COURTESY OF WELCOME NEIGHBOR STL
Celebrate World Refugee Day with Welcome Neighbor STL's eight-course drive-thru supper club dinner.
This weekend, Welcome Neighbor STL is offering a very special supper club event that goes well beyond a delicious meal. In celebration of World Refugee Day, the organization will host an eight-course Syrian and Moroccan drive-thru dinner fundraiser, showcasing the outstanding culinary contributions made to the city's food scene by immigrant and refugee cooks while raising funds to support those new to the United States.
The drive-thru supper club fundraiser will take place this Sunday from 4:30-6 p.m. at STL Foodworks in the Central West End. Diners pre-purchase a ticket through Welcome Neighbor STL's website and schedule a pickup time for the contactless, curbside event. The $35 ticket includes an eight-course Syrian and Moroccan meal, prepared by refugee cooks, that features such dishes as beet root salad, babaganoush, pastille (a Moroccan chicken pastry) and kibbeh (A Syrian dish of bulgur, beef, pine nuts and walnuts).
Founded by Jessica Bueler in 2016 as a grassroots movement, Welcome Neighbor STL has grown into a vital organization that helps immigrant and refugees adjust to their new lives in St. Louis. The supper club events are a key part of that model. By empowering refugee cooks to share their skills, the supper clubs have become a pathway to entrepreneurship for many involved, leading to catering and other food-related businesses that provide support for their families. To date, the supper clubs have served over 9,500 guests and raised over $260,000 for area refugee families.
Initially created to be in-person events, the supper clubs turned to a drive-thru format during the COVID-19 pandemic, providing a lifeline to refugee families who had come to depend on the income generated from the events. Though it is uncertain when the organization will return to the in-person format, the drive-thru supper clubs have been a great success and, according to Bueler, have even raised the profile of the events.
For more information and to purchase tickets to the World Refugee Day Dinner Fundraiser, visit www.welcomeneighborstl.org.
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