Warm holiday meal for city’s needy
More than 2,000 served by Glide Memorial Church at prime rib lunch
Dwight Garrett sat at a folding table Sunday morning surrounded by strangers, scooping food out of a yellow plastic tray in the basement dining room at Glide Memorial Church.
He doesn’t have friends or family in San Francisco.
“I have nobody I have a past with,” he said, explaining that while he survived the AIDS epidemic in the 1990s, most of his friends did not.
But he didn’t line up Sunday morning for company. He came for Glide’s annual Christmas Eve prime rib lunch, a tradition that lures more than 2,000 people to the Tenderloin neighborhood church for roast beef and several sides, including a tin of pumpkin pie with whipped cream.
For more than 25 years, House of Prime Rib has been donating the beef for the meal
— 3,700 pounds of meat this year. Volunteers spend more than 24 hours cooking the dozens of roasts, each seasoned with salt and pepper and sliced thin.
By 11 a.m., the tables in the basement were full, with hundreds more waiting in line outside for the special meal.
“I hope they feel a little bit of joy,” said Kyriell Noon, Glide’s senior director of programs, as he watched people stream into the dining room. “I hope that they feel cared for.”
Joe Betz, owner of House of Prime Rib, dished up the beef, putting a slice on each tray before passing it to his grandson, who scooped the mashed potatoes. Betz stopped for a few seconds to try to calculate the cow equivalent of 3,700 pounds of prime rib before finally deciding it was simply “many moo moos.”
“If you do something, do it right or not at all,” he said of the donation. “If you give with your heart, you get more in return, more than you realize.”
He looked down at his nearly empty pan. “More beef!” he yelled.
Luncheon guest Douglas Earl, 60, said he hopped out of bed, showered and hightailed it to the church basement to share a meal with friends.
“When I was in my addiction, Glide saved my life,” he said. “These are my people.”
At a nearby table, another guest looked at his tray and shook his head.
“You have people who don’t have money or family, but this place is serving prime rib,” said the man, who didn’t want to share his name. “There’s some good in all the bad out there. Everything is not all bad.”
At the front of the serving line, celebrity chef Tyler Florence wished each person a merry Christmas as he handed them a full tray. He said he wanted to volunteer with his two sons, Miles and Hayden, to “give them the gift of selflessness for Christmas,” he said, and to be part of a community coming together regardless of circumstance.
“Everybody here has hopes and dreams and a spirit,” Florence said.
As wave after wave of people ate at tables in the basement, up in the church sanctuary, parishioners gathered for the morning service, including acting Mayor London Breed, who blinked away tears as the entire congregation held up their hands to offer her a community blessing.
“Come now, let us work together, talk together, love together, change the world together,” Cecil Williams, Glide pastor emeritus, told the crowd after the blessing. “C’mon people, it’s Christmastime.”
Downstairs, Garrett kept his head down as strangers took the empty seats at his table as he filled his fork with prime rib and mashed potatoes.
He said he doesn’t often venture from his room in a Tenderloin motel, where he’s lived for 16 years. There are monthly trips to the grocery store and weekly visits to food pantries. But the prime rib lunch lures him out on Christmas Eve.
“It’s a treat,” he said with a smile. “I don’t usually get meat.”
But he’ll stay home on Christmas, he said, skipping Glide’s traditional turkey meal. Perhaps he’ll reminisce about his disco days in Miami, before he was diagnosed with HIV, before his friends died. The 1980s were the best, he said.
But on Christmas, his plans are simple.
“I’ll stay home and watch TV,” he said with no sadness or regret. “TV is my best friend.”
“I hope they feel a little bit of joy. I hope that they feel cared for.” Kyriell Noon, Glide Memorial Church