Every Wednesday, Ali Riza Dogan, who runs Ali Baba Mediterranean Cuisine in Midtown Manhattan, loads a car with catering pans of hot food to transport to Chinatown.
He’s been running a meal program for homeless people in New York City for years.
“Between 7th and 8th Avenue, doesn’t matter how cold, rain, doesn’t make a difference,” Dogan tells TODAY.com. “Every Wednesday night, we give them food around eight o’clock. I’ve been doing this five, six years.”
His eatery, which he runs with his wife, Turkan Dogan, serves as a refuge for New Yorkers in need, both figuratively and literally. On cold nights, the restaurant’s entryway remains open.
He posts a sign on the door that invites homeless people to come in from the cold: “You can stay inside. The heat is on overnight,” it reads.
Dogan remembers arriving in the U.S. as a young immigrant from Ankara, Turkey. At the time, he didn’t speak English, which led to a very formative evening on one of his first nights in New Jersey.
“I slept outside one night,” he says, adding that the language barrier prevented him from finding his way to his family during the time of payphones. He found refuge in the hallway of a boarded-up hotel, which had a carpet and heat.
The next day, he found someone who could help him call his uncle, who then came and picked him up.
Alongside his father, Dogan worked as a dishwasher for his first job. They eventually opened the first Ali Baba location in 1997.
“When I opened that spot, there was a shelter next to our restaurant,” Dogan says. “Seeing that, I always fed them, because I was lost myself.”
For decades now, Dogan has been serving the homeless community. He often shares his efforts on his personal social media account to hundreds of thousands of followers.
“Sometimes I cannot sleep at night… Because I think about the people forced to stay outside in the freezing cold,” Dogan wrote on April 15. In the clip, he hands out sleeping bags to a man who gives him a grateful fist bump.
“Those who have never lived through the streets may not understand,” he wrote. “But those who sleep outside know very well—sometimes surviving one cold night is a battle for life itself.”
Neighbors often stop by to donate money to the cause, but Dogan says he doesn’t accept donations. He’s starting a foundation for people who want to help others in that way, though.
“I am doing this from my heart,” he says. “We’re all human beings.”
Dining and Cooking