Communal Table

When Erick Williams began working in restaurants, it was a means to an end. The Chicago native believed the best way he could serve his community would be through rehabbing neglected buildings in his neighborhood, and he was just looking for a way to fund that. But over the next two and a half decades, Williams came to realize he had the skills, temperament, and vision to build a foundation for a...

When Jenny Dorsey was working in the fashion world at the start of her career she found herself looking at the people above her and realizing it wasn't the life she wanted for herself. Subsequent culinary and business school taught her a lot about what she really valued—and also where she felt welcome and included. Since then, she's used food as a means to explore vulnerability, identity, and conn...

It feels like a lifetime ago that restaurant lawyer Jasmine Moy sat for a conversation about what people need to know before they open a restaurant. Public life has changed in almost unfathomable ways since that podcast in May, 2019, with the spread of COVID-19 and the overdue national reckoning on police brutality and systemic racism that was sparked by the murder of George Floyd. Restaurants own...

Justin Burke is renowned for his "modern gramma" style of baking, but is perhaps just as appreciated for the inclusive spaces and community he creates wherever he goes. In the weeks before the pandemic shut down the world, Burke—who makes his home in North Carolina—sat down at Food & Wine HQ to talk about finding his home in restaurants, teaching his grandmother's recipes to his young son, and why...

In her work as the Executive Director for FoodLab Detroit, Devita Davison has been laser-focused on making sure that residents of her beloved city have access to and equity in the systems that bring healthy food to their tables. In the era of COVID-19, with Black and brown people bearing the brunt of the illness, this public scrutiny and solution seeking is more important than ever. Davison took t...

Romy Gill was getting ready to sell her jewelry to finance her first restaurant. As an immigrant to England from India—and a woman—she was finding it very difficult to get a bank loan, but they didn't know Romy Gill. After a BBC feature, she not only got the loan to open Romy's Kitchen, but went on to become a frequent and beloved presence on the radio and TV throughout the UK, write a stunning ne...

Paola Velez was listening to the James Beard Award finalist announcements hoping for the chance to cheer on some friends and colleagues. She was gobsmacked to hear her own name called out in the Rising Star Pastry Chef category. No one else was surprised. The Kith/Kin dessert master is revered and adored not just for her culinary chops, but also for her thoughtful, forward-thinking, and generous l...

For months, Food & Wine's Restaurant Editor Khushbu Shah spent every waking (and sleeping) second scouting out restaurants across the United States and Puerto Rico to assemble the 2020 class of Best New Chefs. Just a very short time after her final flight, restaurants all over the country closed their doors—some temporarily and some permanently—as social distancing regulations set in and the coron...

There's a good chance that The Joy of Cooking is somewhere in your orbit, whether it's a vintage edition handed down through your family, a copy bestowed upon you when you moved away from home, or even the newest version that came out at the end of 2019. What many people may not realize is that JOY has been a family enterprise since Irma Rombauer published the first edition in 1931. Now, with more...

When it became evident that the COVID-19 pandemic was going to hit New York, Trigg Brown had some tough decisions to make. As the chef-partner of Win-Son and Win-Son Bakery in Brooklyn, he was listening closely for guidance from authorities, but it was slow in coming and he did what he thought was best for his team—including setting up a fund to protect people who were ineligible for help from the...

Even before COVID-19 laid waste to the industry, mental health and addiction were issues that disproportionately affected hospitality workers. Now with a staggering segment of the population laid off and most people isolated from the routine and people they relied on, things are more dire than ever before. After the overdose of one of her employees soon after the pandemic struck, Ellen Yin of the...

Some people are just called to a life of service, and Rachael Ray gratefully counts herself among them. When the coronavirus pandemic swept the nation, she didn't have to think twice. She built charity into her business from the very beginning so that her brand would financially support the care and feeding of the people who need it most—as well as the animals who are keeping so many of us from ca...

On a recent press call with the Independent Restaurant Coalition, Bronx-raised chef Kwame Onwuachi pointed out the painful truth that a tiger at the Bronx Zoo was able to get a COVID-19 test, and yet the human beings in his home borough don't have access to that care and are getting sick and dying at a rate much higher than those in Manhattan. The 2019 Best New Chef spoke with Food & Wine Senior E...

