Hosting Our Own: 120 Meals at Taco Night

On Friday, June 19, 2026, fifteen volunteers cooked 120 asada taco plates and served them to families at the Arcadia Women’s Clubhouse. It was our third event and our largest, and it was the first one we hosted entirely ourselves.

Why This One Was Different

Our first two events were held at Union Station Homeless Services in Pasadena. We cooked in their kitchen and served their residents, and that partnership made a lot of things easy that we did not fully appreciate at the time. The most important one: the guests were already there. Union Station had spent years building trust with the families living in their buildings. We showed up with food.

Taco Night removed that scaffolding. We chose the venue, we handled the outreach, and we had to convince families across Arcadia and Pasadena to come to a room they had never been to, hosted by an organization most of them had never heard of. Flyers went out to Foothill Unity Center, Our Saviour Center, the San Gabriel Valley Family Center, school family liaisons, libraries, and WIC offices.

That work is invisible on the day of the event. It is also the difference between a full room and an empty one.

The Food

The menu was asada tacos with grilled pineapple, diced onion, and cilantro, plus beans and rice from our partner El Portal, and aguas frescas mixed by hand in the kitchen that morning.

We started at Mayfield Junior School in Pasadena at 9 AM. Asada on the flat top, pineapple on the grill, onion and cilantro chopped by hand, aguas frescas stirred in glass jars. By early afternoon the whole operation was packed into cars and headed eight minutes east to Arcadia.

Doors opened at 3 PM. Over the next four hours, 120 plates went out.

The World Cup Was the Point

Soccer is not a side project for us. Half of our mission is building recreational space, because a field does something for a family that a meal cannot, and the two belong together.

So we put the 2026 World Cup on the projector and left it running through dinner. Brazil played Haiti at 6 PM.

It changed the shape of the evening. People did not come through the line, eat, and leave. They sat down, they stayed, and they watched the match with people they had not met before. A dinner that families linger over is doing more than feeding them, and that is worth more to us than an efficient service line.

Where That Leaves Us

Three events in, we have made 286 meals: 86 in April, 80 in May, and 120 in June.

The honest lesson from Taco Night is that hosting is harder than helping. Cooking for a shelter that already has residents is a real skill, and we have it now. Filling your own room in your own neighborhood is a different skill, and June 19 was our first rep at it.

That is the skill we are going to need, because everything ahead of us is in our own backyard.

Thank you to the fifteen volunteers who cooked, drove, set up, served, and cleaned. Thank you to Mayfield Junior School for the kitchen, to the Arcadia Women’s Clubhouse for the hall, and to El Portal for the beans and rice.

Our next event is a free Community Produce Giveaway on Saturday, September 12, 2026, from 10 AM to 1 PM at Saints Felicitas and Perpetua Church in San Marino. Details here.