Chefs and other volunteers serve steak meals to hundreds of homeless at St. Vincent de Paul

Hundreds of homeless people gathered at St. Vincent de Paul campus in Phoenix on Monday where professional chefs and other volunteers served them steak meals in a lunch they likely won't soon forget.

Jimmy Walker, a volunteer who helped organize the event, told The Arizona Republic that the event was a nice opportunity to serve people often living without a roof over their head a meal they could rarely afford to enjoy.

“The homeless don’t often eat steak, as you might expect,” Walker said. “They had smiles and loved it. We had some good videos and some neat entertainment so it was a very special day here at St. Vincent de Paul.”

Walker said the event was also a celebration of Martin Luther King Jr. Day and what would have been Muhammed Ali’s 80th birthday as well as an opportunity to brighten people’s day.

“I just shared with them that God loves you and God accepts you and don’t give up,” Walker said. “Don’t look at yourself as a failure or a loser.”

Marc Lupino, chief executive chef of Prime Steak Concepts which includes the restaurants Oceans 44, Steak 44 and Dominick’s Steakhouse along with other restaurants across the country, told The Republic that he and his son joined other chefs around 7 a.m. to help prepare the grills and ingredients several hours before they would serve hundreds of homeless people.

While Steak 44 and Dominick's Steakhouse provided the beef, St. Vincent de Paul also had potatoes, rolls and vegetables to accompany the steak with cake and ice cream to end the meal on a sweet note.

Lupino praised St. Vincent de Paul for the work it does to help the less fortunate and said he was more than happy to be a part of that effort.

“Sometimes people end up homeless for reasons beyond their control,” Lupino said. “Giving back to the community and smiling at people — looking at people in the eyes — thanking them. Just all of that. Giving people some dignity.”

Lupino said many of the people he served meals to cooked on tiny portable grills if they had any food at all and that the event offered many people an experience that normally comes with a price nowhere near what they could afford.

“St. Vincent is a great place to serve them,” Lupino said. “To serve them a great meal — to serve them something that they have never had before. Some of these people may have never had a steak in their life. I take that for granted working at the restaurants that I run. It’s something that is not cheap.”

Lupino lauded the volunteers at St. Vincent de Paul for making the preparations and serving a smooth process and looked forward to the next event.

“The people are just fantastic there and we just knocked it out. That was it. And we all knew we were there to do it to serve other people and to give people a great meal that they probably would not have gotten if we didn’t get this whole thing together.”

Reach the reporter Perry Vandell at 602-444-2474 or perry.vandell@gannett.com. Follow him on Twitter @PerryVandell.

Support local journalism. Subscribe to azcentral.com today.

This article originally appeared on Arizona Republic: Chefs serve steak meals to hundreds of homeless at St. Vincent de Paul