The Current
We're seeking inspiration toward deeper discipleship through conversations with people working toward justice, cultivating deep spiritual practices, forming community and connection in significant ways, and helping one another heal from trauma. As we follow Christ to the margins of society, to the wounded and grieving, and into the hard work of peacemaking, we find that we are not alone on this journey. Join us to resist despair, and to regain some hope in the world, in the church, and in Christ.
Most weeks, Pastor Chris Nafis is talking with scholars and practitioners who are inspiring and faithful, and some weeks Pastor Chris is engaging with the book of Acts. Each week, we find the Spirit calling us deeper into the death and resurrection of Jesus, into a life with God, and into loving one another well.
This is a ministry of Living Water Church of the Nazarene, which gathers in San Diego's East Village, the epicenter of homelessness in this city. We are committed to meaningful worship, community formation, and service. Join us sometime :)
The Current
Feasting on Peace: Refugees, Food, and Community Building with Ross Carper
What happens when refugees share their culinary heritage with a new community? The story of Feast World Kitchen reveals something extraordinary about the power of food to transform lives.
Ross Carper didn't set out to launch a nonprofit restaurant. His journey began with a food truck side hustle and volunteer work helping refugee families navigate life in Spokane, Washington. When these worlds collided, he discovered how sharing meals created deep connections and support. That insight sparked a vision: a restaurant where refugee and immigrant chefs could earn income, build skills, and share their cultural heritage.
Today, Feast World Kitchen hosts a different chef family each day, all from refugee or immigrant backgrounds. They prepare authentic dishes from Afghanistan, Syria, Venezuela, Sudan, Burma, and dozens of other countries. For customers, it's a delicious culinary adventure. For the chefs, it's transformative – they might earn $2,000 in a single day, develop entrepreneurial skills, and forge meaningful connections in their new community.
Beyond the restaurant, Feast operates a drop-in program helping newcomers navigate housing, healthcare, employment, and other essentials. Community health workers, many former refugees themselves, provide culturally sensitive support. The result is a comprehensive approach to refugee resettlement built around food and hospitality.
In an era of increasing hostility toward immigrants, Feast demonstrates a radically different approach – what Carper calls being "pro-human." Their model replaces traditional charity dynamics with mutual hospitality, recognizing that refugees bring valuable skills, knowledge, and cultural gifts. Through something as simple as sharing food, they're building bridges in a divided society and showing what's possible when we welcome the stranger.
Hungry for a different way of thinking about food, community, and immigration? This conversation will leave you inspired – and probably craving international cuisine.
Hey and welcome back to the Current. This is Pastor Chris Nafis, and today I am happy to have Ross Carper on the podcast with me. He's a friend that I met in my peacemaking training cohort where we went to Northern Ireland. He's also the co-founder and co-director of Feast World Kitchen in Spokane, washington. I'll let him share the details about what they do. They operate a restaurant and catering service where they empower refugees to share their food with Spokane and with the world, to develop some entrepreneurial skills and do a whole host of other things. You'll hear all about it if you stay tuned to the episode here. It is Well, hey, ross, thank you for taking the time to come and talk to me about all the amazing stuff you're doing with Feast World Kitchen. Appreciate you being here.
Ross Carper:Absolutely Glad to be here.
Chris Nafis:So we met on our trip to Northern Ireland. Absolutely Glad to be here. So we met on our trip to Northern Ireland. Some of our folks know something about the trip that I went on the peacemaking training that we did together and I really love the project that you kind of have like been investing yourself in for how many?
Ross Carper:how many years now? Six years plus, yeah, six and a half.
Chris Nafis:Six and a half years. It's a long time and, uh yeah, feast world kitchen. So for people that have like no idea what that is, could you just like like. What do you? What do you all do?
Ross Carper:absolutely, uh, we are a restaurant and catering company in spokane, washington, uh, but the thing that makes us unique is that we're also a non-profit, that we have a different chef family every day, and they a hundred percent of them are people who came to the U? S as refugees or immigrants of some sort, and so it's all international food. And the people in our programs, uh, in our chef program, are going through job skills, english language skills, career skills, small business incubation, all these different programming things that we do in order for them to, you know, take the next step, whatever that might be, here in the US, as they're building their lives here. Many of the folks we work with had to flee really difficult circumstances like war, famine, violence of some kind, and so they're often, you know, kind of starting from scratch or have started from scratch over the past several years and are just building their lives here in the US. And we also have a drop-in program.
Ross Carper:So we're a restaurant where we do full service.
Ross Carper:You know, there's a bunch of tables in the restaurant and people can come in from the general public and just order food like any other restaurant, but the difference is there's always a couple of tables that are reserved for our drop-in program and that's where you know we're always meeting with folks from those former refugee and immigrant communities to, you know, help them navigate life.
Ross Carper:A lot of times we're working on housing jobs, english language programs, finding healthcare, really just community resource navigation and care, and the community health workers that work in that program are several of them have lived experience as former refugees and immigrants themselves and speak those languages. So there's overlap between those two things the drop-in program and the chef program. But basically it's a space where we're always, every single day, there's delicious food from around the world being cooked and the family that cooked that food makes a pile of money that day that they use in addition to the other training and programming, to build their lives or their businesses or go back to school or whatever it is. And then, yeah, then there's all kinds of other navigation and support going on and what it really is, you know it boils down to, is it's a network of supportive friendships around food.
Chris Nafis:Yeah, that's so cool. So, like the everything is kind of like the restaurant is like this hub for all these different like branches of things that are happening, including like how the food gets prepared and and then the people who even some of the people who eat the food. So if you're just coming in from the outside, you're just like you're going to a restaurant and you get to eat some delicious food, but then in the background, so like you said, there's a different chef every day.
