Soul Kitchen Red Bank NJ (Owned by Jon Bon Jovi).......................

For those of you who are reading or hearing about this for the first time, Soul Kitchen is a charitable restaurant where payment is not required. A $20 donation is requested for a 3 course meal, if you cannot afford the suggested donation you can eat for free and volunteer as payment for your meal.

On June 27, 2019 myself as well as 13 of my fellow Ho’s held a gathering or more affectionately knows as a Ho’down at Soul Kitchen. In lieu of the suggested $ 20. donation we offered to pay $ 50. pp in order to “pay it forward”.

I arrived at about 6:30pm to ensure everything was “set” and there were still diners in the dining room. Wendy, the executive chef and my main contact for the event asked that we give them time to finish their normal dining then the venue would be ours. By 7:05 all of our guests had arrived and the room was set. The dining room itself is very nice, probably a dozen or so tables of which they set up two primary tables for us. They also set up a bar with the various BYO"s generously supplied by our guests. (shout out to @PHREDDY @joonjoon @MsBean @jsfein et al for their BYO contributions)

The meal was a 3 course choice of soup or salad, entree, desert. I chose the salad, burger and the desert was an apple spice cake. This is a charitable venture and they pride themselves on locally sourced farm to table ingredients, I went into this with the charity first and my “foodie expectations” second. I was happily surprised that the food was actually good, very good. The salad was light, fresh and the homemade dressing was perfect. The burger while not a kobe/wagyu etc. style burger, it was topped with a pinapple slice, fried onions and aioli sauce that truly worked perfectly together. I was very pleasantly surprised by the burger. I had a bite of my wife’s chicken, which was a non breaded cutlet made parmesean style and it was very good. The other entree offered was salmon and while I didn’t’ try it I did not hear any complaints or see any dishes go back. I almost forgot they had a ravioli on the menu in a pesto sauce which was very good as well. (we had a few extra to share around the tables)

The apple spice cake for desert was a perfect end to a wonderful meal. Once again though the highlight of the night was being able to share the experience with my fellow Ho’s, another shout out to @SteveR (I think I tagged the right Steve lol) & @PHREDDY who both made a trip from the outer boroughs of NY to spend the night with the Motley Monmouth County Ho’s.

I know pictures were taken so I’m going to ask that those with pics please share. I want to say Thank you to Wendy Escobedo, Executive Chef for all her help, excellent job on coordinating and your kitchen/ menu skills. Lastly a special thank you to:

@seal & Mrs. Seal
@BossaNova & Mrs. Nova
@jsfein & Mrs. Sein
@MsBean & Mr. Bean (who was missed)
@heidicooksandbakes (thank you for the donation(s) even though you couldn’t attend)
@CurlzNJ (especially for all the help coordinating and the name tags!!)
@SteveR (still hope this is the right Steve)
@PHREDDY & Mrs. Phreddy (Thank you for the wine and your company)
@joonjoon (The Current Hot Dog Eating Champion of Asbury Park)
@ Mrs. Notjr (Yes believe it or not there is a woman who can tolerate me for 25 friggin years!!!)

Lastly…@sck for providing us this format where a group of stragglers that were left for dead on Chow Island were able to transplant themselves and continue our good times and food adventures.

Peace my friends.

28 Likes

What more can I add to @NotJrvedivici s post but this,

THANK YOU @NotJrvedivici for having the vision to see what we could do and the fortitude to follow through! A great time was had by all.

4 Likes

Very glad I was able to make this event. It was a great time. A very special shout out to Wendy and her crew of volunteers at Soul Kitchen who truly made us all feel very welcome.

4 Likes

@NotJrvedivici certainly captured the night…as always, the company is excellent, and I think we were all pleasantly surprised by the meal. I have photos and will get them up this afternoon, along with a Nicholas Creamery report, because a few of us kept the HOdown going. :stuck_out_tongue_winking_eye:

3 Likes

Thank you for doing this. It was great meeting you all & having dinner at a place that’s doing some excellent work. Hopefully, I’ll be allowed to leave Brooklyn again sometime but, until then, if any of you venture my way, feel free to get in touch. And, yes, you’ve tagged the correct Steve.

5 Likes

B Here are some photos…


And for the record, SOME PEOPLE had their eyes closed in EVERY photo.

16 Likes

Excellent! You got everything! (Well besides the bar! Lol I do believe we had more bottles than attendees, not sure what that says about us)

5 Likes

These two threads gave me an appreciation for the “heart” of JBJ that I’ve not had listening to the music he’s created.

Thanks for that.

4 Likes

Truly a great evening to be able to put names to faces. We thoroughly enjoyed the company of all and clearly was worth the trip from Astoria for us.

In conversation with Joon, we discussed the possibility of again “cross pollinating” an event but exploring the Asian foods of Flushing or Jackson Heights… Hope some will cross the bridge!

7 Likes

Nice job, everyone.

1 Like

I hear it’s not unusual to see JBJ at Barnacle Bills. Anyone ever seen him there?

As already written more eloquently than I could ever, this “New Kind of Ho’Down” was special in so many ways. From meeting folks for the first time that you already feel like you know, to enjoying the camaraderie of those already known, all while supporting the JBJ Soul Foundation in order to help those in our community who are less fortunate than we are, this was truly special HoDown. Thank you all for making it a memorable night but a special thanks to @NotJrvedivici for putting it all together.

5 Likes

Really great thing you all have done here…kudos to everyone. Wish I could have gone but working 5 nights a week means missing a lot of great events like this one.
Wonderful photos of some great looking food, too. Except for those green beans…Yeccchhh.

2 Likes

Looks like an amazing night!!! I made a donation online with comments to hopefully have it end up in red Bank. I’m bummed I missed it but we were gazing at this ! Hope I can make the next!

9 Likes

THANK YOU! SO MUCH…(we missed you!)

2 Likes

WOW!!! What an amazing landscape. We missed you.

3 Likes

I guess my master plan of getting invited over in appreciation of my efforts to raise money for his cause is about to go up in smoke. I’ve been practicing my cow bell since coming up with the idea for this Ho’ Down knowing all I needed was 30 seconds alone with JBJ so he could see and hear what Bon Jovi has been missing all this time, more cow bell.

4 Likes

Will Ferrell has nothing on @NotJrvedivici

Will you wear the shirt open to the navel as well? :wink:

4 Likes

Is there another way to do it? I think not! Just bending down to pick up the cowbell causes all the shirt buttons to sponateously combust. Rather like superman exiting a phone booth!

4 Likes

For you seal, anything! :heart:

2 Likes