San Francisco couple gets help from restaurant community to feed 1,000 people Thanksgiving meal

SAN FRANCISCO (KGO) -- A San Francisco couple is getting ready to serve 1,000 people and they are getting help from some of the biggest names in the Bay Area restaurant industry.

A couple in the Mission is ready to serve hundreds of free meals.

They've spent days preparing and they got a lot help from volunteers, which included some high-profile restaurateurs.

Amanda Ngo is ready. In a matter of hours, she'll be giving away a Thanksgiving meal to anyone who walks into her supermarket. She and her husband Howard are the owners of Duc Loi in the Mission. They say this is their way of giving back.

"When I was leaving Vietnam, I was only 14-years-old and I was really hungry on the boat and I feel like Thanksgiving Day is the most important day and I don't want people to be hungry," Ngo said.

The Ngos actually began doing this seven years ago. It started out with a couple hundred meals. This year, it'll be a 1,000.

A small kitchen requires creativity. So the turkey wasn't baked, but cut into pieces and deep fried. Ngo learned from Anthony Myint, co-founder of the popular restaurant Mission Chinese Food.

"I would like to think that it's the best free Thanksgiving meal you're going to get, because it's the technique of fine dining cooks," Myint said.

Volunteers from all over the neighborhood have come to help. Andrew Chau, co-founder of Boba Guys, says this is his fourth year.

"A lot of us, especially as you grow in a small business, you get bigger, you lose sight of what happened and where you started, so doing this every year and meeting the community is pretty rare," Chau said.

The meals will be ready by noon.