Ghetto Gastro Talks Mt. Rushmore Of New York Food, Culture, And Audible Series
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New York City is a food mecca unlike no other, as its five boroughs provide a smorgasbord of cuisines native to various corners of the globe. For every line across the subway system lies a world of wonders for the foodie in you to explore. Yet, with the ouster of homegrown restaurants and locally-sourced markets and the socioeconomic plight of low-income neighborhoods, pockets of the city aren’t as bountiful in culturally-enriched eateries.
While this reality is familiar to native New Yorkers, Ghetto Gastro has provided a new outlook through their efforts to highlight the taste and vibes of the city. New York natives Jon Gray and Lester Walker and Connecticut-bred New Yorker Pierre Serrao have spent the past decade marrying food, culture and community, one endeavor at a time.
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Launched in 2012, Ghetto Gastro was born when Gray, a fashion entrepreneur, fused his business acumen with Walker’s culinary experience before fine-dining wiz Serrao was brought into the fold. The trio quickly gained popularity with several innovative events, including their “Waffles + Models” series (which Cardi B once appeared at pre-stardom), and “Featherbed Lane,” a “pop-up bodega party” inspired by a street in the Morris Heights section of The Bronx.
Ghetto Gastro’s organic groundswell led big business to come knocking, with the trio striking a collaboration with NYC-based brand Crux for the retail cookware line CruxGG, which includes air fryers and waffle makers. The popularity of CruxGG at Target and Williams-Sonoma helped pave the way for the trio to work with Nike, Timberland, and more. With cosigns from Martha Stewart, Wolfgang Puck, and others, Ghetto Gastro continues to make strides with In The Cut With Ghetto Gastro, the collective’s new Audible Original series.
Produced by Gray, Walker and Serrao, in conjunction with Gunpowder & Sky, the eight-episode series profiles food items synonymous with New York City, including chopped cheese sandwiches, New York-style pizza, jerk chicken, and mofongo. Guests on the series include Questlove, Black Thought, A$AP Ferg, and Von Diaz, who trade thoughts with the trio on the traditional roots of each meal or snack, and the role it plays in the cultural landscape of the city.
Ghetto Gastro has also made the foray into the literary world with Ghetto Gastro Presents Black Power Kitchen, the crew’s first cookbook that’s billed as “a celebration of Black culture.” It’s currently available via Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Target, Williams Sonoma and several other bookstores.
VIBE went In The Cut with Gray, Walker and Serrao and spoke about the evolution of Ghetto Gastro, the ethos that define the movement, their respective Mt. Rushmore’s of New York food, and what they have next in store.
VIBE: You recently partnered with Audible for the release of your eight episode series In The Cut With Ghetto Gastro. What’s the premise of the project and what inspired it?
Jon Gray: Well, with In The Cut with Ghetto Gastro only on Audible, we really wanted to tap into stories that were very central to coming of age in New York. So we’re talking about dishes. You might be from Brooklyn, but you might know a little bit about the chopped cheese, the Uptown staple. We’re talking about pizza. Growing up in New York, you know what it’s like to get a slice. The ice’s in the summer, from the piragua to the cocolatto. The Italian ice at your pizza shop. Thinking about mofongones and the Afro-Latin influence that is in the communities in New York City. So really, it’s a love letter to New York through food and also a love letter to the ancestors just by tapping into the history. So we just wanted to give the people flavor for their ears.
How did the partnership with Audible come about?
Gray: It was real organic. One of the homies was like ‘Yo, what’s good? I got a homie at Audible that I wants to link up,’ and the conversation just started. We were in the mindset of thinking deeply about food because we were working on our book at the time and getting it popping, so it just all formed up together like Voltron and the timing was right. It’s been a pleasure and an honor to partner with Audible.
Some of the food staples covered in this series include the chopped cheese, iconic New York slice, and jerk chicken. If you had to create a Mt. Rushmore of NYC bites, which four foods would make the list?
Serrao: Oh man, I’m gonna have to go with a nutcracker. I’m gonna have to go with a piragua. I’m definitely gonna have to go to with a with a beef patty with mozzarella cheese because everybody know about that. You go up in the pizza spot, you get the beef patty with the cheese. A chopped cheese.
Gray: My Rushmore is the chopped, a slice, a bagel and I’ll go with a Jamaican beef patty, bring in the Caribbean.
Lester Walker: Yeah, I guess my four would have to be the same. It’s like, what else is there? I mean there’s patties, let me get a slice—
Serrao: Yo, we got four chicken wings with French fries.
Walker: I don’t feel like that’s a New York staple, though. I feel like people come here for a bagel, patty, pizza. Maybe some coffee, but coffee doesn’t even originate in New York. So yeah, patty, pizza, chopped cheese and a bagel with lox.
