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Meanwhile… A Full Thanksgiving Dinner On NYC’s L Train

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A Brooklyn comedian turned a Sunday night L train into a full Friendsgiving spread, and the subway has never smelled like stuffing before.

On the night of November 24, 2019, riders boarding a Brooklyn-bound L train out of Union Square around 7 p.m. found something other than the usual mix of delayed-train grumbling and standing-room-only shuffling. Comedian Jodell “Joe Show” Lewis and a crew of friends had turned a subway car into a dinner table, complete with a roasted turkey, cornbread, and cider, and the whole thing wound up featured on “The Late Show with Stephen Colbert” in the show’s recurring “Meanwhile…” segment.

• Jodell “Joe Show” Lewis planned the stunt for months, choosing the L line specifically because weekend service is slower and prone to delays, giving the group more time to set up.
• The menu — catered with East New York’s Chef Bea Kitchen — included roasted turkey, mashed potatoes, cranberry sauce, collard greens, cornbread, stuffing, squash, and cider, served to strangers over more than twenty minutes.
• One rider who boarded at Bedford Avenue rated the turkey a “solid 7/10” and the collard greens an “8.5/10,” and cellphone footage of the meal went viral on TikTok, Twitter, and Instagram.

The Setup on the L

Lewis didn’t just wing it. According to the details behind the stunt, he spent months figuring out logistics before settling on the L train as the venue, banking on the line’s notoriously spotty weekend schedule to buy his group extra minutes without a conductor cutting the bit short. The crew set up a long folding table inside the car, dressed it with tablecloths, decorative apples, and electric candles — the kind of table you’d expect at a relative’s house, not squeezed between subway poles.

Before anyone touched a fork, the group led a communal prayer for the car full of strangers who’d just wanted a ride home. Then came the actual production: plating turkey, mashed potatoes, cranberry sauce, collard greens, cornbread, stuffing, squash, and cider, and handing plates to everyday straphangers and even subway staff. It took more than twenty minutes to make sure nobody in that car went unserved.

Commuters Respond to Recent Changes

Commuters who stepped on expecting a normal ride — including riders who boarded at Williamsburg’s Bedford Avenue stop — reacted with a mix of shock and amusement once they realized what was happening a few feet away from the doors. Reviews came in fast and specific, the way New Yorkers review everything.

One rider rated the turkey a “solid 7/10” and the collard greens an “8.5/10.”

That kind of on-the-spot food critique, delivered mid-transit, is exactly why the clips spread the way they did. Cellphone video of the feast racked up hundreds of thousands of views and reactions across TikTok, Twitter, and Instagram within days, turning a single subway car into a nationally broadcast bit once Colbert’s show picked it up for “Meanwhile…”

The Motive Behind the Meal

Lewis has said the point wasn’t just to go viral — it was to make sure nobody around him went hungry over the holiday, subway car or not. It’s the same spirit that drives plenty of pop-up holiday food gestures around the city every November, except most of those don’t involve a moving train and a folding table wedged between the doors.

Not everyone was charmed. The stunt split opinion online between New Yorkers who thought it was a genuinely sweet piece of holiday chaos and critics who questioned the sanitation of serving a hot meal on subway seats, or dismissed the whole thing as clout-chasing dressed up as generosity. It’s the kind of split reaction that’s become a running theme for viral moments involving the city’s transit system, whether it’s New York’s subway ecosystem making headlines for the wrong reasons or, in this case, a comedian trying to do something right with it.

Whatever side people landed on, the numbers didn’t lie — this was one of the more-shared subway clips of the week, and it landed Lewis a spot on national television during Thanksgiving week, which is a pretty good return on a folding table, some electric candles, and a plate of Chef Bea Kitchen’s collard greens.