On Wednesday night Steven Virola, chef at the Boulder View Tavern in Lake Harmony, brought his cooking skills to Paul’s House in Jonas.

The house is one of Valor Clinic’s transition homes for homeless veterans which provides life skills, mentors, peer-to-peer support and knowledge about the VA in a safe place.

Known as the Climbing Chef, when the 25-year-old chef isn’t working in the kitchen at Boulder View Tavern, you most likely can find him streaming his culinary adventures live on Twitch, where he raises awareness and donations, so he can continue to pay it forward and feed people in need.

When asked why he chose Valor or why he wanted to spend his free time and money to feed other people, he said, “The last three years I wasn’t in such a great place and then I got into streaming and started my own community named Shiv Nation. It’s a place where no one is judged,” he said.

The acronym stands for Same House Independent Vision. Virola has only been streaming on Twitch under TheClimbingChef for about six months and he already has more than 300 followers.

Livestreaming and cooking

Arriving in early afternoon, Virola; his girlfriend, Cheyenne Welch; and a veteran and friend, Steve Rumley carried in the boxes of fresh vegetables and meat along, with shrimp that would soon be stuffed with crab meat, and strip steaks. The kitchen counter was soon covered with the food the three would prepare and cook for the 12 veterans in the house.

Setting up for the streaming took some time, but soon the three were peeling, cutting and sautéing for the veterans’ special dinner.

The entire dinner had to be planned around some of the veterans’ diet restrictions, which included sugar-free and gluten-free. However, it didn’t seem to keep Virola and his two helpers from creating a dinner fit for a king.

The meal began with mixed greens with strawberries, pomegranate, sweet potato and walnuts in a homemade vinaigrette, followed by a navy bean and ham soup and cheese quesadillas with fresh fruit salsa. The main course was New York strip steak topped with crab meat stuffed shrimp, garlic mashed cauliflower, carrots and squash. And if that wasn’t enough, their dinner ended with individual sugar- and gluten-free cheesecakes.

It was amazing to watch Virola, as the Climbing Chef, livestream how to prepare the food while talking to all of his followers on how important his mission is to feed hungry people.

“With the $600 donated from Shiv we were able to buy all the food and have enough left over and to do something else nice for them,” he said.

Before coming to cook the dinner, Virola and his girlfriend went to check out the kitchen to make sure they didn’t need to bring anything with them to prepare the food. While checking the cupboards they noticed the dishes and silverware were worn and nothing matched.

“So we decided to buy them dishes and silverware, because everyone deserves to have something nice,” he said, and added there was even enough money left to make each resident a gift basket filled with all healthy snacks.