NEW YORK (WCBS 880) — A restaurant in Brooklyn is showing off a much different men courtesy of the owner, who is celebrating emerging Black chefs.
Celebrated chef Greg Baxtrom was very aware of the Black Lives Matter movement in Brooklyn, his restaurant was just steps away from it.
“Our restaurants are two blocks from Grand Army Plaza, so the marches went by our restaurants every day,” he tells WCBS 880.
He has two eateries across the street from each other: Olmstead NYC and Maison Yaki.
Both restaurants were closed for months and when they could open, he wanted to give other chefs the opportunity to work.
“I offered, if anyone could use the space for a couple of weeks, to shoot me a message,” Baxtrom said.
In a heartfelt post, he talked about seeing how segregated things were in the U.S. from his experiences working in Spain, where things are so different.
He said he especially wanted to help Black chefs and essentially handed over the keys to his restaurant.
Recently, chef Joseph Smalls took over the space and served up a menu which attracted a pretty good crowd.
“I didn’t have to give out any money,” said Smalls. “I just had to give myself and they trusted me to do a good job – and I’m just proving to them that I can uphold that.”
He kept the profits from the food, and Baxtrom kept profits from the bar tabs.
In the kitchen, LaMarvin Johnson says the opportunity to work in the restaurants is giving him a chance to show off his chops, that he might not otherwise have gotten as a black chef.
“It’s hard for us to move up the ladder in the corporate world and in restaurants,” he explains.
“It’s hard to be a black person in the restaurant industry in New York,” adds Kilolo Strobert, the restaurant’s wine specialist. “I think it’s great. That’s why I wanted to do it: for us to excel, show our excellence, and to shine.”