Opening a pantry shelf and finding a random mix of potatoes, canned chickpeas and a bag of onions is the kind of moment that usually ends in a shrug and a pot of something plain. For one Toronto chef, that mix is the starting point for a full lunch service, and her videos of it have found an audience of 179,000 followers.
Maddy Goldberg, a private chef in the Toronto area, donates her time every Tuesday at Fort York Food Bank, TODAY reported on Nov. 12, 2026. She cooks lunch for 100 people using whatever food turns up there that day, and she films the process. Goldberg captions each video as cooking lunch for 100 people with the random food found at the food bank, which is exactly the promise behind the series.
Cauliflower, Hummus and a Frittata From the Same Shelves
TODAY food reporter Joseph Lamour described one of her most popular videos, posted in September 2025. In it, Goldberg rubs cauliflower with oil and spices, roasts it, and serves it with scratch-made hummus, poached eggs and toast. The plate looks like something from a restaurant menu, not a donation line.
Other videos follow the same pattern. TODAY said she has turned caramelized onion, chickpeas and pepper into a fall-flavored frittata, and potatoes and onion powder into barbecued hash browns. Each dish starts with the contents of the food bank rather than a shopping list, so the menu depends on what arrived that week.
Goldberg posts on Instagram as @maddygoldberg, and TODAY counted 179,000 followers for her when it published the story.
From Social Work Classes to Fine-Dining Kitchens
Goldberg told TODAY she studied social work in university and went to culinary school afterward. She has always loved cooking, she said, and watched food television. Once she was cooking for herself in university, she would study food textbooks at the library instead of reading for her classes.
Dinners for friends, along with episodes of “Chopped” and “Top Chef,” pushed her toward the kitchen instead of social work. She moved up quickly and landed in fine dining. Commenters on her videos have joked that she would “absolutely clean house on Chopped,” according to TODAY.
Wikipedia’s overview of food banks describes them as charitable organizations that collect food for distribution, often through pantries and soup kitchens, with the first one, St. Mary’s Food Bank, founded in the U.S. in 1967. Goldberg’s Tuesday lunches work inside that model, with donated food arriving first and the menu coming second.
Why a Fine-Dining Cook Moved Toward the Food Bank
A chef who changed course after a workplace clash is the subject of a story about a chef who walked out of a restaurant job, and a laid-off man who bakes pizzas in his apartment appears in a San Diego story about 15 pizzas a week. Goldberg took a different turn after fine dining.
The fine-dining world taught Goldberg a rule she says she did not enjoy. “Never run out of anything” was the main one, she told TODAY, and the worst thing a cook could do was tell the chef an ingredient was gone. The result, she said, was overstocking, and surplus food ended up in the trash.
That experience made her curious about the other side of the food system. She wanted to understand what happens when surplus food goes to a charity instead of a bin, and how that works in practice. Fine dining was not her calling, TODAY reported, so she turned to private cheffing and volunteering.
Home cooks know a smaller version of the same puzzle. A cupboard of leftover odds and ends can become a meal when the cook starts from what is on hand, an idea explored in 20 clever kitchen tricks for home cooks on Frenz Hub. A related look at poor people foods that even the wealthy eat shows how plain pantry staples keep earning a place on tables of every kind. Cooks working on a tight budget will also find ideas in 10 clever frugal living tips.
The Numbers Behind a Toronto Food Bank Line
The need behind the videos is large, and the holiday season brings giving questions of its own, such as the ones in 6 things never to do when donating to a charity this season. Daily Bread Food Bank’s Who’s Hungry 2026 report says one in eight Toronto children now lives in a household that relies on a food bank, nearly double the one in 15 recorded in 2022. The same report says Toronto recorded 4.1 million food bank visits for the second year in a row.
Goldberg pointed TODAY to a national figure as well. CBC News reported that Food Banks Canada found 2.3 million monthly food bank visits across Canada, a figure the report ties to grocery costs. In one of her videos, she says everyone deserves access to food while she roasts whole radishes, TODAY reported.
The same belief shows up in her approach to the work. Goldberg says the simplest ingredients can be made into something beautiful, and a donated bag of radishes or potatoes is a real starting point for her rather than a compromise.
Giving Time, Pantry Items or Reusable Bags
Goldberg does not expect every volunteer to cook at her level. For anyone who wants to help, she suggests contacting a local food bank and asking what it needs. If money is tight, she said, time may be what a person has to give, and random pantry ingredients may also be useful.
She added that food banks often need items that are not food, such as reusable bags. That small detail shows food banks can use help beyond groceries.
For Goldberg, the idea is simple and repeats weekly: show up on Tuesday, open the boxes, and build lunch for 100 from whatever is inside. Her videos turn that routine into a window on what donated food can become, and TODAY’s story brought the series to a national audience.
This article was produced with AI assistance and edited for accuracy against the sources linked above.
Image: USDAgov – Public domain/Wikimedia Commons
