On the evening of March 11, restaurateur Steve Chu received an unusual request from a man named Brandon Jones. Jones e-mailed the chef and co-owner of Baltimore restaurant Ekiben explaining that his mother-in-law who lived in Vermont was terminally ill with lung cancer, and was obsessed with the tempura broccoli served at chef Chu’s restaurant.
View this post on Instagram
Jones hoped the chef would share his recipe with him so he could prepare it for his mother-in-law, who had stopped treatments and was in the final stages of her battle with cancer. Chu immediately responded, but Jones wasn’t prepared for what the message said:
“Thanks for reaching out,” Chu wrote. “We’d like to meet you in Vermont and make it fresh for you.”
Stunned, Jones wrote back with the following:
“I emailed back, saying, ‘You do know that this is Vermont we’re talking about, right?’ ” Jones shared with the WASHINGTON POST. “It’s a six-hour drive. But Steve responded, ‘No problem. You tell us the date, time and location and we’ll be there.’ ”
View this post on Instagram
“She had always told us, ‘When I’m on my deathbed, I want to have that broccoli,’” Rina Jones, 38, told the POST. “In fact, when I was packing on Friday to drive up to Vermont, I called my mom to see if she wanted us to bring anything special and she jokingly said, ‘tempura broccoli!'”
“As soon as she opened the door, she recognized the aroma immediately,” Brandon Jones said. “It smelled amazing.”
“My mom kept saying, ‘I don’t understand — you drove all the way up here to cook for me?’” Rina added. “She was so happy and touched to have that broccoli. She couldn’t believe it.”
Despite the sores in her mouth from her cancer treatments that have made eating very difficult and painful for her, Rina’s mother devoured the meal, and came back for all the leftovers the next day.
The Joneses invited the men to join them for dinner, but they needed to start their long journey back to Baltimore, and also refused to accept any compensation from the family for their gift.
“My mom cried later about their generosity and so did I,” Rina Jones said. “They made so much food that she had it again the next day for lunch. It’s something we’ll never forget — I’ll carry that positive memory with me, always.”
The men from Ekiben were just happy they had the opportunity to help make a dark time a little brighter for one of their customers.
“To me, it was a huge honor to be able to help fulfill the family’s wishes,” Chu told the Post. “This is about her, not us. There was a lot of good, positive energy in doing this.”
COMMENTS POLICY: We have no tolerance for messages of violence, racism, vulgarity, obscenity or other such discourteous behavior. Thank you for contributing to a respectful and useful online dialogue.