Dining With Dignity
Each year, Siena Francis House provides over 350,000 meals – serving breakfast, lunch and dinner to our clients, daily, as well as meals to food insecure person from the Omaha community through our “curbside meal” program.
Historically, our kitchen staff engages in meal-planning by seeing what food items can be found in our pantry and freezer, almost all of which are donated by caring members of our Omaha community.
In late summer 2021, Siena Francis House – with the assistance of key players in the Omaha food and restaurant industry – embarked on a program called “Dining With Dignity”. At its core, Dining With Dignity has been bringing some of the finest, most well-respected chefs from a variety of restaurants around Omaha to the Siena Francis House – with the goal of preparing and serving specialty entrees and sides to Siena Francis House clients. For many months, these chefs have been preparing unbelievably tasty dishes for the 400+ guests in our emergency shelter, as well as mentoring our kitchen staff on how to prepare the recipes they create.
Check out Omaha World-Herald reporter, Betsie Freeman’s terrific article, detailing the Dining With Dignity Program, which ran on Thanksgiving Day 2021.
Siena Francis House has had the privilege of hosting – or shortly will be hosting – the following Omaha-area chefs in the Dining With Dignity Program, with many more chefs “in the wings”:
· Jennifer Coco of j. coco;
· Jamil Bah of the House of Bah;
· Ellie Berchal of El Perico;
· Dario Schicke of Dario’s Brasserie and Avoli Astoria
· Tim Maides of Monarch Restaurant & Bar;
· Ashish Sathyan of Kinaara;
· Ben Maides of Au Courant;
· Glenn Wheeler of Spencer’s for Steaks and Chops;
· Jon Stastny of Wonton Jon’s
· Wilson Calixte of Le Voltaire
Eventually, the recipes of the meals created by all of the chefs will be compiled into a cookbook, to be sold as a fundraiser for the Siena Francis House. Until then, please consider patronizing any of these generous restaurants whose chefs have been personally improving our Meal Service and helping Siena Francis House serve our guests with the respect and dignity they deserve. Or, please feel free to make a donation to the Siena Francis House, HERE, which will directly support our Dining With Dignity Program.
