The iconic San Diego restaurant Kansas City BBQ, known as a filming location in \u201cTop Gun,\u201d opened its doors to active-duty service members on Thanksgiving.<\/p>\n
\u201cFamily and friends, mostly thankful to God, for keeping us here every day,\u201d Navy man Freely Jenkins said he was thankful for.<\/p>\n
Jenkins is thankful for many other things, as well, including the many Thanksgiving memories he’s celebrated with family.<\/p>\n
\u201cI celebrate at home, you know: We do family gatherings, we do games, food games, you know \u2026 stuff like that,\u201d Jenkins said.<\/p>\n
This is the first year Jenkins is spending away from home.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019re out here for some training,\u201d Benjamin Tellez told NBC 7.<\/p>\n
Tellez among the many active-duty service members who couldn\u2019t spend Thanksgiving with their loved ones.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s tough, but you keep going,” Jenkins said. “It\u2019s part of the military.”<\/p>\n
The San Diego restaurant has spent the past 40-plus years making sure San Diego\u2019s servicemen and -women have a place they can call home away from home.<\/p>\n
Kansas City BBQ offered them a Thanksgiving buffet and multiple TV screens to catch the football game.<\/p>\n
\u201cTurkey is like the first thing, but obviously, seconds, being thankful,\u201d Tellez said.<\/p>\n
\u201cSweet potato pie, that\u2019s what I\u2019m looking for, sweet potato pie,\u201d Jenkins said.<\/p>\n
The tradition originated with the restaurant’s owner, Martin Blair.<\/p>\n
Growing up in San Diego, Blair watched his parents invite enlisted sailors to share a Thanksgiving dinner and he\u2019s carried on the tradition ever since.<\/p>\n
\u201cOur military gives us our freedom every day,\u201d Melissa Edenfield said.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think that\u2019s an awesome opportunity to have, especially for the veterans who don\u2019t have family around, who don\u2019t have anything to do, they\u2019re able to come and have a good Thanksgiving meal and not have to worry about paying for anything,\u201d Kia Comstock said.<\/p>\n
The buffet will be open again on Friday from 11 a.m. to 6 p.m. \u2014 or until the turkeys run out.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The iconic San Diego restaurant Kansas City BBQ, known as a filming location in \u201cTop Gun,\u201d opened its…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":410244,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5134],"tags":[5229,1582,276,1802,3549,7264,67,586,132,5230,68,2969],"class_list":{"0":"post-410243","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-san-diego","8":"tag-america","9":"tag-ca","10":"tag-california","11":"tag-military","12":"tag-san-diego","13":"tag-sandiego","14":"tag-united-states","15":"tag-united-states-of-america","16":"tag-unitedstates","17":"tag-unitedstatesofamerica","18":"tag-us","19":"tag-usa"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/115626451028276727","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/410243","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=410243"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/410243\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/410244"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=410243"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=410243"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=410243"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}