It seemed like an impossible task: Cook a holiday feast for 60 youth (actually, wait, make that 100) on a budget of just $200.
Shockingly (to no one more than himself), Mandom Hui volunteered to take on the challenge. Even more shocking: With the help of almost two dozen local chefs and food companies, he managed to pull it off.
On Saturday, Hui and a team of chefs and volunteers, including ex-Cava chef/owner Chris McDonald and Miss Thing’s Jasper Hu, set up shop in the kitchen at the Sherbourne Health Centre and doled out a three-course dinner of sous-vide turkey breast and stuffing, roasted squash, cranberry sauce with citrus and star anise, and poached pears with labneh for dessert. Their guests for the evening were clients of SOY (Supporting Our Youth), a program created to offer support for queer, trans and questioning youth 29 and under.
“The staff were like ‘Mandom, they keep showing up. The whole room is crowded,'” Hui recalls. “We served about 100 people. We ran out of turkey. It was absolutely amazing.”
Hui, an assistant to McDonald, has spent the past few months helping SOY beef up its food offerings, helping the community group coordinate healthier meals for its clients. Hui was scrolling through Facebook a couple of weeks ago when he saw a post by Premal Laxman, who coordinates the program’s popular Monday night drop-in event, asking if anyone knew where to get turkeys and sides “at a reasonable price” for a holiday dinner.
“I asked what their budget was, and they said $200,” Hui recalls. “I was like, for 60 people? Are you insane? Nobody could do that, it’s imposslble. My heart just sank.” But Hui knew SOY at least had a decent commercial oven on the premises if others would be willing to pitch in, he’d be able to handle the cooking.
Vanessa Ling Yu
Roasted squash with rosemary was part of SOY’s holiday spread.
He posted a few more calls for help, and soon, offers began rolling in. Staffy volunteered to foot the bill for the turkeys. Produce distributor Hilite Fine Foods offered to give them whatever produce they needed, free of charge (“I was like, ’noooo’, because I knew how much that would cost for 60 people.”) Others, including Wu, Kendall Collingridge from Hooked, and Vanessa Ling Yu from Cater Toronto, volunteered labour or equipment.
Hui started doing the math on how to handle the batch cooking, then took a tour of the SOY facilities to get the lay of the land. He told the coordinator, “We could definitely do this for 60 people.” The coordinator replied, “Mandom, it’s actually for 80 people. not 60.”
“I’m looking at Jasper, and Jasper has this smile on his face, and I’m like, ‘Oh shit, this is pushing it.’”
For a more manageable solution to cooking a whole turkey, Hui turned to the sous vide-centric cookbook he had recently finished working on with McDonald, which included a rolled turkey breast done sous vide with stuffing and cranberry sauce. “We could cook all the turkey in one batch and don’t need to use the stove – I can even cook it the day before if we need to.”
Still, there was the question of where to find enough roll-able turkey breasts to feed 80 people a week and a half before Christmas. “I called Peter Sanagan — he just placed his last order, and all the turkeys were accounted for all the way up to Christmas. I was like, ‘Oh crap, if Peter Sanagan can’t do it, who else can?’”
His next call was Gourmeats in the Junction. “[Owner] was like, ‘Mandom, it’s not like I fetch them out of a tree.’” He called back saying he had a few birds in hand, but they were mammoth five-pound turkey breasts, non-GMO, non-soy, pasture-raised in short, the most expensive turkeys you can get, in far bigger sizes than you could cook sous vide.
His response? “I’ll take whatever you have.” Since it was for a good cause, Gourmeats put the price below cost – Staffy ended up paying $210 for it, maybe half of what retail would have been – and Hui gave himself a last-minute crash course in butchering turkey breasts.
Add to that a few more close calls: They were almost out of bread for the stuffing until Andrea’s Gerrard St. Bakery stepped in the day before the event. Durham Region School District instructor John Mackinnon, who was bringing the plates and servingware (SOY had “20 random plates” on hand), drove in the night of the event at 5 pm, leaving the organizers silently praying for good weather.
Working with a charity, too, posed its challenges: “They’re used to doing soup kitchen-style events – they were pushing me, like, ‘The way we do things is buffet style.’ But you don’t want 80 people lining up for a buffet – and you can’t buffet a sous vide style rolled turkey! It’s gonna fall apart.”
“I’m saying, if we’re going to do this, let’s do a three-course meal. We’re serving each course with respect.”
And so, a line of chefs cranked out plates full-tilt throughout the Monday service – MacDonald even took time off from promoting his book to come in and finish the dessert sauce.
Hui says a volunteer server told him, ‘I have kids telling me they’ve never seen food being plated like this before. They’ve only seen food like this on TV.’ “I was like – wow.”
They also printed out copies of the menu, and SOY’s clients were poring over them, peppering volunteers with questions: “They were all curious about the menus. ‘What’s sous vide? What’s a poached half-pear with labne look like? Why do they need to strain the Greek yogurt to make labne?’ It opened up minds, so to speak.”
They were supposed to feed the volunteers with what was left over, Hui says. But when more and more clients showed up for the dinner, the volunteers offered to give up their share — another act of generosity in a week full of them.
“I want to shout out the industry people,” Hui says. “A lot of them said, we’re not doing this for publicity. We’re doing this because it’s the right thing to do. It’s Christmas, for crying out loud!”
“It was the hospitality industry coming together to help out, which I think is absolutely amazing.”
Sherbourne Health Centre
Staff, youth and volunteers pose for a post-dinner photo.
nataliam@nowtoronto.com | @nataliamanzocco
