Northampton steakhouse cooks luxury food for over 60 homeless people

A Northampton steakhouse has teamed up with the Hope Centre to cook luxury food for over 60 homeless people.

The staff at Moosteak, a steak restaurant in Wellingborough Road, spent their Saturday (February 4) cooking at the homeless charity in a bid to bring some joy to those living rough on the streets.

Owner of Moosteak Northampton, Saf Choudhury, said: “We understand that in such a difficult time due to the economic crisis and ongoing health concerns after Covid-19 that many people are sad, afraid and feeling let down, especially the homeless.

“I think, if we can give some people some hope especially coming out of Covid, we just want to give back and let people know we are here to support them.”

Chefs Saf, Sami, Shaful and Desmond from Moosteak cooked in The Hope Centre’s kitchen from 9.30am to 12pm to serve up a range of their South Asian dishes with British twists. Homeless people who would usually be given bread, beans and pasta dishes were able to enjoy fillets of beef, biryani, gourmet burgers and yoghurt dips with salad.

Around 60 homeless people were served meals and 26 takeaway boxes were put together for service users living in St John’s Halls.

Saf said: “The feedback we got was tremendous. It was something away from what they usually had. It is not something you would normally find unless you go into a restaurant or order a takeaway. Everybody loved it. People came up to the window to say thank you and the feedback was amazing, they were asking us, ‘when will you be back again?’”

The business plans to give cooking tutorials at the Hope Centre once a month to teach service users how to make simple dishes with inexpensive ingredients. Their head chef will give lessons on knife skills and preparing a variety of rice, curry and bread-based dishes.

Saf said: “We will come into this happy and enthusiastic. We are all bubbly people and we want to engage. For us, it is easy to cook but we want to be more than that and we love what we do.”

Moosteak is encouraging more local charities to get in touch so they can partner up.