Serrao: And throw four chicken wings and fried rice on there for me, too. I want veggie fried rice, I don’t want no pork on my fork, let’s get it, man.
No pork on the fork.
Serrao: And throw in one of them iced teas, too. Let me get one of them iced teas from the back!
That’s a Fendi. The series includes insight from the likes of Questlove, Black Thought, Von Diaz, and A$AP Ferg. Without giving too much away, what were those conversations like?
Gray: They were honestly like how we just talk to any of our homies, because these are all people. Like Von Diaz, she had the deep historical knowledge. So she’s putting us on the game on things that we didn’t know. So just like for the audience, it’s a learning experience for us. We’re not coming on a pedestal, we’re here to learn and share and exchange, as well. So having those guests was a lot of fun. You know, you heard Black Thought with the chopped cheese slander [laughs], so it gets spicy. And we got my man Scarr from Scarr’s Pizza. So it was just a pleasure to build with all of them folks and having a good time. It was a really a lot of fun. It’s a job, but this was a fun job making this show.
Serrao: And it’s also interesting to get other people’s opinions, too. ‘Cause growing up in The Bronx and growing up in New York City, period, we’re very opinionated people. So everybody’s gonna talk their sh*t from their borough, too. You’re from Brooklyn, you’ve got a certain way you finesse the way you do things. And if you’re from Queens, you’ve got a certain way you finesse and do things, but every state has their own way of doing things, as well. So it was cool to have those type of interactions with those people and they’re our friends, too. So it’s actually these conversation we could have with our friends and break bread and build bridges, you know.
You mentioned the book [Black Power Kitchen] earlier. Can you speak on that?
Gray: Yeah, Black Power Kitchen is a manifesto and a cookbook. We’ve got recipes, but really recipes for success. Having conversations with luminaries, you mentioned Ferg. Ferg is in the book as well. Thelma Golden, Emory Douglas, who’s the Minister of Culture at the Black Panther Party. Kimberly Drew, Theaster Gates, Dream Hampton, but just vibes, you know. Really wanting to take people through the inception and the ideology and ethos of Ghetto Gastro, so you’ve got all of the things. Visual arts from people that inspire us because we hope that us sharing our inspiration will inspire more people. So it’s just paying it forward and circulating the vibrations.
Right. Going back to the genesis, explain how Ghetto Gastro came to be and how it’s evolved?
Gray: It’s an organism, so it’s constantly changing. You mentioned evolution, but it started with me and Les growing up in the same neighborhood, P joined us soon after. We were doing things in the neighborhood, parties downtown. Actually at my crib in the West Village and we took it overseas to the south of France, Africa, Japan. So really just creating experiences, designing products, telling stories. It’s really a platform itself. You think about the foundations of Hip-Hop, which started in our borough, it’s taking things that typically don’t go together and putting them together to create a new language for the people. It’s the voice of the people. Vibes, everybody eats.
Serrao: And a good kickstart, a good jumpstart for that would be when I won Chopped in 2012. That was a good way for us to keep up that momentum and get some traction going as well in the streets because we had some accolades to talk about and walk about. So that was another thing as well. We wanted to disrupt areas that were classically doing things and be unapologetically Black and showing our people some love.
Walker: We really wanted to create spaces for faces like ours and that’s really just the whole idea about Ghetto Gastro. It’s more than food, it’s bigger than just the three of us sitting here doing this interview. It’s really just about opening doors for others and being a pillar to our community. Being of service to our people and just showing them what you can do when you band together with your people. And how far you can go when you go together.
That’s real. And I like that, ”spaces for faces.” I like that spin. What would you say is next for Ghetto Gastro?
Gray: Definitely Audible because it’s applaudable. Tune in, download that whenever you can. Tap in, leave a comment, leave them reviews, let us know how we did. We’ve got just a lot more… I don’t like to say content because content just feels cheap, but a lot more food in the form of media. We’re working on a lot of media, creating things for people to see that’s coming soon. We’ve got our products hitting stores soon. We’ve got the re-up on the air fryer going back in Target this summer. Yeah, a lot. People just got to tune in and stay in tune because the game is to be sold, not told.
Serrao: We’re cooking up. We’ve got some good merch coming, some good clothes dropping, collaborations. We’ve got the book out as well. We have a restaurant in Tokyo right now that you could pull up to if you’re in the Tokyo area. It’s called Burnside, paying respect to our Bronx roots and paying respect to our jerk chicken and our Maroon-influenced food from the West Indies, taking it out there to Tokyo. So, yeah, and also just stay tuned to what’s going on. Tap in with Ghetto Gastro on Instagram and YouTube, we’ve got a lot of things cooking up. We’re whipping.
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