Soup kitchens have long had poor reputations. The dreary perception that follows these spaces, however, could not be further from the truth. Hospitality News Magazine learned this when we got the chance to travel to the Trenton Area Soup Kitchen (TASK) and chat with Chef Adam Livow, TASK’s Manager of Food Services, a wonderfully enthusiastic chef who shared with us his personal history, his plans for TASK, and a little bit about Hell’s Kitchen.
Chef Adam speaks with an upbeat positivity blended with sincere humility and an eye for the good in the world. As a kid in Marlboro, NJ he struggled staying focused in traditional classroom settings due to ADHD. Fortunately, he realized early on that he was a hands on learner and found that cooking – a passion fostered at home with his mother – kept him engaged. After excelling in his high school’s culinary program and completing a degree in Criminal Justice, Chef Adam enrolled at the French Culinary Center and became classically trained.
“It kept me engaged. I wasn’t just sitting in a classroom learning a recipe for chicken chasseur, [I learned] it by executing the dish.”
His tenacity is evidenced by his resume. As a post-graduate he worked for the Ritz-Carlton in Boston where he fell in love with banquet-style dining, and then the Grand Marquis back in his home state where he worked up to Executive Chef at just age 23. Staying there for 6 years, he moved on to be the first Executive Chef at the amusement park, iPlay America, before being on Season 14 of Hell’s Kitchen.
“It was 47 days in Hell’s Kitchen from beginning to end… I learned more in that time than I did in my entire culinary education and career.”
Always having an inkling for healthy styles of cooking, Chef Adam helped open and operate Shaka, a nutrition-focused restaurant in New York after his time on the show, before going back to help iPlay. It was during his second stint at iPlay, when a coworker there, longtime TASK chef Paul Jensen, suggested he come check out TASK and see if he’d be interested in cooking for a soup kitchen.
“At first I was like, ‘what am I going to do with a classic culinary education working in a soup kitchen?’ I walked in and saw everything going on and I said, ‘this isn’t a soup kitchen, this is a community center.’” The rest is history.
When Chef Adam speaks about TASK it is impossible not to have a strong hope for the future. Seeing equipment limitations as his only obstacle, he takes pride in his kitchen’s ability to feed 2,000-2,500 people a day and has goals to reach millions more. The food for TASK’s meals come from a variety of sources: donations from local grocery stores and nonconventional food stores; Mercer Street Friends Food Bank, which distributes federal USDA products; and individuals and local businesses. TASK purchases food products to ensure a balanced meal, but the amount spent is only one third of the total cost of product needed for 8,000 meals a week.
“The marbleization on this steak was ridiculous. This is a $130 cut of steak in a restaurant and we’re giving it to our patrons for free. And, look, they deserve it.”
The meals that Chef Adam creates pull from every one of his prior culinary experiences. His principled work ethic pushes him to create every meal from scratch, something that many banquet chefs cooking in finer settings don’t have the tenacity to do. The sometimes chaotic nature of donated food keeps his attention, as he is forced to conceive menus with little preparation time, yet he prevails, delivering nutritious meals to those in need Monday through Friday for free, no questions asked.
The most inspiring thing about Chef Adam is his outward awe. Selfless and grateful, he takes no single credit for the things that he does, and touts that the most important parts of TASK are the social and educational services that it offers its community members. He understands that the focus needs to be on helping those who are disadvantaged, and if that means helping to make sure they don’t need to worry about finding or paying for a nutritious meal, then that’s what he will do for them.
“My goal is to be out of a job. When we have fed and helped everyone, I will know my mission is complete.”
Being at TASK since just August of 2019, the journey so far is only the beginning for him. Chef Adam sees one great future potential of the organization in food trucks. Employed by those in TASK culinary educational programs, he believes that mobilizing his kitchen will allow TASK to reach an exponentially higher amount of those who either are not aware of the kitchen, or are unable to get themselves to its location on their own. It’s all part of Chef Adam and TASK’s gargantuan goal to ensure that no person, Trenton area or not, is food insecure. Given TASK’s current reach and Chef’s persistence, positivity, and knowledge, that goal doesn’t seem so far.
