Bottura and his team reached out to Caritas Ambrosiana, a Catholic foundation which helps people who are homeless get back on their feet, and started working on a concept in an abandoned theater near a church."It was not just opening up a soup kitchen, it’s opening up a refectory, where monks used to eat while reading the Bible," Cristina Reni, the manager, says. "You don’t just feed your body, but also your soul."So Bottura and his crew built a place of art. A group of 13 designers created custom-made tables (the 13th is built from the scraps of the others), while artists like Maurizio Nannucci Mimmo Paladino , and Gaetano Pesce donated works for the space. And unlike the standard soup kitchen stereotype, this wasn't going to be a regular cafeteria assembly line; Refettorio Ambrosiano would have servers meeting the diners beyond the counter"It’s a different approach," Reni says. "If someone is there and you don’t go out [behind the counter], you don’t shake their hands, you’re not going to talk with them. And for our diners, it's different. They come here and they feel dignified. Okay, I’m a person. Yes I’m in a soup kitchen. I need help, but it’s not a bad thing. "The project grew: Lavazza donated the kitchen (created where the stage used to be); supermarkets around town provided staples like pasta and flour. Everything else arrived from a supermarket exhibit at the Expo. A (donated) truck arrived daily at 9:30 a.m., packed with products set to expire the next day: vegetables on the verge of rotting, meat about to go bad, and milk about to sour.