Longtime local residents and lifelong culinary artists Jim Zehner and Carl Moore, shown at right, have run the “Who’s Hungry?” soup kitchen out of MAZU since this May. Posing with Zehner and Moore are “Who’s Hungry?” volunteers Max Lake, Robert Bolen and Joan Chappelle. (Photo by Reilly Dixon)
“Empty Bowls” fundraiser to benefit Yellow Springs soup kitchen
- Published: December 9, 2024
“Who’s hungry?”
It’s a straightforward question, and one easily answered this time of year. With dinner tables crowded with cranberries and casseroles, holiday hams, potatoes, pies and more, we’re all hungry.
Some more than others.
A 2022 report from the nonprofit relief organization, Feeding America, shows that 1.65 million Ohioans were food insecure that year — meaning they were without access to enough food for an active, healthy life due to limited financial resources. Thirty percent of Black Ohioans and one in four Latino Ohioans were food insecure in 2022.
One Yellow Springs nonprofit, a kind of ad hoc soup kitchen — aptly named “Who’s Hungry?” — has been working since May to bring those numbers down. Serving warm, homemade food every Monday and Wednesday evening out of MAZU at 229 Xenia Ave., “Who’s Hungry?” has made thousands of free meals for local mouths.
In November alone, the nonprofit fed approximately 600 people from Yellow Springs, Springfield, Xenia and beyond.
According to “Who’s Hungry?” co-founders and longtime local residents Carl Moore and Jim Zehner, they make food for an average of 80 people each Monday and Wednesday. With a different menu for every occasion, Zehner said feeding this many folks for free costs the duo around $500 for each meal.
To “just keep doing what we’ve been doing — feeding hungry folks good, decent food,” as Moore put it, “Who’s Hungry?” has two upcoming fundraisers.
One is slated for 7 p.m. on Friday, Dec. 6, at Tuck-N-Red’s Spirit & Wine, at 305 N. Walnut St., and will feature food from “Who’s Hungry?” and a live-music lineup of several Dayton-based bands.
The second benefit, set for 5–8 p.m. on Thursday, Dec. 12, at the Yellow Springs Senior Center is an “Empty Bowls” fundraiser — a night of pottery, soup and community. Attendees can bring their own bowl and $10 to enjoy different soups made by nearly 10 local chefs and cooks, or up to $45 to purchase a handmade bowl — thrown by one of more than 10 local potters — filled with soup.
All proceeds from both events benefit “Who’s Hungry?”
“These events are for our community that has supported us since day one,” Moore said. “They’re for the people who believe in what we’re doing and who want to help us continue.”
In speaking with the News, both Moore and Zehner noted a key difference between “Who’s Hungry?” and other soup kitchens — their free meals are “actually good.”
“We’re not feeding folks cold porridge or gruel,” Zehner said.
“That’s right,” Moore, the nonprofit’s head chef, with three decades of kitchen experience, added. “When people think ‘soup kitchen,’ they think boring, donated food. Not here. We’ll have lamb shanks, oxtails — stuff that will stick to your ribs.”
On Monday, Dec. 2, when the duo spoke with the News, and when 61 people went to MAZU for their warm meal, “Who’s Hungry?” offered turkey alfredo pasta, an Italian vegetable medley, vegan ratatouille and rice, cornbread and a salad.
“You’ll walk out of here full every single time,” Moore said.
As the News reported earlier this year, “Who’s Hungry?” began as an ambitious idea by Moore and Zehner last December, when they sought to use their joint culinary expertise to feed people from all walks of life to address area food insecurity — a growing need that the pair observed not just throughout the wider Miami Valley, but even here in Yellow Springs.
“We weren’t at all surprised by the need in Yellow Springs,” Moore said. “When I worked at the Emporium for a while making breakfast, I’d see working people counting their money — people choosing between paying their bills and getting something to eat.”
In seeking initial financial support for their soup kitchen idea, Moore and Zehner said they didn’t have to work very hard to convince the YS Community Foundation of that need they’ve observed.
“They looked out the window of their [former] office on Dayton Street and saw homeless people,” Zehner said. “Folks were sleeping outside or in their cars in that [Dayton Street] parking lot.”
Since this May, the pair headquartered their twice-a-week operations at MAZU, secured ongoing support from the Community Foundation and have seen an outpouring of community support. In recent months, the nonprofit has received a number of local financial donations — including an anonymous $10,000 contribution.
