No one needs to go hungry in Evanston thanks to Heather Bublick and Executive Chef D’Andre Carter, owners of Soul & Smoke restaurant. With the help of volunteers and generous donors, they keep the Evanston Community Fridge, adjacent to their restaurant at 1601 Payne St., stocked with meals. There’s also a food pantry there.
Because the need increases during the winter and over holidays, the couple solicited the help of chef Sarah Stegner, co-owner of Prairie Grass Café in Northbrook, to keep that fridge filled.
The Evanston Community Fridge, one of four fridges in the city, serves an urgent need even though many people think of Evanston as an affluent suburb. Bublick and Carter report that 31% of Evanston’s school population lives in poverty and the city has a large unhoused population.
“During the pandemic we were providing meals to the community,” Bublick said. “We partnered with Evanston Community Foundation and World Central Kitchen. We have done over 250,000 meals over the course of the pandemic.”
They were giving 200-300 meals a day to Evanston families that had been identified by the Evanston school districts as being food insecure.
“As funding for that ran out, that programming was ending,” Bublick said. “The Evanston Community Fridge was a natural next step. Anything that we can put into it we do but we definitely rely on community help and community support.”
People can take items from the fridge or the pantry 24 hours a day every day. Anyone is welcome to take food. “No questions asked,” Bublick reported.
As the need for food to keep the fridge filled has grown greater, Bublick enlisted the aid of Sarah Stegner.
“She started Chicago Chefs Cook and she’s a great organizer,” Bublick said. “I thought that she could be a good resource and a good partner in it.”
Stegner has a busy schedule but she readily agreed to help with the Evanston Community Fridge.
“The fact that they have that fridge stocked year-round along with the community is so powerful, how could you say no?” Stegner said. “This is an easy thing that chefs can do — make meals and drop them off.”
She noted that the Chicago chefs have a powerful community and they support each other.
Stegner reported that she has taken food to the fridge in the past but not consistently. She was anxious to help on a more consistent basis because, “It’s kind of shocking how much need there is now,” Stegner said.
Stegner’s first step was to contact members of Chicago Chefs Cook, the nonprofit which she cofounded to provide humanitarian relief to those in need. They have been raising funds to support Maui restaurants, hospitality workers and their families.
Stegner thought they should also help the Evanston Community Fridge because “It’s our own backyard.”
The first thing Stegner did was send an email to chefs from the North Side of Chicago and Evanston about the Fridge. She then made some follow-up calls after which they created a calendar of when each restaurant would drop off food. Chefs from 14 restaurants volunteered to supply food.
Stegner started the ball rolling, bringing 25 meals on Nov. 20 of turkey burgers, white and orange sweet potatoes, cranberry sauce and slaw made from ingredients from local farmers.
“I tried to offer people the same kind of food that I would serve in the restaurant,” she explained.
People who use the Evanston Community Fridge by Soul & Smoke will have the opportunity to try a variety of different cultural foods in future weeks.
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Providing meals to people in need is particularly important to Bublick.
“When COVID hit and we were just starting to do food insecurities, we had just gone through a great personal loss,” she revealed. That was the death of their seven-week-old son in January of 2020.
“I needed something good to come out of the pandemic,” Bublick said. “Feeding families and feeding kids from the school district was the right thing for us.”
Other community fridges are hosted by Reba Place Church at 320 Madison St., Palmhouse 619 at 619 W. Howard St., and CNE at 1335 Dodge Ave. .
For more details, visit evanstoncommunityfridges.com.
Myrna Petlicki is a freelance reporter for Pioneer Press.