Q: Where do most of your ingredients come from?

A: I use a lot of the same local suppliers that I did when I was a restaurant chef. The farmers I work with are community-based and a bit quirky and anti-establishment, like me.

Q: Is soup a big part of your program?

A: Definitely. In the fall and winter we serve soup on a street corner every Tuesday night to homeless youth. We probably have thirty different recipes. We hide a lot of vegetables in our soups—I play the same game with the kids on the streets that I do with my own two kids. They might think they’re eating just cheddar cheese soup but it’s been thickened with vegetables like butternut squash.

Q: What’s the biggest lesson you’ve learned since starting First Slice?

A: The smallest things can help change somebody’s life. Saying hello to a homeless person instead of looking away. Or cooking something really simple and giving it to a homeless person so she feels good.

Q: How do you work with volunteers?

A: There’s a food writer who comes in four hours a week and all she does is roll pie dough for us. She just loves pie dough. We serve a lot of pie, and making pie dough is really therapeutic. There’s a man who comes in and just wants to chop onions. He recently applied for a job at a new gourmet store. He didn’t get it, but I was thrilled that chopping onions gave him the confidence to start looking for a job; he’s been out of work for so many years.