La Morada, an award-winning family restaurant in the Bronx, has turned into a soup kitchen that makes 650 meals a day to feed those in need during the coronavirus pandemic.
The family-owned Mexican restaurant, which was honored with the Michelin acclaim for its Oaxacan food, has fed hundreds of disabled, elderly, and unemployed residents during the ongoing pandemic. They also provide meals to those who do not have gas and are unable to cook at home. While they do serve paying customers, meals provided from the soup kitchen are 100% free.
La Morada reopened in April after closing for a month due to several family members being sick with COVID-19. With the help of a crowdfunding campaign, the restaurant could reopen with the soup kitchen addition. In less than an hour of opening, they had handed out 200 soups.
“We realized the necessity was huge. The next day, without thinking, we cooked double,” said owner Natalia Méndez.
The family knows how hard the pandemic can hit financially. Their requests for an emergency federal small business loan from the Small Business Administration were rejected due to their immigration status.
Co-owner Yajaira Saavedra is a beneficiary of the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, or DACA, which grants young immigrants who entered the country as children but never obtained legal residency the right to work and shields them from being deported. This is why the family are also immigration activists.
“We always say that activism is our secret spice, so I feel like it was just very natural for us to serve the community with what we have,” said Saavedra. “It also goes back to our Indigenous roots when we all pitched in, gathered small ingredients, and made a big pot as a meal.”
Volunteers also pitch in to feed the community by picking up boxes of food to distribute to those in need who are unable to make it to the restaurant. Small local grants have also allowed the restaurant to hire several new employees to assist with the efforts.
“It is mostly the community pitching in and friends and allies just saying, ‘We are going to do this, we are going to fight together and survive,’” Saavedra said.
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