Sales were dismal and the owners had to lay off 90 percent of the staff. Still, The Recess Room in Fountain Valley is determined to host Free Food Friday each week as long as it can, giving away lunches to students and seniors.
Nevermind that restaurants are in crisis because of the ban on dining in due to the coronavirus. Roll up to The Recess Room on Friday, March 27 and get your grab-and-go meals for students up to age 18 and seniors 65 and older. Just call ahead for this week’s special: Trottole pasta bolognese with a side salad will be available for pickup from noon to 4 p.m. while supplies last.
Are they crazy? A little, yeah, says CEO Viet Pham, a founder and co-owner of the restaurant which at this point isn’t breaking even. “We’re definitely losing every day, heavily. So this is kinda tricky. This is what our staff talked about and I thought it was a great analogy. We literally feel like we’re in the dance scene in ‘Titanic,’ but we’re the ones playing music while the ship is sinking just to calm everybody down,” he said.
The Recess Room opened in 2016 with one of the most creative craft cocktail bars in Orange County. Its owners like to have fun and “spread the sunshine,” he said. Some are childhood friends who met during recess at a Fountain Valley elementary school. Pham and Victor Nguyen are in the mortgage business, two others are first responders in the city of Huntington Beach: Yahya Alwakza is a firefighter and Steven Duong is a cop.
“We have really close ties with the community,” Pham said. “Our friends and family live here, so we’ve always been really charitable with whatever we can do. We’ve sponsored a Fountain Valley baseball team before, or like on Thanksgiving we would do free food for the needy, homeless or whoever just wants to have some company.”
The owners continue to go above and beyond to help those in need. They invite students and seniors to call ahead for the lunches, it’s perfectly OK if parents or caretakers pick them up. The response has been enthusiastic. Last week they took about 200 orders and the restaurant’s staff has been volunteering to help.
For customers who can afford takeout, The Recess Room has changed up its menu to family-style dinners such as whole roasted chicken with tortillas and slaw. You can request a six-pack of Four Sons local craft beer or a batch of eight cocktails. It’s also promoting deli-grams, grazing platters of cheese, charcuterie, breads, fruit, jams and honeycomb with a bottle of wine for $40. They’re like the candy grams highschoolers used to send to friends with birthdays or their latest crush. “We wrap it up like a gift with a bow and everything.”
Speaking of gifts, takeout meals are 50 percent off for health care workers, first responders and anyone in the restaurant industry, no IDs required. “We trust you guys,” he said.
But there’s more. Pham’s latest insane scheme? Feeding all the health care workers at the restaurant’s neighbor, Orange Coast Memorial Medical Center. “We would like to start an initiative to pay it forward. Once it’s set up people can donate $5, $10 for health care workers’ orders,” he said. “We can feed the people working day and night through this crisis.”
And that would be about 3,000 workers.
What?! Can The Recess Room afford to do that and stay in business? Let the Titanic band play on, Pham said. “If we’re gonna go down, we’re gonna go down in style!”
If you go
Call ahead: 714-377-0398. Provide your name and estimated time of arrival between noon and 4 p.m. on Fridays. Volunteers will bring your order out to you, curbside. Senior citizens may send a family member or friend to pick up food, or The Recess Room can deliver within Fountain Valley city limits.
Find it: 18380 Brookhurst St., Fountain Valley; therecessroom.com.