You’ll looove the leek and potato soup — after all, it’s made from fresh vegetables pulled right from the garden just a few feet away. But the real nourishment going on at a Vegas SOUP charity dinner is how the event benefits a choice nonprofit with a fat check at the end of the night. This garden nosh takes place every other month at Vegas Roots, a five-acre community garden in the heart of Las Vegas off Bonanza Road. (The ingredients in SOUP: Support, Organize and Unite People.)
“It’s a wonderful way to support some of the smaller, lesser-known nonprofits in town that are doing such great work,” says Vegas Roots Executive Director Rosalind Brooks. “Even if we raise just $300, it helps.” Indeed, these bimonthly bashes — with a featured soup created from veggies culled from the Vegas Roots garden — are a far cry from tux-and-gown galas that power some of the more established nonprofits in town. For a $10 ticket, you get some of the freshest soup around and, at the end of the night, a vote on which of the four organizations will get the ticket money. Reps from the various nonprofits deliver five-minute pitches in hopes of winning the donation. Since Brooks launched the event in November, Vegas SOUP has given money to every kind of organization, from halfway houses for ex-prostitutes to groups supporting grandparents raising grandchildren full-time. We’ll slurp to that.
Vegas SOUP takes place 6:30 p.m. July 22 at the Vegas Roots Community Garden, 715 N. Tonopah Drive. Info: vegasroots.org —