Josie McCarthy has always cared about people.
She attributes it partly to growing up in a large Irish family in Chicago. As she puts it, “Irish families like to take care of their own,” and McCarthy has always had a wide view of who she considers her own. She has worked for social service agencies for 25 years in everything from working at a homeless shelter in Chicago to helping autistic adults and schizophrenics when she lived in Ireland, to her current position as the manager of the Dining Room, a restaurant that serves free food to anyone who signs up.
The Dining Room, located on West 8th Avenue and Lincoln Street in downtown Eugene, is open weekdays between 3:30 p.m. and 6 p.m. The diners take a number outside, then sit around in groups chatting amiably and awaiting their turn. Capacity inside is limited to 35 guests at a time to create a restaurant feel rather than that of a crowded soup kitchen.
The delicious aroma of Sloppy Joes fills the air as customers sit in booths or at the counter. The walls are decorated with paintings from one of the regulars, and there’s a piano in the corner, which is frequently played during meal times.
The Dining Room wasn’t always like this. When McCarthy took over, the restaurant was far closer to what people would associate today with a depression-style soup kitchen, with long lines, a packed dining room and a reputation for violence that forced it to close its doors for four months in 2001.
McCarthy had a different vision of what the Dining Room could be. She remembered walking past a Thai restaurant in Chicago one evening with three homeless women she was working with. She felt a strong urge to go in, but the women she was with were sure no restaurant would serve them. McCarthy said it was only at that moment that the injustice of service being refused to them because of their appearance truly dawned on her. At the time, the thought struck her: “Someday I’ll have a restaurant of my own where anyone can eat,” she said.
From her first day at the Dining Room, McCarthy planned to transform it from a soup kitchen into a nice restaurant that served free food. After FOOD For Lane County — the Dining Room’s parent organization — agreed to let her do things her way, she started making changes.
Soon the long lines and the overcrowding, which McCarthy felt created unnecessary agitation and stress for the diners, were gone. At first, McCarthy encountered resistance from both the diners and her staff, because they felt she was new and was changing
too much.
“They didn’t even know they could have or deserved something like this,” McCarthy said. “There was an attitude of ‘that’s good enough.’”
Eventually people came around to her ideas, as they realized the benefits of
the changes.
“Josie is the rock of this place,” said Marsha Vikor, who has volunteered at the Dining Room since last November. “Her ideas have made it so enjoyable for our customers. We are able to treat people with such dignity and such respect.”
Jamie Quesenberry-Gunson, a fifth-year senior at the University who started as an intern at the Dining Room in April 2009, agreed.
“This really functions like a dining room,” she said. “It creates a safe environment, people feel comfortable; (they) stay here for hours having conversations.”
Quesenberry-Gunson volunteered through the summer, and now in addition to being a full-time student, she is a part-time staffer and said she loves her job.
“People come in every day and thank you so much for being here,” she said. “I enjoy seeing the same faces day after day. After a while, you start recognizing people who come in and start having running jokes and long conversations with them.”
Quesenberry-Gunson is one of many University students who have volunteered at the Dining Room through the years. McCarthy usually welcomes in two to three student volunteers a term who work a couple meals a week. Quesenberry-Gunson’s friends are always curious about the Dining Room.
“I have a bunch of friends who come in and volunteer,” she said. “I always recommend the Dining Room; I’m like, “You should go and check it out.”
McCarthy runs the Dining Room on a mutual trust and respect between the staff and diners. Although diners fill out a form with their name and income, meals are distributed entirely on the honor system: IDs are not checked at the door. Those with disabilities get served first.
“They don’t have to tell us what it is, if they feel they can’t stand up, they come in first,” McCarthy said. “It’s funny when I first started it, people said, ‘Oh, everyone’s just going to come in,’ but most of them don’t. Sometimes you assume people will take advantage of you, but when you’re kind and respectful, they don’t.”
Almost from the very beginning, McCarthy has been supported in this venture by Made Marcoe, the front man of the organization. Every night the Dining Room is open for business, Marcoe stands outside taking numbers and answering questions. Marcoe moved to Eugene for a job that ended up falling through, and that’s where his work with the Dining Room came to life. One night the restaurant needed a dishwasher, and Marcoe stepped up to the task. He has been working there ever since.
“I actually lived on the river myself for a bit, was told about this place, came and loved it,” he said.
Wearing a beat-up cowboy hat and dark sunglasses on his weathered face, Marcoe is the perfect middleman between the “world of the marginalized” and the world McCarthy has created inside the Dining Room. At night, he works the crowd beautifully, introducing himself to those who don’t know him, defusing tension wherever he sees it, playfully but firmly keeping everything in order.
The entire staff echoed the belief that they provide more than a meal.
“Food, I believe, is the catalyst to community,” McCarthy said. “I’d like to think this place gives people a sense of community, because I believe that’s what people who are marginalized really need.”
Marcoe believes that their food and dining experience has helped curb violence in Eugene.
“When times are as tough as they are now, when you sit down for meals together, and you never know who you’ll sit across from, I think it makes it harder for people in this community to hurt each other,” he said.
The recession has made the Dining Room even more popular, almost tripling its clientele. When McCarthy started, hosting 150 diners would be a “wild night,” she said, but now the place plans for 300 every night. While this places extra strain on the small staff, it also provides a satisfying validation for the work they do and the atmosphere they have created.
“I don’t just put our higher numbers down to the economy being bad,” Marcoe said. “If you create a nice restaurant, you’re going to get more business. We’ve done it to ourselves.”
Every night, as the crowd leaves the Dining Room and dissipates into the early evening, they offer praise for the meal and express their gratitude. From the regulars to the people just traveling through town, everyone seems happy, relaxed and fed. And that’s all McCarthy and the rest of her staff at the Dining Room have wanted all along.
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