Ross Carper:Do they have like a day of the week, or is it literally like 365 days, 365 chefs, or how does that work? No, that's a good question. We have usually about maybe 30 or so who are active at that stage of the program where they're featured in the restaurant as a chef. So they usually cook every like six weeks or so. We're open Wednesday through Sunday for lunch and dinner, so yeah, it's kind of a rotation. They'll cook maybe 12 to 25 times as a featured chef in the restaurant before graduating into the next stage. Yeah, and oftentimes they're just launching their own business, whether that's a restaurant. That that's pretty rare because restaurants are really difficult and expensive and risky and all those things. But we have had a few do that. But many of them launch catering and pop-up events businesses, uh, that they continue to grow as like a side hustle income to continue to to make extra money. Yeah, cause, uh, life is expensive here in the U S, so I don't know if you've noticed that.
Chris Nafis:Yeah, Uh, I, I, I have noticed. Um, yes, yeah, so do they? Are they when they come in and cook? Are they cooking Like, do they make their own menu? You know what I mean or do you guys have like a standard menu that they come in and learn?
Ross Carper:They come.
Chris Nafis:They're like, we're gonna cook these foods probably from, like, wherever they're from, and yeah, could you maybe say a little more about that?
Ross Carper:yeah, absolutely so. They love. I mean it's it's a point of pride for for everyone to share a little bit of who they are, where they're from, and food is the way that. You know our chefs do that and you know a lot. A lot of people love to do that, you know, even if it's regional, like, oh, I'm from the. You know a lot of people love to do that. You know, even if it's regional like, oh, I'm from the South, you know, I do this amazing barbecue or whatever, like we do that here.
Ross Carper:But people have a ton of pride in the food that they bring from their home culture and so we do work with them to build their own menu and we sort of encourage them like you know, what would you cook if it was, like your daughter's wedding back in you know Sudan or something? And so that helps spark that, the creativity for them to really share the best of their home culture and what they're good at cooking. And usually it's a pretty small menu. You know we have maybe a couple appetizers, a couple entrees, one of which will be vegan, one of which will be gluten-free, maybe a couple of desserts, maybe they have a special drink or tea or something that they like to share, and that's it.
Ross Carper:And so you walk in and the menu has. You know, here's the eight things from Afghanistan that you could try today, and the family is excited to cook that. And there's some friendly competition. You know, like, who has the best shawarma from the middle East? You know who has the best uh, samosas or sambusas, or you know. So there's hopefully, you know, usually it doesn't get too too heated that competition but people actually yeah no, I mean the opposite.
Ross Carper:you know, uh, a lot of times people are helping one another out where, if it, you know, if it's not your day cooking, you might have, you know, a relationship with an other chef through the program and you're jumping in, uh, to be sort of a support staff person for them that day. So it's, it's pretty cool how that network works, yeah.
Chris Nafis:Yeah, and they're like getting to see kind of how a restaurant runs here in the us and you know, learning all these entrepreneurial skills and thinking creatively and uh, and then getting some yeah like maybe even mastering some recipes, maybe that they could use for catering or wherever else absolutely.
Ross Carper:Yep, yeah, all of the above, that's right, and some of them owned restaurants back in, you know in there.
Chris Nafis:Yeah, they know what they're doing. Yeah.
Ross Carper:Yeah, and, but the regulatory environment is different and you know the access to ingredients is different. So you were just, we just help them navigate those things so that they can get what they need to have a successful day.
Chris Nafis:Yeah, I love it and I'm sure you get to eat a lot of delicious food Like, like, do you eat there every day?
Ross Carper:Oh man, I mean, it's tough because I often I don't want to be rude, you know, but sometimes I feel guilty about it. Honestly, chris, we know each other well enough that you know I have that, you know, a little bit of that Catholic upbringing guilt in my veins. Know a little bit of that Catholic upbringing guilt in my veins. But, you know, oftentimes I'm like tapping away on my computer.
Ross Carper:I'm on my back porch at home right now, which is about 10 blocks away from the restaurant, and so I'm often just doing whatever paperwork permits fundraising, like you know, nonprofit management stuff and I do work in the restaurant a few hours a week, for sure. But, um, and at the beginning I was, you know, myself and the other people who started this were in there all the time, and not even you know getting paid or anything. Sometimes I'll sneak in there to like grab a checkbook or something, and then it's like you know, someone, one of our chefs, is like oh, here's this giant plate of food, like I really want you to try this, and and so, yeah, I have to watch myself or else I'll just gain a ton of weight, because it really is, you know it's, it's fantastic, and, and that's one of the one of the perks, for sure, of working at Feast.
Chris Nafis:Well, so you co-founded this, right? Um, how? How did you come up with the idea for like this project and like? How did it? How did it start out? You know cause? You tell the story a little bit.
Ross Carper:Yeah, and you can cut me off anytime because I I can get launched on this one and sometimes people are like falling asleep when I'm telling the story, so I'll try to make it the brief version, but it's really, it's a real like expression of this neighborhood.
Ross Carper:So I used to work at First Presbyterian Church, which is kind of one of the most historic Protestant churches in Spokane, and that place has been that's. I attend there, I'm a part of that community. But I used to work there in youth ministry and then, after you know this was maybe almost 10 years ago I decided to move into a role they had posted a job in, more like community engagement, like helping connect the church with the community, particularly marginalized members of our community service. You know, conversations about social justice, discussion forums, connectedness with nonprofits who we really overlap missionally with, and I love that kind of work and sort of in the missional space. And that was a halftime job. So what I did was I figured, oh yeah, of course I'll start a breakfast food truck to make the other half of my living workout, which when I thought of that idea I thought it was going to be a lot easier than it actually was.
Chris Nafis:But just like a regular, just like you were running the food truck selling the food, just a side gig for yourself.
Ross Carper:Yeah, so I did. I started this. It was called the compass breakfast wagon and it was a breakfast food truck and I operated it here. In started this. It was called the Compass Breakfast Wagon and it was a breakfast food truck and I operated it here in the neighborhood. So when I say the neighborhood, I mean the lower South Hill of Spokane, which means nothing to most of the people listening to this, I'm sure. But yeah, it's a pretty central area in our city. Spokane is not the most diverse place in the world but this neighborhood has a lot of diversity in it because there's a lot of kind of older, somewhat run down apartment complexes or old kind of mansions that are cut up into a bunch of apartments in the neighborhood and a fair amount of those apartments are where folks who came here as refugees have their first place.
