Dine Out at Participating Restaurants This Weekend to Raise Funds for Northwest Immigrant Rights Project

Eat out this weekend and you might just be supporting immigration rights — from Friday, Feb. 7, to Sunday, Feb. 9, over 100 restaurants, bars, and pop-ups are participating in the Seattle Hospitality Immigration Fundraiser. Participating vendors across Seattle are offering special menu items this weekend, and profits will go to the Northwest Immigrant Rights Project (NWIRP), a nonprofit organization providing legal services, advocacy, and education to immigrants, refugees, and asylum seekers in Washington State. 

The fundraiser follows a number of previous fundraisers from Seattle restaurants to foster community and show support for topical issues. Past fundraisers have raised thousands of dollars for issues including abortion rights, the 2023 Hawai'i wildfires, and a previous immigration rights fundraiser in 2018.

The South Seattle Emerald spoke to one of the fundraiser organizers, who asked to remain anonymous due to harassment. "It feels moving to be able to do something a little more positive and to work with so many other people around town," they said. "There is something just really powerful about working with food in this moment, and using food as a medium to bring people together, to draw attention to issues, and to try to do something positive. In a lot of ways, restaurants are public spaces and offer something unique in terms of getting people mobilized that a lot of other businesses aren't able to do."

While many of the same restaurants have participated in the previous fundraisers, the organizers stressed the added urgency of this particular event. The Donald Trump administration's proposed immigration policies have troubled the restaurant community and challenged the humanity of the workforce it relies on.

"As a restaurant, we definitely rely a lot on local farms, and that's where you'll find a lot of immigrants. We rely on the fresh produce that they provide," Jayson Kochan, manager of participating restaurant Mezzanotte, told the Emerald. "They are the backbone to the labor force."

"This is an attack on everybody, the whole city," the anonymous event organizer said. "We talk to our customers every day, and we know how people actually feel about the issues. Customers are really excited, just like the restaurant operators that are involved. They feel good about contributing to the local economy in a way that helps more than just the restaurant."

Participating restaurants range from casual Indian street food chain Spice Waala, to finer dining establishments like The Walrus and the Carpenter. Many vendors will offer special drinks or dishes from which all proceeds will go toward NWIRP. For example, Mezzanotte, a northern Italian restaurant in Georgetown, will offer a special of bucatini cacio e pepe with truffle butter and a specialty cocktail.

This is far from the first time Seattle restaurants have banded together to give to the immigrant communities that sustain them. Since the pandemic, Spice Waala's husband and wife co-founders, Uttam Mukherjee and Dr. Aakanksha Sinha have partnered with Community Lunch on Capitol Hill and Mary's Place for the #Bhojan project, through which they have donated more than $42,000 with a mission of providing culturally relevant, nutrient-dense meals to immigrant communities experiencing food insecurity. 

"Both Uttam and I are first-generation immigrants to the U.S.," Dr. Sinha told the Emerald. "With Spice Waala, we got an opportunity to really open a business that brings forward our own culture and introduce people to our food and the richness of the Indian community. So I think for us, it's important that we stand up for our community, the immigrant community. [The fundraiser] is to support people that are an integral part of our society and bring richness to it."

The immigration fundraiser may reflect one of many occasions that the Seattle hospitality community has shown up for immigrants, but it is a unique opportunity for Seattle residents to support immigration rights through dining. 

The fundraiser will run from Friday, Feb. 7, to Sunday, Feb. 9, at over 100 participating restaurants, bars, and pop-ups. All participating businesses are included in the event graphic disseminated on Instagram.