robin hoodVolunteers serve free dinner to homeless people at Robin Hood restaurant in Madrid.Pablo Blazquez Dominguez/Getty Images
The spirit of Robin Hood is alive in a new restaurant in Madrid, Spain.
The Robin Hood Restaurant charges its breakfast and lunch customers a little extra so that it can feed homeless patrons dinner for free. During the day, items on the pre-fixe menu cost $11.80.
The restaurant, which opened in early December 2016, is run by an 80-year-old Catholic priest named Ángel García Rodriguez. Its dinner menu features items like mushroom consommé, roast turkey and potatoes, and pudding.
According to NPR, the restaurant serves over 100 needy people every night, in two shifts. For paying customers, lunchtime is fully booked until April 2017. Some of the kitchen staff come from luxury hotels, and celebrity chefs are vying to volunteer there once a week.
robin hood 2A homeless man speaks to Father Angel (R) after he had a free dinner at Robin Hood restaurant on December 5, 2016 in Madrid, Spain. Pablo Blazquez Dominguez/Getty Images
The Robin Hood Restaurant shares its name with the infamous heroic outlaw, first referenced in a 14th century poem by William Langland. The character often "robbed from the rich and gave to the poor."
"I want them to eat with the same dignity as any other customer," García Rodriguez told NPR. "And the same quality, with glasses made of crystal, not plastic, and in an atmosphere of friendship and conversation."
The restaurant isn't the only one with a unique method for helping low-income community members. Los Angeles-based Everytable, changes its menu prices depending on what its local customers can afford. The South LA location (where households earn a median salary of $30,882) offers meals for less than $4.50. In early 2017, Everytable will open a second location in downtown LA (where the median salary is $99,990), which will offer the same items for around $8.