Ross Carper:Some of the landlords connect with those resettlement agencies and my job at the church actually my favorite and one of the bigger parts of my job was at that time forming teams of volunteers that can help welcome those families to the neighborhood and to our city and to the US and just help with navigation stuff. Everyone has a caseworker if they come here through the refugee program, but those caseworkers are overloaded and there's a specific list of things that they're supposed to work on. But you know, families need a lot more support than that. You know, just looking at the papers that come home from your kid's school is is really difficult, like I'm. I try to imagine myself doing that if those papers were written in, you know, dari or Persian or something you know, and it's just like what do you recycle and what is really important? You know, yeah, that's where those volunteer teams come in. And so at that time again, this is like 10 years ago I'm in this position where I'm running this food truck in the neighborhood on the weekends and during the week. My job is to connect, you know, and part of my job is to connect volunteers, you know, who want to be about that Matthew 25 marching order of when I was a stranger. You welcomed me and I think that in our world it's like a really pertinent call, particularly on my life. You know, from my faith perspective, that gives me something to do, you know, because we have more displaced people in the world than any time in recorded history and you know, sadly that number has continued to expand since, you know, in those years hugely.
Ross Carper:So I'm doing this work, you know, with these teams of volunteers and I'm being a food entrepreneur on the other side, and then those worlds kind of collided in a bunch of ways. You know, in part because these volunteer teams that I was a part of, we would be sitting in people's apartments and hanging out, and then you know it's like, yeah, it's like food would start coming out of the kitchen, usually about two hours into the gathering, where the Americans are like, oh, time to go home. You know, because they have a little bit of a. Americans usually have a little shorter of a social clock than a lot of folks from around the world who tend to linger in community a little bit longer. That's when the food would start coming out of the kitchen. And then everyone's like, well, okay, they made this incredible meal, we're going to stay. And then it kind of is like that's where friendships start happening. It's not just, hey, we're helping you fill out some paperwork or get a practice for your driver's license test or something, it's more sitting around and really connecting over food.
Ross Carper:And that idea led to and I won't tell the whole story because it's too long, but that was part of our origin story with Beast World Kitchen is that was happening a lot, and then people were asking me how they could start a small food business. Many of these families already were running small food businesses out of their apartments, you know, like selling 20 plates of food on a Saturday night to students from Saudi Arabia who really wanted something that tasted like home but were here at the university nearby, you know. So these are, you know, kind of under the radar food businesses, that. But for people who wanted to scale it up and do it legally, with commercial kitchens and stuff, they often, you know, were asking how I navigated all that with my food truck and and so those conversations, yeah, just led to this idea of having a commercial kitchen that would be a shared cooperative space and a nonprofit, where it could be like this hub where people can cook and earn significant income, sharing food from their home culture, and that that would be a chance for more to happen there too.
Ross Carper:So this really old, really terrible condition restaurant came up for sale across the street from my church in early 2019. And, yeah, a bunch of us in the neighborhood and in the church were like, hey, you know, someone should really start something like this and throughout 2019, that someone should start this kind of became. Well, maybe we should start that. And by the you know, by the grace of God, I have no idea how this happened, but we pitched, we, you know, we formed a 501c3. A lot of our board members are still with us from that original board. Some of them look like me and are from Spokane, washington, born and raised, and others are former refugees themselves from all over the world, but really all of our original board is from the neighborhood.
Ross Carper:You know, from a few from my church and a few people of different faiths and different ethnicities and backgrounds who just came together and started refining this idea.
Ross Carper:And we pitched it to the church to see if they would be interested in buying that restaurant building and renting it to this newly formed nonprofit Cause yeah, we didn't have any way to get a mortgage or something and, to my eternal surprise, they actually said yes.
Ross Carper:So that's that's kind of to make a long story kind of long. That's how that came together. And my co-director, maisa, she's from Jordan and so she was doing some catering and doing some food business and she lived two blocks away from where I was operating my food truck and another neighbor was doing this pop-up curry business across the street from that. So within this two-block radius on the lower South Hill in Spokane, the three of us were the core of those people who really had a desire to support our neighbors who came here from around the world and are trying to get their lives set up and working really hard to do that, and who are into food and and bringing community together around food and and that was kind of the core team as we continued to get going and, yeah, we did a Kickstarter and end of 2019. And then, and then after, yeah, right at the end of 2019, we did our first catering and then which?
Chris Nafis:is the perfect time to start a restaurant right at the beginning of 2020 right yeah, especially a catering company yeah, catering company large events yeah, gotta have really big events.
Ross Carper:um, so, yeah, in march all of the catering business went away and we pivoted quickly to pop you just take out, you know, like one we started with one night a week and it was like no contact.
Ross Carper:Take out, you know, we were all like hazmat suit, like you know, masked up, bringing food out and putting in people's trunks of their cars and stuff during early COVID time and, to be honest, like we, we sold a lot of food during that time because takeout was like the only fun thing you could do and people were really excited to like, you know, to do something at home. That was like supporting the community. And, um, we would make these little sheets and we still do, but at the time we would make little sheets with like QR codes or like links to YouTube videos where people can like listen to the music of that culture while they're having the meal, and here's a little paragraph about the family and what they when they arrived and what they're up to. And so it became a community builder, even during that time when we could hardly be together. But that actually gave us the time to remodel the dining room anyways, because we, you know, we had gutted it. We weren't ready to have customers inside there anyways, whether it was COVID or not.
Ross Carper:So so yeah, we went from one night a week to like two nights a week and then maybe and then three, and then we added some lunches and then we built out that fall a patio dining area so people could like come and actually eat and kind of open air outside. So and then now we're, yeah, open five days a week with interior and exterior dining, and we cater probably like five to ten events per week as well.
