A NYC restaurant helps the homeless
Ali Baba Mediterranean Cuisine’s owner built an entryway with a heat lamp for people to sleep under and donates food weekly to homeless people, a story that went viral on X this week. The posts showing the heat-lamp entryway and the regular food donations received thousands of likes and reposts, highlighting the restaurant’s ongoing charity work. (x.com)
A Midtown Manhattan restaurant owner who once slept in a heated hallway as a lost immigrant now opens his restaurant’s vestibule to people with nowhere to go on freezing nights. (thetablet.org) Ali Riza Doğan, owner of Ali Baba Mediterranean & Turkish Cuisine on East 53rd Street, told The Tablet he arrived from Ankara, Turkey, in 1986 and spent one winter night sheltering in a boarded-up New Jersey building after getting lost. (thetablet.org) When temperatures plunged, including to 14 degrees below zero on February 8, Doğan said he posted a sign reading, “If anyone is staying outside tonight, you can stay inside,” and let people sleep in the restaurant’s heated, dry vestibule. (thetablet.org) The restaurant’s shelter effort is not new. Tribune Media Wire reported on January 9, 2018, that Ali Baba’s vestibule at 46th Street and Second Avenue had a heat lamp for homeless New Yorkers, and that two people slept there on a freezing Saturday night. (wnep.com) That 2018 report also said the restaurant saved food for homeless people and had fed about 100 people at a Thanksgiving dinner the year before. (wnep.com) Doğan told The Tablet that the food donations continue year-round: each Wednesday, he joins volunteers serving lamb, chicken, and Mediterranean side dishes to homeless people. (thetablet.org) The story resurfaced in March 2026 in reporting by The Tablet and Currents, then spread widely on social media this week through posts showing the heated entryway and the weekly food runs. (thetablet.org) (netny.tv) The attention landed as New York City’s homelessness numbers remained high. The city’s 2025 Homeless Outreach Population Estimate counted 4,504 unsheltered people on a single January night, and Coalition for the Homeless said 90,803 people slept in the city’s main shelter system each night in February 2026. (nyc.gov) (coalitionforthehomeless.org) New York City’s Department of Homeless Services says the Homeless Outreach Population Estimate is the city’s annual count of people sleeping in streets, parks, and subways, while its April 10, 2026 daily report logged 461 outreach contacts and 73 placements in a single day. (nyc.gov 1) (nyc.gov 2) Doğan told The Tablet he still remembers the night he was cold, lost, and unable to speak English. Forty years later, the part of his restaurant he keeps open is small, but it is heated and dry. (thetablet.org)
