RiceVan Helping Provide Afghan Evacuees In Philadelphia Taste Of Home
PHILADELPHIA (CBS) -- Chefs are giving Afghan evacuees in Philadelphia a taste of home. It's just one of the ways the region is helping them get back on their feet.
Nasratullah Adil and Farahbi Mongory arrived in the United States only months ago. They are just some of the thousands of Afghan evacuees who were relocated to Philadelphia.
Both are now preparing halal meals for fellow Afghan evacuees.
"When we are able to provide the cooked meals, prepared by an Afghan chef we hired, it's all the more impactful -- the spices, the tastes, the rest, the rice is prepared," Eric Rosenfeld with RiceVan said.
These deliveries are fueled by RiceVan, a food delivery service that launched a halal division.
RiceVan has a contract with the Nationalities Service Center to provide the food and deliver hundreds of meaningful meals daily to Afghan families in hotels and permanent housing.
All of the cooking is done at RiceVan's founder restaurant General Tsao's House on Sansom Street.
Both Adil and Mongory were noticed by RiceVan during a hotel delivery.
Adil was an international chef and is now using his cooking skills to make native food and to help his family who is still overseas.
"I work in here. I want to save money and sometimes, I'm sending money to Afghanistan because no one is working there," Adil said.
Mongory used to work for the Afghanistan government. He says the Taliban killed his father months ago and he came to the United States alone.
"My mother told me, 'leave here'," Mongory said.
Mongory said he was scared to come to the U.S.
"I live with myself. All of my family right now, they're living in Afghanistan," Mongory said.
Both are thrilled to be helping out in the kitchen to feed fellow evacuees.
"For them, any type of familiarity of culture, of identity, must be of some comfort and when we talked to individuals, we recognized there were certain things that we could do to provide cultural comfort food that would give them a place of home and a sense of meaning," Rosenfeld said.
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