"They’ll be able to go to a grill in Kuwait City and say, ‘I’ll take mine medium rare,’ and it’ll be John Mancini cooking it for them," said former St. Paul City Council member Pat Harris, a founding organizer of the Serving Our Troops project.

Besides Harris, the bar owners will be joined by about 40 fellow Minnesotans, including St. Paul finance director Todd Hurley, communications consultant Ted Davis and a host of executives from the Twins, Timberwolves and Vikings.

The Serving Our Troops steak dinner will be held simultaneously at five military bases in and around Kuwait City. There also will be a live video feed into the St. Paul RiverCentre, where the soldiers’ families will enjoy an additional 3,000 steak dinners at the same time.

Harris, who co-founded Serving Our Troops with John Marshall in 2004, said this is the ninth dinner the effort has hosted and his third time in Kuwait City. The project has drawn volunteers from across the river and beyond.

"We’ve got guys from Rochester that are part of the project,"

said Harris, who figured this is one of the largest troop-feeding efforts of its kind and one of the few that offers a simultaneous video link to families.

More than 2,300 Minnesota National Guardsmen from the Rosemount- and Bloomington-based 34th Red Bull Infantry are serving in Kuwait. About two-thirds of the way through their latest tour, they represent more than 500 Minnesota communities.

The soldiers from the 1st Brigade Combat Team will enjoy dinner at five bases: Camp Arifjan, Camp Buehring, Camp Virginia, Ali Al Salem and the Kuwait Naval Base.

In addition to Kuwait, the Serving Our Troops project previously has followed Minnesota National Guardsmen to Kosovo; Iraq; Camp Shelby, Miss.; Fort Sill, Okla.; and Sparta, Wis.

"We’re in good hands when we’re there," said O’Gara, who has taken multiple trips overseas with Serving Our Troops. "They take good care of us. When we were in Iraq, our convoy got a flat tire. That’s the only time I really felt nervous."

Pat Mancini, who co-owns the restaurant that bears his family’s name, said his brother John and son Nick Mancini will be in Kuwait while he’s serving families at the RiverCentre.

"I’m not the one going, but I’m nervous for my son, yeah, and nervous for John," Pat Mancini said. "Kuwait’s pretty secure. It’s just the traveling. If it were Iraq, I’d be very nervous."

Harris figures Serving Our Troops is one way to share a bit of Minnesota hospitality with soldiers deployed from across the country.

"We don’t just serve the Minnesotans," Harris said. "We serve the soldiers who serve alongside them, as well."