Just two months ago, Chef Jason Paluska was slicing hamachi crudo onto hearts of palm, passionfruit, and coconut cream while grilling ribeye with trumpet mushrooms, sunchokes, and black-garlic sauce during regular dinner service at The Lark.

This week, deep in the throes of the COVID-19 pandemic ​— ​which may decimate America’s culinary culture more dramatically than any other industry ​— ​Paluska remains in the kitchen. But instead of prime cuts and sushi-grade seafood, he’s cooking up massive pots of Tex-Mex chili and chicken pozole verde, throwing braised pork enchiladas together with beans and rice, and packing it all into to-go containers that will feed the homeless, veterans, seniors, and other at-risk segments of Santa Barbara County.

It’s all part of an emerging network of restaurants, social workers, and nonprofit foundations that are trying to fill the region’s most vulnerable bellies while also keeping chefs employed and protecting the larger food chain of farmers, ranchers, and fishermen. These efforts are complex, very fluid, and still in need of sustained funding. But just a few weeks into the projects ​— ​the primary ones being umbrellaed under the Foodbank of Santa Barbara County and SB ACT’s Community Food Collaborative, with New Beginnings and City Net as partners ​— ​many feel that the work is paving the way for food-distribution solutions that will persist even when the pandemic dies down.