The Lower East Side has seen its fair share of buzzy restaurant openings, but this one founded by author Mark Bittman is different: Community Kitchen isn’t just a restaurant. It’s a social experiment with sliding-scale payment — and a challenge to the way New Yorkers think about dining out. It opens on Friday, September 19, tucked within the Lower Eastside Girls Club (281 East Seventh Street, near Avenue D).
The new restaurant is led by executive director and food justice advocate, Rae Gomes along with chef Mavis-Jay Sanders, the 2022 James Beard Award-winning chef of Philly’s Drive Change, whose resume also includes Blue Hill at Stone Barns and Untitled. Community Kitchen will test whether a sliding-scale pricing model can make high-quality, locally sourced food accessible to everyone. That means a multi-course dinner will cost as little as $15 for neighborhood folks, $45 for diners paying closer to cost, and up to $125 for those who want to contribute more, no questions asked, no policing.
“The goal,” says Gomes, “is to create a space where everyone feels welcome, but where we’re prioritizing our neighbors.”
“Food should be a joy and a right, not a luxury,” Sanders adds. “I want people to see themselves in the food they’re eating, and I want them to feel cared for.”
“Ideally,” Bittman says, “half our diners will pay $15, and the other half will be split between the middle and higher tiers.”
The New York Times reported that it aims to create 80 jobs and will pay each worker in excess of $32 an hour. Its advisory board includes Alice Waters, humanitarian and chef José Andrés, author Marion Nestle, Saru Jayaraman of One Fair Wage, and activist Karen Washington.
Inspiration
Community Kitchen isn’t the first restaurant driven by community-first. Rocker Jon Bon Jovi’s JBJ Soul Kitchen has a pay-what-you-can model in a couple of locations around his home state of New Jersey. In New York, among many programs, there is Rethink Food from founders Matt Jozwiak and Eleven Madison’s Daniel Humm, which, utilizes dining donations to support restaurants that provide meals to communities impacted by food insecurity. Further uptown in Harlem, Massimo Bottura’s Food for Soul offers free community dinners on Tuesdays for lunch, along with “gourmet” dinners on Wednesdays and Fridays, per the website. There’s also a ticketed monthly Chef’s Lab to raise funds and awareness for the project.
The Community Kitchen space resides in a fully built-out bakery that has never really been used, complete with honeycomb-tile floors, an old-fashioned display case, and a counter that’s being replaced by a bar. There’s a full kitchen with an oven, stove, and proofers — all tucked within the nonprofit Girls Club space. The restaurant’s entrance greets people with an elaborate mosaic of the neighborhood, made from shards of the many other locations that housed the Girls Club before this address.
While the restaurant’s opening is around the corner, the project has been years in the making, starting during COVID, after Bittman published Animal, Vegetable, Junk, about the history and future of the American food system, he wrote recently in his newsletter, The Bittman Project (Disclosure: Melissa McCart had edited Bittman’s newsletter.) As he was doing book talks and interviews, “I realized that for the first time in fifteen years none of my projects had a deep emotional hold on me.”
That realization helped push Bittman toward opening a restaurant that prioritized well-being. “Food that is prioritizing BIPOC farmers employing agroecological principles; a system that treats workers well, with respect and living wages; cooking that promotes wellness, not sickness; and universal accessibility, building not only health but community,” he wrote. “Serve great food on a sliding scale: If you have less money, you pay less. If you have more money, you pay more.”
As far as the space, Bittman tells Eater that when he first considered the project, he drove around the Northeast from Worcester, MA to Philadelphia, looking at potential places. “Last year, Rae and I looked in the Bronx, in Brooklyn — everywhere. It was challenging. Then Rae brought us here, and we all really liked the space and we liked the people, too.”
A collaborative approach
Hiring Gomes led to a more systematic search. “We weighed the pros and cons and voted,” she says. “Everyone picked this as their top choice. We wanted to create something where we were not only thinking about the location, but also the partnerships.”
In bringing life to the restaurant, Sanders says it will feel like a high-end dining room “minus the attitude,” with custom-built tables, Jono Pandolfi ceramics, and more. “We want to bring the same service you’d expect at a Michelin-starred spot, but without pretension,” she says.
The menu will run several courses — mostly plated, with a few family-style dishes — changing with the seasons and what their farmers have available. There is one menu option for everyone, with potentially a vegan alternative.
For now, Community Kitchen will run as a pilot program, stretching through late November. This is so the team can test not only the menu, but also figure out how to balance the sliding=scale model and build relationships with people living in the neighborhood. Gomes describes it as a chance to rethink what dining out means in New York.
“Restaurants were meant to be places of nourishment and community,” Gomes says. “Somewhere along the way, we lost that. We’re trying to bring it back.” Reservations are live for September 17 for the neighborhood and two nights later for the general public through Community Kitchen’s website. Going forward, half the seats will be reserved for local residents at the $15 tier with dinner served Wednesdays through Saturdays.
Melissa McCart is the lead editor of the Northeast region with more than 20 years of experience as a reporter, critic, editor, and cookbook author.