John Winterman got fired from his first restaurant job in 1986, and he's been in love with the industry ever since. He honed his appetite for fine dining under the stewardship of Charlie Trotter and Gary Danko, ascended the ranks in Daniel Boulud's empire to become maitre d' at the flagship Daniel, then joined forces with Drew Nieporent's Myriad Restaurant Group to open the 2015 James Beard Best N...

Louisville-based chef Edward Lee is the kind of person who sees a community in crisis and doesn't think twice—he steps in and figures out a way to keep people fed. When the government furloughed workers, he rallied the people around him to make meals for those who were suddenly without a paycheck. Through his charity, The LEE Initiative, he's set up mentorship and education programs for women and...

It's nearly the first of the month and for most businesses (and people) the rent is due. But what happens if you're a restaurant owner who has had to scale back or shut down entirely due to coronavirus? Can you just not pay, or is there anything the government is working on to help? Food & Wine senior editor Kat Kinsman happens to be responsibly socially distancing alongside an expert on the matte...

Angie Mar arrived back in New York City from a stint cooking in London, and found a restaurant landscape completely changed. After a painful period of self quarantine for the safety of the people around her, she put on her game face, went to her restaurant, and made some tough but necessary decisions to ensure a future for the business, and the financial stability of her team. The Beatrice Inn is...

When Steve Palmer and Mickey Bakst started Ben's Friends, they had no idea that it would be the force that it is today. What began as an industry-specific recovery meeting in Charleston, SC has since transformed into a national lifeline for chefs, servers, bartenders, and other hospitality workers trying to achieve and maintain sobriety in an industry that often celebrates and enables excess and m...

Ming Tsai is one of the best-known chefs in America, but that doesn't insulate him from the onslaught of challenges and unknowns that the restaurant industry is facing right now. Rather, he's had to take quick action to take care of his employees and community—especially the most vulnerable people—and knows he can't do it alone. Tsai spoke with Food & Wine senior editor Kat Kinsman over the phone...

Restaurant workers are usually the last people to ask for help because they're too busy serving others. On today's Communal Table podcast, as COVID-19 spreads across the country, Food & Wine senior editor Kat Kinsman shares resources and coping strategies for chefs, servers, bartenders, and other hospitality people who are fighting for their lives and the industry they love and rely on. Matt Jenni...

As COVID-19 spreads across the country, restaurant workers and owners are in uncharted waters trying to figure out how to take care of their employees, stay in business, and feed their community. Food & Wine senior editor Kat Kinsman spoke by phone from her home in Brooklyn with Salem, MA pastry chef and Industry United co-founder Kate Holowchik and Amanda Toups, co-owner of Toups' Meatery in New...

During times of crisis, restaurants are there for us. They're where we celebrate, gather, catch-up, connect, and nourish ourselves body, mind, and spirit. At this unprecedented and uncertain moment when people are told to socially isolate because of coronavirus, many of them are in danger of shutting down for good. Food & Wine senior editor Kat Kinsman spoke by phone from her home in Brooklyn with...

In addition to writing books, playing gigs as a professional musician, hosting podcasts, performing one-man shows, and appearing on TV shows like Masterchef and Top Chef, Jay Rayner has served the last 20 years as restaurant critic for The Guardian. The question he has received with extreme regularity: "What would you eat for your last meal?" Rayner made it his business to contemplate that questio...

Whether you're away from home for business or pleasure, you're in a vulnerable spot when you stay in a hotel, away from your normal patterns and dependent on other people. Sarah Robbins knew hospitality was her calling, got an ROTC scholarship to put herself through school to learn all about it, and has spent her entire career finding ways to make restaurant and hotel guests—and the people who wor...

Emma Bengtsson has always been stubborn and driven, and in many ways, it's served her well. Growing up as an elite athlete, she developed the intense discipline it took to rise to the top, and when she started working in kitchens, the same rules applied. She worked through the often intense pain of a spinal injury for many years, rarely asking for help and steadily getting worse. When her Michelin...