As a child in the Bronx, Jon Gray used to entertain himself by reading “The Joy of Cooking.” On nights when his family ventured out to a restaurant, he took charge.
“They crowned me the restaurant king in my family when I was 5 or 6 years old,” he recalled. “I’d order for the table.”
Now 29, Gray has played the restaurant king on pilgrimages to France, Spain and Denmark. He is a leader of a group of globe-hopping food lovers and chefs calling themselves Ghetto Gastro. Along with his fellow members, like the chefs Lester Walker and Pierre Serrao, Gray wants to see the day when the Bronx is recognized for the talent of its homegrown chefs.
“I feel like success for me would be establishing the Bronx as a culinary destination,” he said during a recent stroll through the neighborhood. Another of his founding Ghetto Gastro comrades, the Bronx-born Malcolm Livingston II, is the pastry chef at Noma, the trailblazing restaurant in Copenhagen. “That alone shows the potential of inner cities and what our culture is capable of,” said Serrao, who has cooked in Italy and Barbados.
Ghetto Gastro is a loosely knit collective of food enthusiasts with big dreams. In the New York area and beyond, it is sought-after for its inventive approach to catering. (At a gathering last year, one dish featured raw hamachi sheathed in ginger oil and served on a slab of Himalayan salt.) But hosting parties and giving the Bronx props are only the beginning of its aspiration. “Our vision is to empower the community,” Serrao said.
Gray wants to create a food-oriented educational mission for children, publish a book (“The title I have right now is ‘Black Power Kitchen,'” he said) and put together an Anthony Bourdain-esque TV program in which he and others travel around the world exploring the cooking of the African diaspora.
“Feijoada — that’s a slave dish,” Gray said. “These stories need to be told. And they should be told by people of color.”
When people talk about the history of black culture in his home borough, conversation often turns to the block parties that led to the genesis of hip-hop in the 1970s. But Gray said he thinks the time is right for a different cultural revolution, one fueled by a passion for food.
“There’s new stuff going on,” he said. “Let’s talk about some of that.”
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