Chris Nafis:So, yeah, it's crazy times yeah and yeah, I mean you said about six years and you know, through the pandemic and you've got this really beautiful thing happening now.
Ross Carper:Every culture has feasts, you know every religion, every faith has, like you know, the feast of St, whatever, or like it's a wedding feast, or you know it's like there's it's just a word that does cross cultures and and it implies celebration and abundance, and so we just thought that that that would be a word that embodies some of what we're trying to do.
Chris Nafis:Yeah, and you may. I mean, you've mentioned people. You've mentioned people groups from like many different places already just in this like little conversation how many? I don't really know the refugee kind of culture there in Spokane, but like how, how many? Where are people from? You know what I mean, like what's the, what are the demographics I guess of? Uh, yeah, your area.
Ross Carper:Yeah, so I think we've worked with people from about 40 different countries. Hey, um, of those 160 families, we've covered maybe a little over 40 countries. And you know, primarily it really it really it just depends again, like sadly, on what depends on what's going on in the world. And people are really on the move. You know, since we, since we started Feast, more and more people have been displaced by violence. You know, afghanistan fell to the Taliban and hundreds of Afghan folks ended up, through different government programs, ended up in Sp Spokane and many other places. And, of course, russia invaded Ukraine. So we have a lot of Ukrainians who came a few years ago because of that. And these are people we know that we wouldn't know if they hadn't experienced that trauma of being forced to flee because it just wasn't safe, because it just wasn't safe. But you know, other refugees are like people from Iraq who worked with the US forces there, you know, in some capacity, so it wasn't safe for them to stay. Or the situation in Darfur, sudan, has become the worst humanitarian crisis again in the world. You know, just like it was in the early part of this century, and so we've had a lot of folks from that area who have come here, but, yeah, syria, of course, and then definitely, like South and Central America, venezuela, colombia, el Salvador, you know we have folks from all over the place. And then some folks came as immigrants of another sort, you know, not necessarily through the refugee resettlement program, and so we've had folks from many, many other places who came here through some means and are building their lives here in the US. So, yeah, we've the populations have really kind of ebbed and flowed based on those world events, but, yeah, we're thankful to know all of them. You know it's it's a joy to get to know people from around the world and and again, like Feast is not necessarily a Christian nonprofit, but that was certainly my motivation and and there's a lot of folks on our, you know, on our board or in our volunteer base or customer base who you know, who support because of a desire to live out that, that calling that I mentioned, um, that is all throughout scripture, but it's just, it feels like now is the time, um, and it felt like this at the time too, it felt like immigrants in the U? S and in our community were being targeted by folks who want to instill fear or narratives about them, racism being a big part of that. And yeah, you know, it just felt like we need, we need a positive space to to create community that crosses those cultural boundaries.
Ross Carper:And food is kind of that ultimate, like the thing that brings people together more than more than most things, you know. So, so there's something powerful about food, you know. It's like the. Sometimes we say like the table is the ultimate playing level playing field. You know it's like we're all, we're all together, like the table is the ultimate playing level playing field. You know it's like we're all, we're all together around the table, kind of like those original, you know like volunteer groups that I was working with. You know we're helping, we're doing, you know we're serving, you know we're volunteering.
Chris Nafis:And then it kind of transitions into something deeper when you get around the table with folks yeah, like make space, it's like this sensory experience and it's like a yeah, there's food is so deeply tied to like kind of culture and language and like place, you know, and so, yeah, there's like that sharing that happens over a meal. That's goes. I feel like it really goes beyond words. You know what I mean. Like you get you get this like full-on, embodied experience of like experiencing something together, but then also like something that someone made and also someone grew, and something you know what I mean. Like all the steps that bring things to the table are like so much of like what make, and then it's literally the food is what makes us who we are Right. So, yeah, I love it.
Ross Carper:Yeah, we talk about mutual hospitality. Yeah, I love it. Yeah, we talk about mutual hospitality.
Ross Carper:That's one of our organization's values is yes, like you know, people who look like me, who are involved with us, we want to extend hospitality to the United States, and with all the warmth and love and friendliness and support that we can, but in our space, we're also like I am a recipient of hospitality right, um, all the time there, and it's and it's this mutuality of of we're supporting one another, you know, and helping each other out and I receive a lot in that work as well and and so that's how we want it to feel is that a sense of mutual, uh, working working side by side with with one another to help each other take the next steps.
Ross Carper:You know, for me it might be taking new steps in education and learning about different cultures, or facing some biases that I might have, or, or, you know, learning about food, or learning how to cook some different types of food, or whatever it is, um, but, uh, for others, it's a step of, like learning how to navigate and and support their family and in this environment. So, yeah, it's uh, yeah, it's pretty fun.
Chris Nafis:Well, I love the entrepreneurial model of it because there's like, yeah, like that dual hospitality thing I mean for, uh, at our church, that's been an important thing for us to you know. As you know, we have a lot of folks on the street and there are people that are often most of the world just looks at and thinks they have nothing to offer the world. But when you invite people in to share their gifts and their giftedness, which everybody has, um, there's something so like empowering about that and dignifying and like the, the ways that we can serve together and not just be like have this charity, sort of dynamic of like we give you everything, but like when it's a, when it's more mutual and relational, there's the back and forth, like there's so much more potential for meaningful, deep relationships to form and and for people to, yeah, like you said, meet each other on the level playing field of the table, like I love. I love how you put that, and I also think there's something about the way that are like. The kind of the job culture of the United States is so like corporate now that everybody's expected to just kind of like fit in and get a job working at McDonald's or Walmart or you know what I mean, and you kind of have this like huge organization that does everything, these certain ways, and you just kind of fit into this slot and you do the job expected of you.
