Refettorio Felix
What is it: The community magic that can happen when a three-star Michelin chef solves for issues of food waste, food insecurity, and social isolation through great food, compassionate design, and human dignity. Refettorio Felix takes London’s food surplus and turns it into meals for the vulnerable prepared by local chefs, bringing people together in community over a shared meal served in comfortable surroundings.
What you need to know: In 2017, renowned chef Massimo Bottura – his Moderna restaurant Osteria Francescana was named the world’s best – brought his innovative non-profit Food for Soul to St Cuthberts Centre, a 30-year old charity serving those experiencing mental health issues and homelessness, aging populations and the vulnerable in the community. Building on the impacts of Refettorio Paris and Refettorio Gastromotiva in Rio de Janeiro, in London Bottura teamed up with The Felix Project, a charity that saves food that can’t be sold — in date, good quality ingredients from national supermarkets — and delivers it to those in need.
As with his other projects, Bottura realized that the context mattered too. For Refettorio Felix he commissioned Ilse Crawford, a designer sensitive to the wellbeing impacts of the environments that she creates, to transform St Cuthbert’s space. Her brief: “to make it beautiful, a universal pleasure that is often missing from social projects”. The resulting dining area facilitates connection and closeness, with reading areas, low hanging light fixtures, and darker toned walls. Swiss furniture company Vitra donated the chairs.
How to bring this into your life: Refettorio Felix is very much active through the pandemic, serving meals and hot drinks. If you are local you can volunteer to support their ongoing work.
Why we think it matters: There are an estimated 8.4 million (12%) adults living in households with insufficient access to food. And yet, in the UK annually 10,000 tonnes of food is wasted (that figure is closer to 1.6 billion tons worldwide). These figures are pre-covid and have only gotten worse. Before the virus, the project served 75-80 people a day, in the early days of the pandemic that went up to 300 meals.
Refettorio Felix steps right into the gap between food insecurity and food waste, but it does so in ways that treat people with care and dignity. The conversations made over meals, the feeling of support of a safe environment, become as important as the social inequalities it hopes to alleviate. After a meal, people can stay – for therapeutic counseling, creative workshops, and even laundry services.
In their own words: “We sustain and support vulnerable people with positive and warm therapeutic services to accomplish our charity’s objectives of relieving poverty, hardship, sickness and distress. Our impact is grounded in the power of a shared meal of outstanding quality made with 100% surplus food.”
Something to do: If you are able, start to help alleviate food insecurity from your home – from reducing the meat you consume and the food you waste to supporting your local food bank and supporting school meal programs.
Additionally, support: Emma’s Torch | Social Bite | Brigade Bar + Kitchen | Luminary Bakery
