Hot meals return to Sister Jean’s Kitchen in Atlantic City

This summer, the long-running free meal program began a soft reopening at its new location, the former St. Monica’s Roman Catholic Church at 108 N. Pennsylvania Ave., just up the street from the former location in Victory First Presbyterian Church.

The Friends of Jean Webster Inc. again serves hot meals daily to all comers, with the lone requirement that they be hungry. On a steamy weekday morning, a line continued down the entrance ramp and across a courtyard in one of the three buildings on the property. Shade was at a premium as people waited to be allowed into the air-conditioned building where there is now a kitchen and dining room.

Chef Abdul Salaam, who said he has spent his life in food service, had burgers and salmon on the menu, along with fresh pineapple and other produce. There were fresh flowers on the tables, grown in the community garden on the side of the church.

It is a continuation of the late Jean Webster’s ethos, that food is vital, but it is not just about food. The kitchen is also about community, and making guests feel welcome.

The garden adds some green to the neighborhood and provides fresh vegetables along with flowers, said Paige Washington, of Linwood, as she cleaned the dirt from a harvest of bright orange carrots. She’s the director of development for the Friends of Jean Webster, a job she’s had for about nine months.

The job includes the chance to literally get her hands dirty.

John Scotland, the executive director of the organization, said between a food pantry and the kitchen, the organization provides about 1,000 meals a day. Atlantic City is among the poorest cities in New Jersey, and the new kitchen stands among the neighborhoods with the highest poverty rates in the city.

Earlier that day, a line for the food pantry inside the church extended out the side door and down the block.

Blanche Johnson lives nearby. She was picking up food at the pantry for herself and her nephew and visits about twice a month.

“It’s such a blessing,” she said of the additional groceries.

“It’s made a big difference,” said Alicia Davis, who was sitting in a patch of shade in the long line for the pantry. She said she has studied psychology and most recently worked in security, and hopes to get back to work soon. In the meantime, she said, Sister Jean’s has helped tremendously.

Webster began by feeding people in her neighborhood. She had worked as a casino sous chef, leading a team of about 700, Scotland said, but had to stop because of a heart condition.

“The story goes, she found two people eating out of a trash can,” Scotland said. She took them home and fed them. “She said, ‘If you’re hungry tomorrow, come back.’ It just grew from there.”

That was probably in the 1980s. Scotland met Webster in the mid-1990s, when there was a regular line outside her home. A friend of his called to let him know what was happening.

“I was pastor of the Presbyterian church in Brigantine at the time,” Scotland said. “We were looking for a way to have an impact in Atlantic City.”

Webster, universally known as Sister Jean, died in 2011. She was 76. As her health limited what she could do, Scotland said, Webster did not want to let go, still determined to work as hard as ever. She also kept the kitchen’s guests at the center of any considerations, he said.

The kitchen continued to operate out of Victory First Presbyterian Church at Pacific and Pennsylvania avenues, one of the oldest churches in the city. That building is set to be demolished to make way for a new cannabis dispensary and consumption lounge. The city had ordered the church and the kitchen closed, citing the building’s condition.

“It had been in rough shape for about 10 years,” Scotland said. “They finally shut us down.”

At that point, the Casino Reinvestment Development Authority was working to help the kitchen relocate to its current location, in a former Roman Catholic Church that had served the Haitian community, including Masses in Creole.

In 2015, the Camden Diocese combined the Catholic parishes in Atlantic City into a single parish. That meant closing two churches, including St. Monica’s.

The kitchen has worked to repair and modernize the three buildings on the property, including the church, the rectory and the single-story building that now serves as the kitchen and dining room. That was the original site of the pantry, which started distributing food in 2020.

“We passed it through the window,” Scotland said. COVID-19 restrictions meant the guests could not come inside. “That’s how we started getting back on our feet, almost a year and a half after we were shut down.”

People needed nutritious food, he said, but were also desperate for some human contact.

“There has always been a need, but it got really bad during COVID,” he said.

The organization had developed a plan to raise the former church above flood elevation, which Scotland said was a necessary step before any significant investment could be made in the building. They worked with the CRDA to rehabilitate the kitchen and get it ready to renew hot meal service, and had presented the plans for the building renovations.

“It would have cost too much money,” he said. “When it hit the Governor’s Office, the budget committee killed it.”

Those plans may be revisited as part of a more extensive plan for Atlantic City, but for now, the buildings remain as they were.

The pantry is open on Tuesdays from 10 a.m. until 1 p.m., and Wednesdays and Thursdays from 3 until 6 p.m. The kitchen will serve prepared meals Monday through Friday from 11 a.m. until 1 p.m., to be eaten on site or to go.

As the morning wears on and the summer temperatures rise, the line thins at the pantry, with a stream of people leaving with bags of canned goods and other food. One woman asked Scotland if there were any sweets. Not today, he said.

Salaam invited a man holding a toddler inside the dining area before food service was ready to begin, to get the child out of the heat. The rest of the line remained, waiting to be welcomed in for a meal and a nourishing serving of kindness.