Chris Nafis:But when you're doing like entrepreneurial work which, like you're doing and you've did before, you even started this program, you know my Rachel, my wife is, you know, started and runs a small business. We even started this program. You know my rachel, my wife is, you know, started and runs a small business. We planted a church. You know you just kind of there's this like autonomy in it that it's hard to describe. It's like a responsibility and a weight that you always carry. But there's also, like this inherent like freedom in it that um is so good. You know what I mean like, have you seen that with the folks Like, are they and you can kind of create your own way? And maybe people that wouldn't fit so well in the corporate culture of wherever like they, can make their own way where, like this, this like thing that offers you a living, it matches your gifts and your time and your rhythms. And you know what I mean Is that are you, am I imposing things, or do you? Are you seeing this too in what you're doing?
Ross Carper:Oh, absolutely yeah, being an entrepreneur, you know, starting a business or some sort of like self-employment income, is so hard but it also does have, you know, some real upsides, you know, for folks who maybe traditional employment isn't something they can really do. Right now we work with a lot of single moms, you know, who have. You know some of them have like six kids and have been through a ton of stuff and are working through all that and you know they're one day a month or one day every six weeks cooking a feast. You know they might make like two thousand dollars worth of income that day. It's a big day, yeah, but um, that doesn't happen if they're like cleaning hotel rooms, uh, five days a week, six days a week, for you know and scraping together some way for their kids to be cared for at that time. And so you know that kind of work in a big spurt every once in a while is something that you can do as an entrepreneur. That you're not. You're just not able to do that as a hourly wage worker. So we also, you know, we try to make sure that people are finding those steady kind of bread and butter employment situations if they desire them and if they can do that. But you know, just life situations and different things, it's a great way for people to kind of fast forward their, you know, kind of their settlement process here, to make, you know, significant income and to have it be something that they can scale themselves.
Ross Carper:Just on Saturday, I was with this father and son team that these guys are awesome. They're from Syria, yusuf is the dad and Hamsa is the son, and he's like 16, I think and they're always working together and they owned restaurants in Syria and in Egypt. So they had to leave Syria because of the war and you know, they found themselves in Egypt and he opened a restaurant there too. You know, these guys did it. They actually bought suits for the occasion. I was like, you know, it's a wedding, so maybe like, wear a polo shirt or something under your, uh, under your apron, and these guys show up in suits. I mean, they cooked all day and then they, um, you know, once the food was kind of ready in the warming units and stuff they're like okay, and then they went and changed into their nice, these nice suits that they had ordered online for that occasion, you know, and and they made great money that day.
Ross Carper:But you know, yusuf the dad, he, he was working in sort of a manufacturing situation until recently and, uh, and he's been scaling up what he does as a food entrepreneur to the point that it makes more sense for him to focus on that than working in a factory. So, and it's, of course, more aligned with what he loves and the joy that that he exudes when he's cooking. That's true of the many, many, many of the folks we work with. You can tell how much joy they have. But you know, that's just another day in the life of feasts.
Ross Carper:As we I showed up to help, you know, make sure this wedding was set up properly and I, I certainly didn't have to be there at all because they had it completely dialed in and my main job was unlocking the commercial kitchen that they use to cook that and, uh, check in on them, and it was a really, really great day, and that kind of thing happens all the time. The income from catering a wedding for a hundred and some people is significant, you know, and they source the ingredients and did the work and did everything properly, with health and safety and and all the rules of the road for running a small business, and, um, and they earned it. So one of my favorite things is writing that, writing those checks.
Chris Nafis:Yeah, well, and they and like again, I don't want to harp on it too much, but like having the freedom to kind of do their own thing with that which you know. I mean, obviously, if you're catering someone's dinner, like it's not like you just make whatever you want, you know, but like there's some, you're doing it right and that allows it to be like a family thing. So him and his son, you know, you get hired at wherever at the hotel chain, like they're not necessarily going to like hire your son also, and you get to work together.
Ross Carper:You know what I mean.
Chris Nafis:Like there's, just like this there's this like there's something different about it, where you get to be really who you are and part of your, your people, and do the thing that you love doing and that you get to share with the world. That's like so cool in that and then, yeah, like the pride in it. And uh, yeah, the suits. Did you have a suit or did? Were you underdressed?
Ross Carper:I was completely underdressed. I left because I was.
Chris Nafis:I was embarrassed um, but no I left because or you got thrown out, like jesus, you know like you don't have your wedding clothes on, yeah nice uh bible reference there gotta get a bible reference in there, if we can.
Ross Carper:You know no, they didn't need me there. So I I had a, you know, I had a button-up collared shirt on and in an apron and but I just, you know, I was just kind of there to just kind of say hello because I knew that they had it and help get something set up. But but yeah, I mean, it's just a part of their this, this couple who got married, this was at, like, the Spokane central public library. They got, they got married on the top floor of our brand new, nicely remodeled library and it was just cool and you know, that's a memory for them and their guests that they'll always have.
Ross Carper:And they, they wrote that review today. That was like we were just like our, our guests were so thankful for chef Yusuf and Hamza and the service and the food. And you know, our wedding planner does you know 30 weddings a year or whatever and she said she's never had food that good at a wedding. So it's like, yeah, good job guys, awesome. I feel like Yusuf's going to get another wedding soon, probably with a wedding. So it's like, yeah good job, guys.
Chris Nafis:Awesome, like he's going to get another wedding soon, probably with that wedding.
Ross Carper:Exactly, yeah, well, seriously, and those are, those are relationships that like as vendors, like that could that could end up being a huge income source for him, for sure, yeah man, that's so cool.
Chris Nafis:How many like do people? What's a typical path for someone that like comes through your program? Do they graduate? Do they keep working with you kind of long-term, or what does that look like?
