AUSTIN, Texas — In the kitchen at University Baptist Church, the work begins before anyone reaches the table.
UT protests sparked a church kitchen that now feeds Austin through community care
There are trays to fill, vegetables to chop, meals to pack and volunteers moving quickly around one another in a space that feels less like a production line than a family kitchen scaled up for a neighborhood.
At the center of it is Fadi Odeh, the church’s food program director — a former immigration attorney, self-taught chef and queer Palestinian Muslim American who sees food as both nourishment and invitation.
UT protests sparked a church kitchen that now feeds Austin through community care
Odeh has the kind of culinary résumé that could have taken him in a very different direction: a finalist run on “Crime Scene Kitchen” Season 2 and an appearance on Food Network Canada’s “The Great Chocolate Showdown” Season 1.
KEYEUT protests sparked a church kitchen that now feeds Austin through community care
Instead, much of his work now happens in a church kitchen, where the meals are free, and the mission is less about performance than presence.
UBC describes Odeh as a former human rights lawyer whose work with food is rooted in community-building and understanding.
For Odeh, cooking is not so much a second career as a continuation of the first.
Fadi Odeh checks food in the UBC kitchen, where he says cooking has become a way to build community and offer dignity.
As an immigration attorney, he said the heart of his work was helping people access resources and improve their lives.
But over time, he began to ask where his own sense of purpose lived.
The UBC kitchen serves as both a workspace and gathering place, where volunteers prepare meals rooted in service, welcome and belonging.
He had been cooking since he was 9 years old, he said, and eventually realized he already had the tools he needed. In his words, food became a way to have difficult conversations, help people gain access, and give them enough stability to think clearly.
“Ultimately when you’re hungry you can’t really think right,” Odeh said.
And when you’re full, you have a much better perspective.
Pro-Palestinian demonstrators gather on the University of Texas at Austin campus in April 2024. (PHOTO: CBS Austin)
The kitchen’s current chapter began during the 2024 student protests on the University of Texas at Austin campus.
University Baptist Church, located just off West Campus, became a place of respite for pro-Palestinian demonstrators as protests and police response roiled the university community, according to Odeh.
A May 5, 2024 protest at UT Austin followed weeks of campus demonstrations that later shaped the work happening inside nearby University Baptist Church. (PHOTO: CBS Austin)(PHOTO: CBS Austin)
Odeh remembers being contacted after the church opened its doors to students.
Suddenly, he said, hundreds of people were coming through.
UT protests sparked a church kitchen that now feeds Austin through community care
The building became a sanctuary, a lost-and-found, an organizing space and a place where know-your-rights trainings were held.
Then came a simple question: Could he teach them how to use the commercial kitchen?
UT protests sparked a church kitchen that now feeds Austin through community care | Credit: Fadi Odeh
“I’ll do you one better,” he remembered saying.
I’ll come cook and I’ll teach you how to use it.
Volunteers work side by side in the UBC kitchen, preparing meals for students, neighbors and anyone facing food or housing insecurity.
What began as a volunteer response turned into something permanent. Odeh said he first showed up for two days. Then the pastor offered him a job.
“And that was history,” he said.
For Lance Milliken, who has volunteered at the church for two years, the pull of the place was immediate.
Lance Milliken, a longtime volunteer at University Baptist Church, helps prep food for a community meal in the West Campus kitchen.
ALSO | Austin launches new public art and events to celebrate diversity after crosswalk removals
He said he was walking through West Campus during the student protests when he saw students being ushered into the church after what he described as a chaotic and painful day on campus.
As a queer Black person, Milliken said, his first instinct was to ask what he could do. He saw the church offering students “safety, respite, a place to organize, a place to lick their wounds.”
Fadi Odeh brought new systems and organization to the UBC kitchen, helping volunteers prep, cook and serve meals while keeping the shared space running smoothly.
Soon, he was helping in the kitchen.
Today, he describes himself as an unofficial number two — cooking, coordinating, and helping serve as a bridge between Odeh and the church.
University Baptist Church sits just off the University of Texas at Austin campus, where its doors opened to students during the 2024 protests. | Credit: University Baptist Church
What has kept him there, Milliken said, is the feeling of safety Odeh creates in the kitchen. He called Odeh both deeply knowledgeable and unusually approachable, the kind of person who teaches without making people feel small for asking questions.
