For some it was a distaste for waste, for others it was frazzled nerves that motivated restaurateurs to feed their communities in the days immediately following the landfall of Hurricane Ida.
“Ida was terrible but not a total loss, so we had resources to share,” said David Greengold, one of the owners of Juan’s Flying Burrito, a taqueria with four New Orleans locations. Past disasters taught the Juan’s team to pack their restaurants’ walk-in coolers with dry ice in anticipation of losing power. When the winds died down Greengold emptied the coolers at Juan’s Mid City and CBD locations, set up a grill on the lawn of his Mid City home, and, working from a generator-powered refrigerator, he and his wife, Chrissie Roux, started cooking and feeding anyone who showed up.
“Chrissie was the force behind all of this,” Greengold said. “She used her social media resources to get the word out and find people in need. We ended up bringing food to Ochsner employees who had exhausted the vending machines and employees of Zeus’ Rescues who were craving anything but canned goods. We cooked until the food ran out. I guess we fed about 800 people.
Greengold said Warren Chapoton, also partner in Juan’s, had a similar operation going with the contents of the coolers from the Uptown and LGD locations.
