Lakewood Community Services Center Launches A La Cart

On Tuesday November 22 at 2:00pm celebrity chef Matt Fish, chef/owner of Melt Bar and Grilled, will present a live cooking demo at Cove Community Center featuring his famous Roasted Garlic Tomato Soup – easy to prepare, healthy and delicious! The demo, just the first in a series, is open to all - no registration is required – and is FREE to anyone participating.

“We are so fortunate to have Lakewood chefs eager to give of their time and their talent,” said Trish Rooney, executive director of LCSC. “And to have the City of Lakewood Department of Human Services so eager to host them at the new and beautiful Cove Community Center is just fantastic.” Each participant will have the chance to sample the dishes and can take home the recipes so that they can make them at home.

Chefs will prepare their recipes on the Charlie Cart, a self-contained completely portable kitchen that is being used at over 325 sites in the US today. The sites include famers markets, K-12 schools, food pantries, libraries, and hospitals throughout the country. Chef Rocco Whalen of Tremont’s Fahrenheit restaurant has been delivering cooking programs using the three Charlie Carts purchased in 2019 by the Cuyahoga Public Library and it was Chef Whalen who introduced LCSC to this amazing kitchen. To learn more, go to www.charliecart.org.

These cooking demos are just part of a larger program with the goal of helping individuals and families to eat healthier by introducing them to inexpensive and readily available ingredients that will raise the nutritional value of the meals they can prepare at home. A nutritionist will be creating healthy shopping lists, sharing recipes, and even offering guided grocery shopping tours to LCSC client families. LCSC’s partnerships with the Greater Cleveland Food Bank, the Hunger Network of Greater Cleveland, partners at the West Side Market including Mena’s Produce and Meister’s Foods and the City of Lakewood have coalesced around this important initiative that will impact the health and wellbeing of our community.

Initial funding from the Lakewood/Rocky River Rotary provided seed money for the Charlie Cart. Program funding from Three Arches Foundation allowed us to not only buy the cart, but to provide salary support and the purchase of healthy food options for residents in Lakewood, Rocky River, and Westlake.

Mark your calendars so you don’t miss the three upcoming demos:
November 22: Matt Fish, chef/owner of Melt Bar and Grilled
November 29: Ben Bebenroth, chef/owner of the soon to be open Boom in Lakewood
December 6: Gregg Korney, chef at Georgetown

If you can’t make it to the live demos, you can watch them on Cox 45 Community Public Access Channel. The first to air will be on Tuesday, December 6 th at 4:00pm with future airings on Tuesdays at the same time.

You can keep up to date with 2023 chef demos on LCSC’s FB page, on the City of Lakewood’s page and on the City of Lakewood Department of Human Services FB page.