“We still don’t have a clue where that came from,” Zehner said. “But we’re just so grateful for it.”
While “Who’s Hungry?” is geared toward the hungriest few in Yellow Springs and beyond — the folks sleeping in parking lots or counting change at the Emporium — Zehner and Moore said they’d never turn away an empty stomach. For them, “Who’s Hungry?” is a question posed to all.
“What are we going to do? Check your ID or your blood sugar level when you come in?” Zehner laughed.
Moore added: “Right, so let’s say you work your ass off all day. You have a baby at home and you just don’t feel like cooking. Just come in, throw us a couple bucks and feed your family. No questions asked.”
This “food for all, no questions asked” approach to feeding the community is one that has been at the core of MAZU co-owner Angie Hsu’s philosophy since she and her husband opened the Taiwanese, Israeli and Indian restaurant behind the Emporium last year.
“One of our core values, and one of the main reasons we opened a restaurant in Yellow Springs, was to serve the community — to have a kind of menu that allows our family, friends, neighbors and groups to share food and stories with one another,” Hsu told the News earlier this week.
Hosting a soup kitchen twice weekly — when MAZU is closed — is part and parcel with those values, Hsu said.
“We have no problems at all in sharing our space,” she said. “I’ve gotten to meet and interact with so many people in town — people I see every day who, now, I know a little better.”
The upcoming “Empty Bowls” fundraiser is partially being coordinated by Hsu — it’s a way, she said, for “Who’s Hungry?” to continue carrying out its mission of feeding those in need for years to come.
She was introduced to the “Empty Bowls” concept by longtime local potter Bruce Grimes — one of the ten-plus local ceramicists whose bowls will be available at the benefit — earlier this year. It’s a charitable concept that has been replicated internationally time and again by artists and cooks seeking to raise money for local soup kitchens, food banks and other organizations — like “Who’s Hungry?” — bent on combating food insecurity.
“I just love the concept,” Hsu said. “It’s a trifecta of my three great loves: food, pottery and sharing food together.”
Not to mention, she added, it’s an opportunity for the ten-plus local potters to showcase their talents.
“We are a town of potters, after all,” Hsu said.
Beyond breaking bread with the “Who’s Hungry?” and greater Yellow Springs communities, getting a chance to meet Zehner and Moore and keeping warm in the unforgiving December cold with a hot bowl of soup, Hsu added that the “Empty Bowls” fundraiser offers attendees a unique culinary experience. As she said, food just tastes better when it’s eaten out of vessels made by the hands we can shake.
“Homemade soup, homemade vessels — it’s a return to our basic instincts,” Hsu said. “Sure, some days I’ll eat out of a to-go container. With it, I’ll eat faster and it’s convenient, but I’m not as present in the experience and I don’t appreciate the food in the same way. Maybe that’s just how it is in modern-day society, I guess. But eating from something handmade? It does something for me that’s emotional, almost spiritual.”
Just like the twice-a-week meals served by “Who’s Hungry?,” the two upcoming fundraisers are open to one and all, but as Hsu, Moore and Zehner all recommended, be sure to come hungry.
“Who’s Hungry?” serves food to all every Monday and Wednesday, 3–7 p.m., at MAZU, located at 229 Xenia Ave. To donate to the nonprofit, go to http://www.bit.ly/WhosHungryYS. For more information, on “Who’s Hungry?” and to see their upcoming menus, go to http://www.facebook.com/whos.hungry.ys. To contact Moore and Zehner about volunteer options, call 937-609-2382 or 937-609-2067.
For additional coverage of the origins of “Who’s Hungry?” see past News reporting at https://www.ysnews.com/?p=109591.
The first of the upcoming two fundraisers for “Who’s Hungry?” will take place at Tuck-N-Red’s at 305 N. Walnut Street at 7 p.m. on Friday, Dec. 6. The second fundraiser — the “Empty Bowls” event — will take place at the YS Senior Center, 5-8 p.m., on Thursday, Dec. 12. $10 pays for the soup; $25-$45 pays for the soup as well as a handmade bowl to keep. To RSVP to the latter event, go to http://www.tinyurl.com/ysemptybowls. All are welcome to attend both fundraisers.
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