Punjabi Dhaba restaurant gives back

They started Thursday and plan to continue giving away meals for seven days.

“Because I’m in the restaurant business, I’m just helping other people with meals,” owner Goli Singh said.

People just need to pull up into their parking lots, and they will be standing outside waiting with boxes of food ready to go. All community members have to do is tell them how many meals they need.

Singh started out by planning for at least 500 meals for the first day. Over 800 free meals ended up being given away at Punjabi Dhaba on Thursday.

“It was really busy today; I never expected it,” Singh said.

He plans to extend giving away meals past the initial seven days if so many people continue picking up meals.

Singh and co-owner Paul Jammu also sent meals to a local shelter and a hospital.

Helping others goes even deeper for the owners, who are followers of the Sikh religion.

“This is a part of my religion,” Singh said. “And the free meal to help the people is part of the religion and the culture, so when somebody anywhere in the world gets any kind of problem like facing problems or earthquakes or any kind of natural problems... then, we always do a service helping the local community.”

“Seva, or selfless community service, is a core tenet of Sikhism – the world’s fifth-largest religion, of which there are approximately 500,000 adherents in the United States,” said Graham West, media and communications director at the Sikh Coalition.

“The concept of feeding those in need as a means of service is an important part of the Sikh religious tradition, and Sikh community members and gurdwaras (Sikh houses of worship) are increasing their efforts to do so given the ongoing pandemic," he said.

The meals being served also have a deep meaning; they are serving langer.

"Langer means a vegetarian meal that is served at all the temples, the Gurdwaras, all over the world," said Raj Pannu. "Anytime we have services, we finish the service with a dessert, as well as a vegetarian meal."

Like the traditional langer, meals distributed are vegetarian. Each day’s meal may be something different. Thursday’s meal included rice, red beans, two homemade Indian tortillas and potatoes with green and red bell peppers.