It’s that time of year again!
Houston Restaurant Weeks kicked off on Aug. 1 and will run through Sept. 4. The event was founded by the late Cleverley Stone, who hosted a food radio talk show on Houston’s CBS 650 AM (KIKK-AM) for over 13 years. She was also a food service contributor to FOX 26 Morning News, starting in 2008. She created Houston Restaurant Weeks (HRW) in 2003 as a fundraiser for the Houston Food Bank, which helps provide food for low-income and food-insecure residents in and outside of the city.
Stone died of uterine cancer in May 2020. Her final wish was that HRW continue in perpetuity in her name. Her daughter Katie Stone now chairs the annual event. She created the Cleverley Stone Foundation in homage to her mother, who was passionate about helping those who are food-insecure.
“Her life’s mission was to end hunger and to feed families in Houston,” Katie Stone revealed about her late mother. “She was really driven by stories she would hear in Houston about people not having enough to eat.” That drive and passion led her to create HRW, which has raised over $18 million for the Houston Food Bank — one of the largest food banks in the United States.
Katie Stone continues her mother’s legacy as president of The Cleverley Stone Foundation. (Photo by Michelle Watson)
Founded in 1982, the Houston Food Bank distributes fresh produce, meat and nonperishables for city residents and prepares nutritious hot meals for kids. The Houston Food Bank serves 18 counties in southeast Texas, including Harris, Liberty, Chambers, Brazoria, Fort Bend, and Austin. (It also provides food for localized food banks in Montgomery and Galveston counties; those banks, in turn, provide food for their residents.) According to houstonfoodbank.org, the charity has distributed 150 million meals. It does so via a network of 1,500 community partners, including schools, shelters, soup kitchens, and food pantries.
One of those pantries is in the mostly black Trinity Gardens neighborhood. Chef Jonny Rhodes, who grew up in Trinity Gardens, called the area a “food desert” in a Houston Chronicle article in Oct. 2019. The article also defined nearby neighborhood Kashmere Gardens as a “food desert” — a low-income area where residents struggle to find healthy, affordable food. In 2010, the USDA reported that 18 million Americans live in food deserts — places more than a mile from a supermarket in urban/suburban areas and more than 10 miles in rural areas.
The city-wide 20th annual Houston Restaurant Weeks is back to help generate funds for our local food banks
One food pantry helping to bridge that gap is in Trinity Gardens First Baptist Church, which shares its name with the surrounding neighborhood. On one Saturday morning per month, food is delivered and distributed. The pantry is headed by Sis. Barbara Brown, who has worked with the Houston Food Bank (HFD) since 2010. She says the Houston Food Bank is essential for the pantry’s operation.
“The Food Bank is 100% of where we get our food,” Brown said in a phone interview. She added that she has to take online classes and submit to frequent inspections of the pantry — which serves people from all over: “We get people from Pasadena and La Porte,” she says, “and we cannot turn people away.” She estimates that the pantry serves around 125 people each month. Those that come will be given mostly non-perishable food — canned corn and green beans, walnuts, cereal, boxed spaghetti. But the Houston Food Bank truck also delivers some perishables: gallons of milk, bags of ham, even some eggs.
Pantries like this benefit directly from the HFD, whose vital missions are funded in part by Houston Restaurant Weeks. Participating restaurants will offer special brunch and lunch menus for $25. For each brunch and lunch purchased, restaurants will donate $3 to the Houston Food Bank. Dinner menus are priced at $39 or $55. The donation for the $39 dinner menu is $5, and the donation for the $55 dinner is $7. For a full list of participating restaurants, visit houstonrestaurantweeks.com.