Lowcountry Cuisine Fall/Winter 2019-20

LC 14 www.LowcountryCuisineMag.com | www.MountPleasantRestaurant.com | www.CharlestonRecipes.com lowcountry cuisine MICKEY BAKST It was in 2008 when the economy collapsed that Mickey Bakst, general manager of Charleston Grill, read that a local homeless shelter was unable to feed the homeless each day and was going to close down food service. “I walked my dog that morning thinking, ‘This is bullsh*t, I can do something.’ I realized that ultimately I can’t, but we could,” Bakst recalled. So he – and they – did. The restaurant industry veteran reached out to his colleagues and created a 501c3 called Feed the Need. “We do it about 80 times a year now. Area restauranteurs donate their time, their product and their staff to go into shelters around the community and feed the hungry. Every week there are one or two lunches being served under the name Feed the Need for as many as 400 people each meal.” But Bakst felt that more could be done, so he started yet another nonprofit, Teach the Need. “It wasn’t enough to feed people. We needed to teach people how to earn the funds to feed themselves,” he explained. Teach the Need is geared towards teaching skills necessary for the hospitality industry to high school seniors from at-risk homes. The students take a seven-week training course and then are helped with job placement upon completion. “There are tons of success stories with this program. We have students working all around town who went through Teach the Need. They’re working in different restaurants from Halls to Kiawah to Charleston Grill to 82 Queen,” he beamed. Three years ago, Bakst and his friend, Steve Palmer, started an organization called Ben’s Friends after Palmer’s friend and chef, Ben Murray, took his own life due to his addiction. “Drugs and alcohol really wreak havoc on our industry. We got sick and tired of people destroying their lives,” Bakst explained. Though not affiliated with AA, Ben’s Friends has a similar approach, but is specifically for people in the restaurant industry who wish to stop drinking or using drugs. An average of 20 to 25 people show up for the regular Sunday meetings, usually hosted by Bakst or Palmer, and the program has gained traction around the country. There are now Ben’s Friends groups in 10 cities around the nation, with more on the list for the future. These programs are only the tip of the iceberg for Bakst, whose campaigns have raised hundreds of thousands of dollars for groups like the Charleston Nine firefighter families, the Emanuel Nine families and Katrina victims. When asked what drives him to do these things, his answer was simple: “I can.” “And my wife Ellen, of course. She gives me the strength and motivation to keep it going. But here’s the reality: in our community – and every community – there are people who need. If you’re a person who has and a person who can, the question I would ask is, ‘Why wouldn’t you?’” JONATHAN KISH The CEO of Queen Street Hospitality has made community support and helping others part of his everyday as chairman of the Charleston Restaurant Foundation. Its annual major event is the Lowcountry Oyster Festival, which benefits local schools that focus on culinary education. But his newest community-oriented focus was borne from the government shutdown in early 2019. “We started looking at the affects that can happen long-term for government workers who were without a job for a long period of time. And that led us to looking at school lunch debt, specifically in the tri-county area of Charleston,” Jonathan Kish said. At the time, he said, local schools had racked up between $300,000 to $400,000 in lunch debt. By the spring, Kish saw that the Mickey Bakst. Photo provided by Belmond Charleston Place.