At the Dongsan Korean Reformed Church in Yonkers, N.Y., the cafeteria is twice the size of its worship space. The spacious, high-ceilinged room is filled with more than 40 round dining tables encircled by white folding chairs. After the 11 a.m. service every week, lunch is served and the tables fill up like a high school cafeteria.
On a recent Sunday, hungry, boisterous parishioners formed long lines for their servings of miyeok guk, a savory seaweed soup, which burbled away in three giant pots on the stove. Everything is made from scratch, and with good vibes only.
“You have to cook with joy or the food won’t come out right,” Soon Geum Jang, 73, said. If there’s anything difficult about feeding 400 to 500 parishioners every week, the kitchen’s head chef Young Hee Kim, 65, said it’s producing that sheer volume of food. But cooking together, with friends, “it’s not hard.” Every Saturday morning, Ms. Kim and her team meet early at the church to prepare food for the next day’s lunch.
