No such thing as a free lunch in cutthroat Hong Kong? Founder of Grateful Free Vegetarian Restaurant believes ‘a simple meal can save a person’
- Non-profit eatery operates on charity funds and provides a comfortable place for meals for those on hard times amid city’s relentless pace
- Founder Ng Po-sin, 29, believes everyone deserves to dine with dignity
Every day from 11am, a restaurant in the old Hong Kong neighbourhood of To Kwa Wan invites people in with three dishes, a bowl of soup and unlimited rice – for free.
“Free food is not impossible even in a highly materialistic city like Hong Kong,” says Ng Po-sin, the founder of the non-profit eatery, maintained by funds from a charity.
Ng, 29, opened Grateful Free Vegetarian Restaurant in October last year. Free vegetarian food is served from 11am to 2pm for a total of 200 people daily except on Sundays. The three-hour lunch slot is divided into six half-hour sessions seating 30 people each. Diners can pick a suitable slot and get a reservation ticket in advance.
True to its name, the restaurant’s operations centre on the theme of gratefulness. Before meals, volunteers lead diners – mostly the elderly – in a chant: “Be grateful to heaven and earth, as well as to parents, and for health and food”.
The idea came to Ng one year ago when as chairman of charity Ran Deng, he was handing out free meals in poor neighbourhoods and found that most of the needy did not even have a comfortable place to enjoy meals.