April 6, 2000 | Read Time: 1 minute
Less than a year ago, Michael O’Halloran was working in one of Philadelphia’s most fashionable restaurants, a bistro called Fork. Though he was on his way into the top ranks of the city’s chefs, Mr. O’Halloran, 32, was beginning to get bored, according to Gourmet magazine (March).
“I wasn’t really learning anything,” he says, nor was he doing anything to help people who couldn’t afford to eat at places like Fork.
When he wondered if there was someplace where he could teach cooking skills to people who were losing welfare benefits, a friend told him there was such a place, though its emphasis was on helping the homeless.
The place was the Back Home Cafe, a cheerful, clean haven in a rundown neighborhood north of City Hall, and part of an organization known as Project HOME formed by a Roman Catholic nun, Sister Mary Scullion, and Joan Dawson-McConnon.
Lynn Giordano, the social worker running the Back Home Cafe, was less than enthusiastic about Mr. O’Halloran because, she said, she was tired of young, well-off volunteers coming a few times to ladle out some soup for the poor. But Mr. O’Halloran pitched in energetically, working beside rehabilitated addicts and recovering mental patients.
A few months later, Ms. Giordano announced that she wanted a change of duties, and Mr. O’Halloran offered himself as full-time chef-manager. His new job is a challenge, he said. “Running a restaurant at a break-even point with a staff that has such limited experience is basically impossible.”
