of buns and apples sit on the sidewalk. Once a month, the day before welfare cheques are handed out, the hungry from all over Vancouver come to feast on a now-famous stew lovingly made by the cooks at the Fairmont Waterfront Hotel.

The story behind this stew started eight years ago with Clemencia Gomez, who worked with Neighbourhood Helpers, a non-profit group that reaches out to people living in single-room-occupancy hotels (SROs) in the downtown core. Part of her job was to make sure people were eating well. She even started a little rooftop garden, so residents could grow some of their own food. While working in the downtown area that includes the Old Continental, Vogue, and Gresham hotels, she noticed there were a lot of other hungry people in the area.

“That was the biggest shock, to me,” says this native of Colombia, “that people could be going hungry in a rich country like Canada.” She decided to do something about it.

She went to the Fairmont Waterfront to see if she could get leftover produce to put in a monthly soup. Daryle Nagata, executive chef at the time and well-known for his hotel rooftop garden, said, “I can do more than that, I’ll make it for you.” And so began the monthly ritual that continues today. The giant pot of stew—much heartier than soup—is so large it is hooked up to its own heating system and has to be tipped into the waiting buckets with an electronic device. And the standard set by Nagata remains high.

“It doesn’t matter who my customer is,” says Zarko Torbica, the banquet sous chef and official “taster” at the Fairmont Waterfront. “If it doesn’t taste good, it doesn’t go out.”

“It tastes just like the stew my mother used to make,” says one happy recipient. “You don’t have to ask ‘where’s the beef’ in this stew—there’s big chunks of meat in it,” says another. They go back for seconds and thirds. After all, they won’t taste this stew again for another month. Young, old, homeless, or sheltered, the people gathered here once a month, rain or shine, have one thing in common: hunger.

It may come as a surprise that there are hunger problems outside of the Downtown Eastside. But the Forum of Research Connections (FORC) Report, an assessment of Vancouver’s food system, compiled by a group of researchers from the Centre for Sustainable Community Development at SFU, found that food “insecurity,” or not having regular access to healthy, nutritious food, is prevalent to varying degrees in neighbourhoods throughout Vancouver. Some barriers to access are income, housing costs, age, disability, ethnicity, grocery store locations, or lack of cooking facilities.

Most people are unaware of the SROs on the Granville Strip, as was Rose Mancini, who replaced Gomez last November.

“I used to go to movies on Granville Street and I had no idea there were single-room-occupancy hotels there,” she says.

Under her guidance, the garden program is expanding. Raised beds have been put in the parking lot behind the Old Continental. Residents grow tomatoes, lettuce, herbs, and flowers, for their own use.

“We have a big barbecue at the end of the summer,” says Mancini. “The hotel managers are great. They put out a huge spread for the residents.” All this only a few blocks away and yet worlds apart from the landlords we hear about on the Downtown Eastside.

In addition to weekly soups at the SROs, the volunteers host coffee hours to get to know the residents. The food comes from the Food Bank and is not always what Mancini would call healthy: candy, cookies, doughnuts. But she’s working on that. Cobs Bread has been supplying scones for the coffee hours; and they’re fresh-baked, not leftovers. Organics at Home, on the North Shore, also provides organic produce weekly.

“Food always brings people together,” says Mancini. “That’s how we build relationships.” Yes, feeding people does sound like the neighbourly thing to do.

Spring Gillard is the author of Diary of a Compost Hotline Operator: Edible Essays on City Farming (New Society, 2003). She is a member of the Vancouver Food Policy Council.

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