Community Kitchen<\/a>, a nonprofit \u201csliding-scale\u201d restaurant that aims to make high-quality, ethically sourced meals accessible to all New Yorkers, regardless of income. It offers an unusual combination in the city\u2019s food scene: a fine-dining experience with no distinction in service or menu based on what diners pay.<\/p>\nCommunity Kitchen opened Sept. 19 inside the Lower Eastside Girls Club, serving dinner Wednesday through Saturday, through Thanksgiving. It\u2019s the brainchild of longtime food writer Mark Bittman, known for his New York Times columns and books like \u201cHow to Cook Everything,\u201d and Rae Gomes, a food justice advocate and cofounder of the Central Brooklyn Food Co-op.<\/p>\n
Together, they hope to prove that good food can be both elegant and equitable, and that a sliding-scale model can work in a city where affordability and access are often in conflict.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe wanted to pilot this as proof of concept for ourselves, and for funders,\u201d Bittman said. \u201cIt\u2019s not an easy concept to grasp in the abstract, so we\u2019re making it concrete.\u201d<\/p>\n
Diners sit under soft light at tables set with linen napkins and simple stemware. The fixed menu this week, by James Beard award-winning chef Mavis-Jay Sanders, included a tomato salad with basil vinaigrette, braised lamb with eggplant, house-baked sourdough and a dessert of roasted plums with almond streusel. Outside, signage emphasized the mission in English, Spanish and Chinese: \u201cLocal Food\u2026 Famous Chefs\u2026 Everybody Eats\u2026 For as low as $15.\u201d<\/p>\n
Two weeks into regular service, Bittman said the results are encouraging but that it\u2019s still too early to draw conclusions. \u201cThis is a research project that has a restaurant attached to it,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
Most of the guests so far have been friends, family and supporters, but there have also been some customers who caught the early press, Bittman said. Guests have driven down from Canada and up from Philadelphia, he said. An area of ongoing effort is to attract more diners from the neighborhood, including the enormous NYCHA campus that flanks Avenue D a few yards away \u2013 Bittman said they\u2019d be spending on specific community outreach soon.<\/p>\n
He added that, so far, enough people are paying the higher prices to keep the operation balanced. The $45 option is meant to cover the cost of the meal, while the $125 tier reflects what the dinner might cost in a for-profit restaurant. The $15 tier is designed for diners who need financial flexibility, and Bittman said the tier breakdown so far is roughly what the team expected.<\/p>\n
Gomes said the project was designed with that tension in mind.<\/p>\n
\u201cThese projects are expensive to run,\u201d she said. \u201cThey tend to exclude the folks in the community, especially in neighborhoods that are gentrified.\u201d<\/p>\n
Her goal, she said, is not just to serve food but to test whether Community Kitchen can \u201clive its values\u201d of local sourcing, dignified jobs, plant-forward menus, financial accessibility and visibility. \u201cIf we\u2019re not doing that, then we\u2019re not doing the thing,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
Anastasia Arce was studying the menu outside the restaurant. She lives nearby, and said she\u2019d passed by Community Kitchen a few times already and wondered what it was. Another local, Noah Levy, did a double-take. \u201cThere\u2019s not a ton of food on this side of Avenue B,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
The kitchen has begun to build a rhythm, sourcing from local farms and planning for fall and winter shifts as tomatoes and corn drop out of season. Guests seated for the early seatings trickled out slowly as others arrived, and people chatted on the sidewalk, across from a group of men lingering at the bodega across the street.<\/p>\n
Bittman said he hopes more locals give it a try.<\/p>\n
\u201cCome see us, it\u2019s a really unique experience,\u201d he said. \u201cIt\u2019s warm, it\u2019s welcoming. The food\u2019s fantastic, the atmosphere is wonderful.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cAs a restaurant that doesn\u2019t have the pressure of making money, we\u2019re doing a great job.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"As Rebecca Perkins walked home to the Jacob Riis Houses on Avenue D, she paused in front of…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":277913,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5122],"tags":[5229,405,403,5226,5225,5228,5227,67,586,132,5230,68,2969],"class_list":{"0":"post-277912","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-new-york","8":"tag-america","9":"tag-new-york","10":"tag-new-york-city","11":"tag-newyork","12":"tag-newyorkcity","13":"tag-ny","14":"tag-nyc","15":"tag-united-states","16":"tag-united-states-of-america","17":"tag-unitedstates","18":"tag-unitedstatesofamerica","19":"tag-us","20":"tag-usa"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/115317701653679543","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/277912","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=277912"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/277912\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/277913"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=277912"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=277912"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=277912"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}