Ross Carper:Yeah, we never. We're not very good at like kicking people out, um, but we do have like a limited number of times when you can be a featured chef in the restaurant and then then you're on like the sub list for last minute cancellations and things. You're always on the catering list If someone requests you for catering because they love your food, and we really do have a lot of customers who start following specific families as they go through the program and then it's like, oh, my daughter's graduation party, I really want these guys to come out and, if possible, possible, we make that happen. So so, yeah, you're always part of the feast family, but you know, we want to make sure we're moving people through enough to give opportunities for new families and new cultures to be represented at the restaurant, which is hard. It's hard to say goodbye and then and then some people do launch their own things.
Ross Carper:We've had a few restaurants that have spun off and are doing well, and so, yeah, that's happening too, but we are not necessarily guiding people toward that specific outcome because of how risky and difficult it is lifestyle-wise and financially, and so for some they want to do it, and immigrant families have always succeeded owning restaurants in the U? S. So we never want to say no for people or anything but part. It's just as big of a win If someone in our program realizes they really don't want to do this every day and take on this massive like risk and debt and, you know, rent this place for $9,000 a month.
Ross Carper:And you know um, and say, you know, maybe I'll just kind of cater as a side hustle but go back to school to be a, a nurse or something. You know, um, and we'd love to facilitate that too, you know. So a lot of people think of our program like as a restaurant incubator. But we are much more open-ended than that because the point is, you know we're, we want to incubate flourishing, not just restaurants. You know, restaurants is that's a, that's one outcome of many and it's a really low percentage of folks who are going to be able to do that and but some do and some will and that's that's great. But like, like, if there's some stability and skills and connections that they build, that leads to other opportunities. We see that all the time and that's much more common.
Chris Nafis:Yeah, not everything's fair. Like sometimes, like a season in your life is as important as you know, getting to the next stage or whatever. You know it doesn't have to be this thing that I tried for a bit is what I do forever, um, but like as you're getting your feet under you in a new place, like having that experience and the friendships and the you know because you're I imagine a lot of these people are coming out of like very traumatizing situations where they're facing direct threat of violence right and so as you have time to like, just just kind of settle yourself, your mind, your nervous system.
Chris Nafis:Having like that community, I feel like would be invaluable.
Ross Carper:And not only was the situation that she came from violent, like her marriage was also violent, and she worked with us in our program in a variety of different ways, including, you know, as a part-time janitor for part of her time with us, but now she's working full-time at a hospital Navigation that she's gotten from our drop-in program, like support workers particularly Robin who has walked alongside with her like okay, here's the job you want to do. Like let's think about the English that you need to gain. That here's this apps online program that we bought licenses to so you can learn that specific vocational English. And just one foot in front of the other.
Ross Carper:And she's in a place of stability that, like I mean, I can't even I don't even want to share other details just in terms of identifying people, but like not only the violence, but like specific, like one of her children, a lot of health, a lot of health problems too, and and so, just like gosh, the, the strength that that woman has is absolutely I don't know how to even imagine or describe what that must be like to be her she still comes in and organizes our, our like we have this like external, like storage container where we keep a lot of supplies for, like, takeout boxes and catering supplies and stuff and like, part of her thing was organizing that and she just comes in and does it, even though she works full-time at a hospital, like, like, and she's a single mom.
Ross Carper:She just wants to give back and like the, the friendships we have with her um, and she's a single mom. She just wants to give back and like the, the friendships we have with her um and and a hundred other people like that, um are worth so much Um, but but yeah, it's pretty joyful to see people move, move from one point to another and and the friendships that happen along the way.
Chris Nafis:Yeah, yeah, yeah, and she probably wants to stay just connected, you know, and yeah, it's awesome, I love it. So I want to ask also. So, like when we were in northern ireland, we were getting news from back home. Part of the news was that a restaurant in san diego had been raided with like a really strong uh, bona fortuna, san diego people listening to this probably know the restaurant and you know it's one of our favorite places and uh, and then the la stuff was going on where, like the raids were getting really intense in la and there was a huge community pushback. They ended up calling in marines and stuff.
Chris Nafis:Um, there was also some things happening in spokane where, like there were some people in or near your restaurant that were also sort of getting arrested by ice. Well, what's happening? Because it was interesting, because we we there was a bunch of spokane people on the trip with us and so I was hearing about the spokane thing and I got home and I was like it was spokane like in the news that did people hear. Hear about it and not really hadn't been national news, which makes me think this stuff's probably happening all over the place, but it's only getting sort of national attention in a few places what, what happened and what's going on there now.
Ross Carper:Yeah, yeah, I mean I I had to kind of step away from our training at Corey Mila for an afternoon just just to touch base with our team and make sure we like just see how people are doing and think about our training. If, if ice was to show up at our restaurant and they, they have not yet done that. Uh, that we know of Um and they haven't, you know, identify themselves there ever. But we have a. You know we've done a lot of practicing and training for that.
Ross Carper:But but, like you said, these two young guys from Venezuela were arrested here in Spokane while we were there and this set off a pretty massive protest and I didn't actually know it at that time. But a day or so after that I found out that these guys actually are part of the English language school housed within my church, first Presbyterian, and that you know that we partner with that English school like every day. You know these, these guys, hadn't like engaged with Feast as chefs or anything, but it's just like they're very much in the ecosystem of of support that we were a part of and and doing everything the right way. You know, came through TPS, temporary protected status that has been rolled back by the current administration, but they had also sought asylum and filed those claims, and so that's a form of relief also for immigrants who are, or become undocumented. So these guys were documented because they came through the specific government program that has now been canceled, and so now they all of a sudden become undocumented.
Ross Carper:I'm not commenting on these guys' specific case because I don't know it as well, but just in general, that's happening to a lot of folks, particularly from those places like Venezuela and Haiti and a lot of those countries in that part of the world, but others too. You know, there's a while we were in Northern Ireland. There's a travel ban instituted that includes a lot of other regions as well.
