Moby Dick House of Kabob offers ‘Catering for a Cause’ to help needy families during holidays

Bethesda, Maryland-based Moby Dick House of Kabob will open its first restaurant outside of the D.C.-metro area in Baltimore. (Courtesy Moby Dick House of Kabob)

A popular local kabob restaurant is offering to parlay your hankering for kabobs, hummus and fresh pita into a meal to help needy families this holiday season.

“We’re doing ‘Catering for a Cause,'” said Alex Momeni, chief operating officer of Moby Dick House of Kabob, with 31 locations in the D.C. region. “For every catering order that customers place with us during the holidays, we are donating a full entree to a local shelter.”

The campaign, which runs through Jan. 1, aims to help neighbors enjoy the holiday on the basis of the company’s catering orders.

“We’re going to tally it up and we’re working with some local shelters to provide weekly deliveries,” Momeni said.

Catering for a Cause is not the first charitable initiative of Moby Dick. During the recent government shutdown, they offered Sandwiches for the Shutdown.

“Whoever was affected by the government shutdown, by just showing a government ID, they’d come in and get a free sandwich,” Momeni said. “Displaced employees were invited to swing by, grab some lunch, while trying to figure out how to get back on track with your career.”

Moby Dick also works with Too Good To Go, a service that redistributes surplus food to avoid food waste.

Moby Dick House of Kabob began with a single restaurant in Bethesda, Maryland, in 1989.

“It originated as a Persian brand, but over time it kind of morphed into more of a Persian-Mediterranean kind of concept,” Momeni said, during a visit to the brand’s Sterling, Virginia, location. “We wanted to make sure we covered a lot of flavors from back home but also brought in some influences from surrounding regions.”

“Our specialties are open-flamed grilled kabobs,” Momeni said, as employees turned large skewers of chicken breast, seasoned beef and lamb, and salmon on the charcoal grill.

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Neal Augenstein

Neal Augenstein has been a general assignment reporter with WTOP since 1997. He says he looks forward to coming to work every day, even though that means waking up at 3:30 a.m.

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