Newcomer Kitchen

Cooking Up Opportunity

In early 2016 the Canadian government welcomed 25,000 refugees fleeing the tragic civil war raging in Syria. The large number and sudden arrival of so many families overwhelmed the bureaucratic machinery of the Canadian settlement agencies resulting in hundreds of families being stuck in temporary accommodation for several months, often in cheap, inconveniently located hotels that had no kitchen facilities.

As this situation dragged on, I (Len Senater), together with Cara Benjamin-Pace and some other concerned neighbours began to discuss if there was anything that could be done to help out. As I already had a kitchen and a peculiar kind of restaurant that invited total strangers to do all the cooking, it did not feel like that much of a stretch to extend an invitation to use our space. A bit of luck connected us with Rahaf Alakbani and Esmaeel Aboufaker, a young Syrian couple living in one of the hotels, and the idea of a foray to The Dep was hatched.

From that small gesture of hospitality, things snowballed very fast, from a casual field trip to cook and share some food into a weekly pop-up selling out 50 meals. We suddenly found ourselves in the local, national and international media spotlight as we navigated the complexities of trying to establish, legitimize and finance a new non profit project. From nail-biter crowdfunding campaigns to last-minute gala fundraisers we scrambled to keep the project afloat all while running hundreds of regular Dep events.

Over the next 3 years Newcomer Kitchen would help put over $150,000 into the pockets of more than 80 Syrian families, and find itself featured in The New York Times, The Guardian, TIME Magazine, Al Jazeera, CBC, and more… We would welcome VIP visitors from Prime Minister Justin Trudeau to billionaire entrepreneur Hamdi Ulukaya while scrambling to figure out how to keep the project going.

After 3 years at The Depanneur, Newcomer Kitchen moved on to become its own separate non-profit organization, led by Cara Benjamin-Pace and Tamara Chaikin. With funding from Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada (IRCC), the City of Toronto, GTAA Propeller Project, and many others, Newcomer Kitchen would go on to help create social and economic opportunities for many more newcomer women from all over the world.

Newcomer Kitchen was based out of the Centre for Social Innovation at 192 Spadina, where it ran a range of food entrepreneurship programs for immigrant women until early 2025. Unfortunately their government funding was not renewed and their programming is currently on hiatus until new funding can be secured.