Ross Carper:So yeah there's a major protest downtown. People were trying to, you know, physically impede the ice vehicles, you know, and it stayed peaceful, like a lot of what we were studying in Northern Ireland was peaceful, you know, nonviolent, de-escalation, and trying to be present in a way that is, as a peacemaker while still being a justice maker too, and I think that was the posture of the vast majority of the folks that were down at this protest. But then it got. I think a couple of people slashed the tires of a vehicle and that kind of got things going into a more physical. When property is damaged, then the local police will engage in terms of, like their measures that they take, and so that happened. And then there's tear they take, and so that that happened. And then there's, you know, tear gas and all the different things, flashbang stuff. And then, yeah, the mayor instituted, instituted a curfew in our city that night, you know, it was just like it kind of escalated and it wasn't like probably everyone in the nation knew about it, but for that night it was a national news story because of that curfew and, yeah, just the eruption of, you know people, the way people are feeling, being very erupting in the middle of our city. So, in response to what feels like a totally unjust abduction of a couple of members of our community who are by no means gang members or violent criminals or anything like that.
Ross Carper:So, with the people in our programs, there's a whole spectrum of their experiences as immigrants and there probably are more undocumented folks than I even know about who help with the cooking and things like that. We have a certain amount of documentation we have to do, but we certainly don't go beyond that for obvious reasons, and we just want to be about be pro-human and that's like our friend Jer, who led our global immersion experience along with Oshita. The idea of being pro-human is, for some reason that's counter-cultural in our society right now. For some reason that's countercultural in our society right now, chris, and that's something to lament and to try to stand against in the ways that we can. But yeah, there's people who are afraid, even if they're totally legally documented and like perfect status. There's people who are just afraid that they're going to get picked up, because it doesn't seem like these cowboys really care about that sometimes, or that's the perception, or something happened that they heard about to someone who has a green card or who has citizenship even, or it's just maybe less of that and more just the sadness of knowing that their families might not be able to come here and join them as immigrants, because a lot of these programs are completely shut down.
Ross Carper:Um, and I've talked a lot about refugees. Uh, the refugee resettlement admission program is, it's not a thing in the us right now and that's that's. Uh, yeah, with the times that we live in and the 120 some million people who are displaced by violence around the world, that we see feels like a tragedy that we're not able to be part of. Be I think people often think about people who are getting arrested, families being split up, all the direct impacts.
Chris Nafis:But I think about all of the fear that is instilled in everybody else and all of the stress that communities have to bear not knowing what the future is going to be. As you see the administration building up more and more detention centers and adding to the ICE agent payrolls and just kind of gearing up for what seems like a more massive deportation process and definitely promising that to the community, which voted for this, you know. I just think about all of the people who are kind of living with, like the dread of possibility, even if it never comes. You know what I mean. Like especially after having to having come from somewhere else where you left for a reason you know, like maybe you already felt unwanted, unwelcome, under threat there, and then now coming here and finding yourself once again in a position of like two people will want me here and uh, am I in danger again myself here and am I going to get thrown back into a dangerous situation? Um, it just um, I don't know, it's just, it's, it's, it's not good.
Ross Carper:Yeah, I mean, sadly, there's a lot of folks that we work with who this kind of stuff feels really pretty familiar to them and, like you said, like some of them came here to get away from that, like, maybe their husband was a political protester in some place, where, if you are protesting, the strong man in power you could have a van show up and take you away. And the beauty of America is supposed to be that that's not how it works, right? Well, that's how it does work for some people here now, and, and so I think we need to try to figure out how to, you know, keep standing up and saying that we want to be about something we want to strive to be, the thing that America has always striven for and never actually fully embodied, which is that all people are created equal. You know so. Anyway, I could go off on a civics lesson, but I'm not going to do that. I just think you know you work with a lot of folks who are, you know, without housing, and the scapegoating that goes on for that, for those communities of people, is reinforced by leaders in your city and in your, in my city and in in our society to say, oh, these people, blah, blah, blah. You know the cities used to be so much better because there weren't. You know, there's just all of these talking points that people continue to rehearse to. I don't know if they're being taught, and they're.
Ross Carper:You know, this is the mindset, instead of being a little more curious about what it might be like to be in that situation and a little more creative, the way your church is about trying to offer some different, you know, some different sorts of responses, I would say, that are aligned with the love of God. You know, and the same is true for refugees and immigrants. It's when you're taught your whole life to say, oh, those people, they're the ones taking all the jobs, or they're dirty, or they're blah, blah, blah. You know whatever it is. Oh, and you know, I used to go out and all I heard was English, and now I can't go anywhere without hearing you know whatever language.
Ross Carper:And I just think we need to teach our kids some different narratives about because, aside from policies and people being picked up by ICE and things like that, there's an emboldening of people's behaviors in schools and in public, when the leadership is reinforcing that. So, kids, that we, our chefs and other people in our programs are sharing with us the things that are being said to their kids at school that two years ago weren't being said. Because you know we're just at a heightened place right now and and you know kids will repeat those things, um, if that's what they're hearing at home. And anyway, I just, um, it occurred to me thinking about your work and the communities that you hang out with and, yeah, that there's much to be done in terms of the, the scapegoating and the prejudice.
Chris Nafis:Yeah, I mean there's as I've talked to. So, like we've been doing this podcast, I'm talking to people who are doing all kinds of different work and the parallels are just always there. You know what I mean, and I think that's part of what's fun about even just doing this, having these conversations. For me is that it's inspiring for people in our context to think, even in parallel ways, about like, oh yeah, that that dynamic that's true for the immigrant community in Spokane is also true for the unhoused community in San Diego and all that cool thing that they're doing there. Like maybe something similar could happen, even if it looks a little different because the context is different where we are. And I mean that's part of how like I think the witness works. I mean you're, even if it looks a little different because the context is different where we are. And I mean that's part of how, like I think the witness works.