That matters in a kitchen. It matters even more in a church.
Guests gather inside the University Baptist Church dining room, where community meals and church events help turn the West Campus space into a place of welcome. | Credit: University Baptist Church
Milliken said some queer people he knows have told him this is the first time they have stepped inside a church in years. To him, that is part of the deeper meaning of the work: creating a space where people who have often felt pushed to the margins can feel welcome again.
For Odeh, that idea sits at the heart of Pride Month.
Located near UT Austin’s West Campus, University Baptist Church is home to the kitchen where Fadi Odeh helps serve students, neighbors and community members. | Credit: University Baptist Church
He said queer people have historically been at the forefront of service, in part because they understand what it means to live on the margins and to show up for others.
The spirit of the space, he said, is simple: “We welcome everyone.”
Volunteers work side by side in the UBC kitchen, preparing meals for students, neighbors and anyone facing food or housing insecurity. | Credit: Fadi Odeh
That welcome is also shaped by his Palestinian heritage. Odeh said everything he makes is informed by a Palestinian lens, but he does not see his cooking as isolated from other cultures. Ingredients, he said, travel. Flavors overlap.
Food becomes a language people can understand even when they do not share the same words. To him, the possibilities of food are “hope incarnate.”
Inside the University Baptist Church pantry, shelves of donated and purchased food help support weekly meals and to-go distributions.
The people who come through the program are not one kind of person.
Odeh said there is sometimes an assumption that the meals are only for people who are unhoused, but the kitchen serves anyone who is food insecure, housing insecure, unable to access benefits or simply going through a hard time.
MORE | Pride Month ceremony in Round Rock honors Barbette with new Texas historical marker
The dining room at UBC serves as a gathering space for meals, events and conversations — an extension of the kitchen’s mission to feed and welcome the community.| Credit: University Baptist Church
UBC’s God’s Family Dinner serves a free weekly meal with no requirements or restrictions; the church says the ministry has served more than 150,000 free meals since it began in 2004.
Odeh said the need has grown as grocery prices and the cost of living have risen. He often thinks about the duality of the room — people arriving in moments of despair or challenge, and then the small triumph of watching them sit down to a hot meal.
Inside University Baptist Church’s dining room, tables are arranged for a community gathering supported by the food program led by Fadi Odeh. | Credit: University Baptist Church
One of the moments that stays with him is a little girl who came back to the steam table with a simple request: one more piece of cake.
Dessert, Odeh believes, is not extra. It is part of the meal. It is also part of the dignity.
University Baptist Church in Austin became a place of refuge during the 2024 UT protests and now houses a growing community food program. | Credit: University Baptist Church
During Pride Month, Odeh’s story brings together identities that others might try to pit against one another: queer, Muslim, Palestinian, American. He does not see it that way.
“We hold all these different parts,” he said. What he holds on to, he added, is not the baggage others bring to those identities but peace within his own spirit.
The UBC dining room is set for an event, part of the church’s broader effort to bring students, neighbors and volunteers together around shared meals. | Credit: University Baptist Church
If in Islam we believe that God makes no mistakes, then I believe that he made no mistake in my making.
At University Baptist Church, that belief has become practical. It looks like food packed into containers. Volunteers washing dishes. Students and elders working side by side. Meals are carried into the city. A child asking for more cake.
A person walking into a church for the first time in years and finding, perhaps unexpectedly, a place to belong.
ALSO | Austin artist reunites with uncle’s AIDS Quilt panel, turns grief into a new art show
Odeh said there are many ways for people to help: volunteering, distributing meals, donating, sharing the program, hiring him for classes or catering, or helping connect food with people who need it.
During the summer, he said, the program offers to-go meals on Wednesdays and welcomes people to pick them up and distribute them to neighbors or community fridges.
For Milliken, the invitation is even simpler. Come as you are.
“Get to know your neighbor,” he said.
People are not as scary as we think.
UT protests sparked a church kitchen that now feeds Austin through community care
HOW TO HELP:
Volunteer:
Donate:
Donations can be made through UBC’s Giving page. The church says donors can use the “special instructions” field to note the specific fund or program they want to support.