by Kelly McKnight
‘Ville Voice Eats Correspondent

Sometimes you run across people too good to be true.  Chef Timothy Tucker is one of those people.

Hey, call me cynical (because I am).  I’m always looking to see what angle you’re playing so when I meet a person like Chef Tim, my inclination is to wonder either what he is on or what he trying to prove. I turns out Chef Tim is just trying to make the world a better place….one meal at time.

To set the table, my wife Ellen raises funds for non-profits and she introduced me to Chef Tim over a year ago.  Ellen helped Chef Tim’s group by getting chefs’ coats donated to the program and she asked me to come to a lunch that they were serving.

So I went to lunch and not only filled my stomach….I witnessed something that filled my eyes with tears and my heart with hope.

Back to Tim. Prior to this, Chef Tim served worked at some pretty prestigious places including The Mansion on Turtle Creek in Dallas and The Painted Table in Seattle, plus he is a graduate of Sullivan University’s Culinary Program.  With a background like, it looked like Tim was on the fast track to the big time by opening his own eatery or launching a line of cookware or writing a best-selling cookbook. But Chef Tim chose a different menu — four years ago he went to the Louisville Salvation Army to oversee the prep and foodservice production at the Center of Hope.

“I’m on a mission of healthy cooking and healing people’s bodies with food. That’s how I cook, and that’s how I teach,” said Chef Tim.  Every day, seven days a week, Tim’s crew cooks breakfast for about 150 needy people and another 250 for dinner. “All of the food is made from scratch. It’s free of additives, hydrogenated oil, fructose,” Tim said, so people are not only getting good food, they’re getting food that is good for them.

Now comes the dessert.  At the same time Tim is feeding the masses, he’s also taking homeless people and training them to work in foodservice.  Chef Tim and the Center’s director came up with a job-training program for people who want to work in the food-service industry. The intensive 10-week program has students learning restaurant skills including safety and sanitation, food prep, knife skills, soups, sauces, stocks, meats and more.

Give a man a fish and he has a meal.  Teach him how to fish and he can feed himself.

Graduates of the program have gotten good jobs at all types of places including caterers, restaurants, bakeries, cafeterias, corporate venues and school food programs. Some of Louisville’s finest eating establishments now have Chef Tim’s people working there.

And that’s how I met Chef Tim.  I went to a lunch graduation program and was overwhelmed with the speeches the graduates made.  I could see and hear the pride they took in their new profession.  I could feel how their despair had been replaced with a future full of promise. These people now had a purpose in their lives.

Tim Tucker is shy and soft-spoken with a kind of “aw-shucks” attitude but he is too quiet.  A program like he runs needs support and that support only comes by making noise. If Tim won’t do it, I will.

You want to do something good?  Then get at your wallet and make a donation to a program that’s really helping turn lives around.  Donate cooking materials.  Go work in their garden.  Do something.  This isn’t welfare; it’s an investment in all of our futures.

They need $9,000 right now to keep the doors open.  Make your checks payable to:

Salvation Army Center of Hope
Culinary Training Program

To learn more, give Chef Tim a call at 625 1170 x 108 and ask for a tour.  If you don’t have treasure to give than give of your time and talent.

“My thing is to get into a work environment where I can help people,” Chef Tim says, “Cooking is a ministry…a way of blessing people who need to be blessed. Eating healthy helps balance the spirit and mind and soul.”

Amen and thanks, Tim.