Chris Nafis:I mean your, your work, your the restaurant, feast World Kitchen and all of the things that are are happening there is like a witness to the rest of us. I think both to to countering that narrative that you're talking about around immigration and refugees, and and like diversity, I guess, in general. And I mean I just want to say like well, just think about the food you know great to have, like food, don't we all from different places? And if we kick everyone out who knows how to make great food, then what are we? I mean that sounds kind of silly, but like that's like all of life, right? I mean I wish we could hear different languages being spoken in our places and be like this is awesome, like there's people that have all this different wisdom and knowledge and experience that they bring with them from their culture and from their giftedness and from the arts and from all the things that happen, and celebrate it, instead of being like, oh you know, we got to get back to. You know English only, or whatever. It's so silly to me.
Ross Carper:I know.
Chris Nafis:Frustrating. But like that's, you all are witnessing to a different truth about what it means to live in community across cultural and ethnic and national barriers, and and it's awesome, I love it and hopefully you know we can find ways in our context to do the same around homelessness yeah, I don't know Any well, I wanted to ask this question. I'm just looking at my notes see what else, so I don't miss anything. This is totally out of left field at this point.
Ross Carper:Does.
Ross Carper:Spokane have like food that it's known for, like what's local spokanean food or like, oh man, I mean, this time of year huckleberries are a a prime example of like an inland northwest food, because those are like native to the mountains here and they're, of course, delicious, and so that's not a culinary. I mean, chefs do a ton of stuff with huckleberries. In fact, one of our chefs at Peace World Kitchen is currently on the national TV show, the PBS Great American Recipe, and she is she's from Thailand and she's one of our chefs. We're very proud of her. So I'm getting this plug in the Great American Recipe she's on Suwannee. Uh, we had a big watch party on Friday night at the restaurant. But she, she does this. Uh, she's featuring huckleberries and some of the like dishes she's making on the show because you know that's emblematic of this region here, um, but but yeah, you know, in terms of food diversity, I do feel like Feast is providing a strong service to the community because you know, we're not a big city and in many ways that's why we have a fair amount of refugee resettlement when that program is operating and I hope it will in the future. We're a medium-sized city with enough infrastructure and schools and jobs and universities and hospitals, you know, so people can kind of get the services they need but and have a job and stuff.
Ross Carper:But we're not such a big city that is super unaffordable and and uh expensive to live here comparatively. But you know there's not a market, probably a big enough market, for some of the food types that we serve at the East. We have Thai restaurants, of course, but there's not maybe a big enough market for like a true like Burmese restaurant. But people will show up when that family cooks every six weeks or whatever, and they'll have. You know there'll be some Thai food on the menu, but there'll be some stuff that's like really really unique to Burma, myanmar, you know so anyway. So yeah, there is. It's not the most diverse place, but I, when I had my breakfast food truck, it's not like I had a lot of like Northwest food. Like salmon is like a traditional thing, but like the salmon don't get here because of the dams anymore. So you know so. But yeah, it's a, it's's a, it's a good place. You got to come visit here chris, I know I need.
Chris Nafis:I have some family out there.
Ross Carper:I gotta get that's right, all right. Well, if you come into the restaurant, it's one percent off for you. Yes, one percent. So that's a little discount I wanted to offer you. I appreciate that.
Chris Nafis:Yeah, thank you, yeah, mention r Ross's name and you get one percent off at Feast World Kitchen. Last last question I'll let you go. Maybe this is negatively reinforcing some of the competitive things we were talking about earlier, but what are what are like top three dishes that have been made at Feast World Kitchen by these chefs? Give us a couple.
Ross Carper:I mean, it's all subjective, but some of my favorite things are oh, I don't want to get in trouble, that's for sure, but there's a woman who cooks with us from Pakistan. Her name is Zubia. She makes some of the most incredibly delicious and spicy biryani rice with chicken or vegetarian. She knows that my whole family besides me are vegetarian, so she's one of those who will always like, if I walk through the restaurant for five minutes and she's there, she will pack a box of food for me to take home. Nice, and, yeah, the vegetarian biryani with the yogurt, kind of cucumber yogurt right To sauce to cool it off a little bit. And then, yeah, shawarma wraps. That's like the cheeseburger of the Middle East, everybody it, but man, I can't. Even I've grown to really love arepas. Uh, venezuelan or colombian arepas, you know, kind of a cornmeal patty that's either fried or or, or you know kind of sauteed and then split open and filled with delicious meats and cheeses and all the things. But yeah, I can't, I can't, I can't choose. It's all good, it's all good.
Chris Nafis:You got any pupusas.
Ross Carper:Over there we do a little bit. We have some Salvadoran pupusas from time to time, similar to arepas, but really good and unique in their own way.
Chris Nafis:I was in el salvador for a summer and there was like a pupusaria. Basically, the host home of mine was like a pupusaria in the back alley and I ate a lot of pupusas that summer. It was very good, oh man. Anyway, it's awesome. Well, uh, I'm really grateful for your time, ross, really even more grateful for your work and, uh, for your friendship and, as we were saying before, like I, I really hope that we get to continue hanging out from time to time through global immersion or just outside of that.
Chris Nafis:And yeah, it's a, it's inspiring what you're doing and, like I said, I think it's a public witness to counter some of the horrible things that are happening and some of the horrible narratives that are happening and some of the horrible narratives that are coming out around the country. And uh, yeah, man, keep it up and send some food down south and I'll come up, yeah and off uh whatever is being served that day absolutely, just let me know in spokane listeners go and hang out at feast world kitchen and get some delicious food, or if you're getting married there or something.
Ross Carper:Yeah, I mean reach out to me, ross, at feast world kitchen and get some delicious food, or if you're getting married there or something, yeah, I mean, reach out to me, ross, at feast world kitchenorg. Just let me know you're going to be here. I'll give you a better discount than I would give chris. So two percent at least. Thank you, I'm glad to be friends with you too, man.
Chris Nafis:Yeah, I appreciate that um and uh for anybody listening. Thanks for uh hanging out with us. Let us know how you're doing, Talk to us about, talk about this with somebody that you know and give us some feedback. Let us know how podcast is hitting you these days and and be blessed. Thanks, Ross.
Ross Carper:Thank you.
