Lady LUX

As a huge celebrity, Jon Bon Jovi can afford some pretty nice meals. Yet his restaurant of choice is a more simple one: The Soul Kitchen, the donation-based community kitchen he founded in central New Jersey with his wife, Dorothea, reported the Santa Cruz Sentinel.

Picking up a menu, guests will instantly notice the lack of prices. The doors are open to all, whether customers can afford to pay or not. While the suggested donation is $10, those without the cash can volunteer for an hour, perhaps washing dishes or serving food, to cover their meal. The little extra that guests often throw in helps maintain the restaurant and serve even more hungry people.

The poor and hungry can enjoy a three-course meal – soup or salad; a meat, seafood or vegetarian entrée; and a dessert – that is nutritious and delicious without relying on charity.

“If you come in and say, `I'm hungry,' we'll feed you,” Bon Jovi said to the Santa Cruz Sentinel. “But we're going to need you to do something. It's very important to what we're trying to achieve.”

The community restaurant is backed by the rock star’s nonprofit, the Jon Bon Jovi Soul Foundation, which builds homes to helps low-income families.

“With the economic downturn, one of the things I noticed was that disposable income was one of the first things that went,” Bon Jovi told The Associated Press. “Dining out, the family going out to a restaurant, Mom not having to cook, Dad not having to clean up – a lot of memories were made around restaurant tables. When I learned that one in six people in this country goes to bed hungry, I thought this was the next phase of the Foundation's work.”

The concept was born after the husband and wife started volunteering at a local food pantry. They soon found their niche at the Lunch Break program, a service that provides food for around 100 poor people a day, renaming it “The Soul Kitchen.” The name still stuck when they moved to a former car body shop.

A year’s work and $250,000 later, the restaurant opened its doors, featuring scintillating fare from cornmeal-crusted catfish to grilled chicken with basil mayo and grilled salmon with soul seasonings. Side dishes such as sautéed greens and mashed sweet potatoes often are sourced from the restaurant’s backyard garden and are organic where possible.

“This is not a soup kitchen,” Bon Jovi declared. “You can come here with the dignity of linens and silver, and you're served a healthy, nutritious meal. This is not burgers and fries.”

With a motto of “a healthy meal can feed the soul,” the restaurant is not just about food, but also about community. Soul Kitchen seats its patrons at tables with people they may not know, encouraging customers to get to know their neighbors or at least introduce themselves to the person sitting next to them.

“At a time when one in five households are living at or below the poverty level, and at a time when one out of six Americans are food insecure, this is a restaurant whose time has come,” Bon Jovi said to Look to the Stars. “This is a place based on and built on community – by and for the community.”

For more information, visit www.jbjsoulkitchen.org.

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