Since its founding in 2012, Ghetto Gastro has been defying boundaries. Inspired by the prismatic presence of cultures and flavors in their native borough of The Bronx, Jon Gray, Lester Walker and Pierre Serrao have transformed what began as a creative collective driven by a passion for food into a full-fledged movement. Their new book, Black Power Kitchen captures that evolution — filled with recipes, essays, paintings, sculpture, art, photography and poetry — pushing the offering past the arena of “cookbook” and into the territory of manifesto.
For the past decade, Ghetto Gastro has worked at the intersection of art and culture, food justice and community care. Their immersive, highly-curated events are as fluid as exhibitions, including thoughtfully designed spaces, menus and musical performances. In 2020, responding to inequities in Black and brown communities made worse by the pandemic, they shifted into mutual aid by partnering with Rethink Food and served over 30,000 free meals in the Bronx. Inspired by the Black Panther’s Free Breakfast for Children Program, they are constantly reframing the traditional bounds of establishment culinary spaces to consider deeper questions around inclusion, empowerment and how to best redistribute resources that combat issues around food apartheid. “Food culture is one of those ways that we can re-create and reinvent,” says Thelma Golden in an interview with Ghetto Gastro included in the book. “Food in and of itself is a way that we create community,” she continues.
On the heels of our Art Basel party in Miami with Marc Jacobs, we spoke to young Black and brown chefs and food storytellers about innovating in the culinary space, honoring the complex layers of their identities and following in the lineage of a community-driven food philosophy.
Pri Aguilar
What role does community play in your creative practice?
They’re my support and my guidance. I love tapping in when I have ideas and I love bouncing them off each other. It keeps me creative.
Does your identity intersect with your curiosities and impulses as a chef?
I’m still in that process of figuring out my identity and how I want to portray that. Being from such diverse places like New York and Peru, and being plant-forward — I’m focusing on what I like to eat while honoring my history with food and my heritage.
What excites you most in terms of future dreams, visions or possibilities for the food world?
I am excited to see more queer representation and different narratives. More cookbooks of Latin American food made by Latin Americans as well as more Black and POC authors.
Morgan Lynzi
What role does community play in your creative practice?
Community is key. I see ushering in this shift where we see ourselves as co-creators of culture as a community project we’re all a part of, and my creative process is in service of this. I’m constantly asking myself, “How is sharing this story, idea, pleasure, joy, anger or culturally inspired dish moving us forward? How am I creating a platform for meaningful conversations about what we all are hungry for in life, yet many may not have the self-permission to explore yet?”.
It’s so easy to forget that as millennials and Gen Z we are in the thick of figuring out who we want to be while also answering the emergency call to reshape the world as we know it. Spaces for diving deep and finding nourishment are needed more than ever. We need reminders on and off our screens that we are interdependent, so I prioritize making first what has the potential to bring us back to the truth that we are never alone in our feelings, fears or dreams.
Does your identity intersect with your curiosities and impulses as a chef?
Absolutely. Using food as a medium for deeper conversations has allowed me to explore and express what it means to not only be a child of an immigrant and multi-ethnic, but a woman craving nourishment in a world that has historically refused to provide it — physically, mentally and emotionally. Most of the recipes I share are developed through my own self-discovery… from a chocolate-covered strawberry cake inspired by a date that showed me how romance was not just what I wanted for me, but from myself, to plant-based twists on Jamaican recipes I grew up with that help me affirm my second-generation American experience; being somewhere in between worlds is just as valid and rich as someone from the Caribbean, or who has had their roots in the US for generations.
What excites you most in terms of future dreams, visions or possibilities for the food world?
I’m really excited to see how underrepresented voices within the space use media to reclaim cultural narratives, re-educate and rebuild the world by facilitating the healing of our relationship to ourselves, each other, and the land we stand on through food. It’s a beautiful time, and the first time, that we can take overdue pleasure and pride in embodying who we are in our own words.
Kayla Phillips
What role does community play in your creative practice?
Creativity is like a child; It has to be stimulated, loved on, exposed to new things, people and experiences. Not to mention, we all know that it takes a village to raise a child. Same concept. I believe there is a time and place to sit with yourself and your thoughts. But I know for a fact my creativity would be so underdeveloped if it wasn’t for other human beings and the things they make, say and do.
Does your identity intersect with your curiosities and impulses as a chef?Absolutely. Because I do exist at an intersection of so many identities, there’s this limitlessness and freedom that comes with that. It was confusing in the past, but as I’ve grown into myself, I’m incredibly grateful that I don’t fit into a box. My food, just like me, is extremely free. Because I moved around my whole life, I don’t feel bound by a certain regional cuisine. Because I didn’t go to culinary school, there’s nothing to “unlearn” in that regard. I really can do anything I want.
What excites you most in terms of future dreams, visions or possibilities for the food world?
Playfulness. It’s always been ironic to me that food, the main thing used to celebrate, has such a serious conception. There’s no room for laughing or being silly in a fine dining kitchen. It’s like, the less happy you look, the more serious your staff takes you. I hate that. I have so many dreams and visions for the future of the culinary universe. But for right now, my main goal is to see myself and other POC cooks have fun in the kitchen. Have fun in your head before you even get to the kitchen. Have fun in the garden. Have fun at the table. Play with your food more. Try that dish you’re afraid will go over people’s heads. Play.
Nasim Lahbichi
What role does community play in your creative practice?
As a child, my parents taught me how important community is, and the importance of relying on it when you need it most. It is essential for your creative mind to be surrounded by voices that speak, look and eat differently than your own. I find so much gratitude with learning and listening to those around me who have experienced life through different lenses, foods and influences. It’s too easy to have tunnel vision with the surroundings you grew up around and there is so much beauty with being uncomfortable. Be inquisitive, ask questions and be comfortable not always being right, your creative mind will thank you for it.
Does your identity intersect with your curiosities and impulses as a chef?
The foods I gravitate toward and the ones that have kept me fed throughout my life help define my identity. My experience as a third culture kid in NYC left me questioning who and what my community was. With both my Puerto Rican mother grasping on to her Boricua identity, with little community in the diaspora, and a Moroccan father assimilating quickly into American society, I experienced a childhood of diverse voices from around the world influencing my perspectives, while also creating a longing for one community I could call my own.
Food was the way that I felt more connected to my Puerto Rican and Moroccan heritages when both families and the respective communities felt so far away. I still feel a sense of longing to be “Moroccan enough” or “Puerto Rican enough”. Over the last few years, I’ve found that sharing my own experience of my heritage with my queer chosen family has been the most fulfilling and rewarding way to feel secure in my queer identity as a Puerto Rican-Moroccan New Yorker.
What excites you most in terms of future dreams, visions, or possibilities for the food world?
What excites me most is finding new ways through food to express solidarity with those who are far away, yet so close. Food brings folks together to nurture (new) relationships and have tough conversations that are best digested in the kitchen. It’s been exciting to see projects like Padma Lakshmi’s Taste The Nation or High On The Hog by Stephen Satterfield thrive in food media. These food shows not only put the spotlight on marginalized groups who use food as resiliency and resistance, but also serve as a history lesson for other individuals who enjoy the fruits of the labor of these communities without acknowledging the hardships these communities have endured.
As pop-ups become more popular in hopes of respecting culture and identity of diverse people, I hope we see more of them. The impact of passionate cooks and storytellers putting their culture on the map through a plate of food only reinforces the idea of intersectionality in the food industry. I’m looking forward to seeing how far food can bend with the influences of culture, art and storytelling of the people around me when it comes to a specific culture.