Volunteer Keesha Charles serves fresh baked cookies at Freedom Square on Saturday. The feeding program is run more like a restaurant than a soup kitchen. — Photos by Paul Cox

“Lord, let us fill the stomachs of the people you put on this Earth,” Richie Melendez prays, gathering his team of volunteers in the kitchen at 141 Wilson Avenue. And fill them they do – but this isn’t just another soup kitchen. Richie, his wife Julieth, and their extended network of fellow Christians have built Freedom Square to be a place of hope and belonging in one of New York City’s poorest neighborhoods. A combination of restaurant-style table service, good healthy food, and the atmosphere of a friendly corner café makes this a spot where visitors are proud, not ashamed, to eat. 

Julieth and Richard, a police officer in Chelsea’s 10th Precinct during the week, began distributing food years ago with the Times Square Church. They saw the need close to home in Richard’s family neighborhood of Bushwick, and initially started giving out meals from a van in Maria Hernandez Park. “But we realized that people needed a real place,” Richie recounts, “somewhere they could rely on to always be right here.” 

Volunteers help pass out donated bread at Freedom Square. (Paul Cox)

Freedom Square took shape in 2007 in a former barbershop just three blocks from the Melendez family home. A steady stream of helpers fixed up the small space: animator and set designer David Bell created a clean and lively interior color palette, and Stan Jouk – Dolce & Gabbana model and sometimes carpenter – built an open wooden divider to enclose the all-important kitchen without cutting it off from the main space. A collection of folding tables and chairs allow the servers to reconfigure the space on the fly. 

On a Saturday afternoon, the doors open at half past noon to find the front area divided, with the right half in “bakery” mode: two tables laden with gourmet loaves, baguettes and focaccia, all fresh donations from an upstate supermarket. Most visitors stop here to pick up a take-home loaf before visiting the “coffee shop” on the left side of the entrance. The coffee is paired with a full selection of cakes, cinnamon rolls, and other pastries, further overstock from the supermarket. 

The décor and cupcakes may seem upscale, but Freedom Square is here to serve some of the poorest of the 33% of our Bushwick neighbors who live below the poverty line. The regulars are as eclectic as any group in Bushwick, a mix of long-time residents of all races, newer arrivals from Mexico, Honduras, and elsewhere, and an energetic contingent of youngsters. “It’s the kids I really worry about,” confides Richie. “You ask them whether they’ve eaten today and they say, ‘yeah, I had a bag of chips.’” 

As the deceptively small space seems to grow to fit each new group dropping in, it becomes clear that everyone here knows someone, and the servers know everyone. Richie introduces an Italian-ice vendor who’s setting up shop outside the door: not just an opportunist, but one of the mission’s first visitors. “José was one of only three people to come in on our first day. We prayed for him a lot, like we pray for everyone, and he’s on his feet now as a vendor.” 

Co-founder Richie Melendez, front, and an NYPD colleague welcome guests to lunch. (Paul Cox)

The founders and staff of Freedom Square are anything but shy about the role of faith in their mission, giving all credit to God for the miracles, large and small, they have seen in the lives of the people they serve. The name, while a tribute to both the parent church of Times Square and the WWI memorial garden of the same name at the intersection of nearby Myrtle and Bushwick Avenues, also holds its own meaning. New York is full of countless feeding programs, soup kitchens, and pantries, and many are embedded in particular churches and serve their aims. Freedom Square isn’t about recruiting churchgoers or trading bread for sermons. “A true Christian act is helping someone to find their own relationship with God. Christ gives people a way to change their bad situations, and that’s a kind of freedom.” This personal sharing of faith is expressed, seated in tight rows in front of the kitchen among those who choose to take part, in a short service of singing and bilingual testimony. Not quite a sermon, the staff good-humoredly call it “God Time.”

Refreshed in spirit and communitas, we step back while the space morphs into its restaurant mode. The smells from the ever-bustling kitchen prove that Freedom Square is as unorthodox about the food they serve as they are about everything else. Keesha Charles, who has been overseeing back-of-house operations, shares a taste of today’s special. It’s ajiaco, a rich stew of chicken, potatoes and corn from Julieth’s home region in Colombia. “We used to just serve regular Spanish food, stuff that was familiar to most of the people who came here,” Keesha explains, “but a lot of the visitors complained that they have diabetes and other health problems, and we realized we weren’t making it any better. We started trying some healthier things with fresh vegetables and seasonings, and everybody loves it. We used to think fresh produce would get expensive, but as soon as we started doing it free vegetables have been appearing from all over.” 

The stew is delicious and deeply satisfying, but it’s only one part of the satisfaction Freedom Square offers. The way the volunteers carry the lovingly made food from kitchen to table, serving each visitor in turn, lends the dignity of a “real” (i.e., paying) restaurant to an operation more often associated with lines and ladles. The impression is reinforced by simple, but carefully designed, details of décor and the slick fliers distributed to promote the mission, which use the graphic style of upmarket cafés and simply refer to the place as “Freedom Square Bakery.” This application of middle class commercial semiotics, paired with plain Christian service, turns a simple feeding station into a true privilege to visit and a powerful source of community. 

Freedom Square is open from 12-3:30 on Fridays and 12-4:30 on Saturdays at 141 Wilson Avenue. See their Facebook page or Twitter feed for more information.