Jon Gray

0:00This is an iHeart Podcast.

0:30app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast. John Gray and I met last May when Yana Peel, the global director of arts for Chanel, invited me to be his guest on their Connects podcast. John and I got together and we spoke about family, our cookbooks, Ghetto Gastro, collaborating with creative partners, food activism, and a lot more. Today, though, the tables are turned, and Sean is my guest on Ruthie's Table 4. He's just had a lunch at the River Cafe, and now with Sean Owen, we're ready to pick up where we left off. So, here you are. When did you get here? Did you just fly in from... I'm fresh off the plane dropping the flame, fresh from New York, your birth state.

1:16I know, it is, 100 miles north of New York. We still claim you. You can claim me. Yeah, it's a good state. And what are you doing here? I'm here for Frise and the 154 Art Fair in the CU. I don't want to wait till you got to New York. I wanted to come do this. Yeah, it's nice to do it here. Well, why don't we start, as we're talking about food, your recipe. So we asked you to choose a recipe from one of our 12 cookbooks, and you chose? I got the linguine with crab. I don't know how to pronounce it with the Italian pronunciation. Linguine al grancio? Is that right? Yeah, you say it the way you like.

1:50Linguine al grancio. Buongiorno. Buongiorno. Linguini with crab. Serves 10. Two large male crabs, about 2 to 3 kilograms, cooked and picked. Three fresh red chilies, finely chopped. Three handfuls flat-leaf parsley, finely chopped. Make sure that knife is sharp. Juice of four lemons. Three garlic cloves, ground to a paste. 500 grams of linguini. That Evo, a.k.a. extra virgin olive oil. Put the white and brown crab meat in a large bowl. Look, look, everybody's coming together, white and brown. Add the chili and most of the chopped parsley, the lemon juice and crushed garlic. Stir in the olive oil.

2:35This sauce should be quite liquid. Cook the linguine in a generous amount of boiling salted water. Then drain and stir into the crab sauce. Serve with the remaining finely chopped parsley. Okay. So why did you choose this recipe? Well, crab is a very meaningful ingredient for me. And then when I think about ghetto gastro, our signature dish involves crab. It's the triple C's, cornbread, crab, and caviar. And for me, like growing up in communities that are historically underestimated, they tell you things like, oh, the people in your community are crabs in a barrel. They don't want anybody to succeed or thrive.

3:15But, you know, crabs don't belong in a barrel. So when you think about different types of environments that humans should exist in, it should not be in environments with scarcity and lack. It should be abundance. You know, I think it's enough on this planet for us all to thrive and not just have to survive. And tell us a crab with cornbread and caviar. Yeah, so this dish, like it started with the name, I want to say. Like, I feel like in 2013, we just, I was listening to this group called Triple C's, the Carroll City Cartel. And I'm like, yeah, we should do a dish named triple C's. And I just started thinking of things that would work with the letter C.

3:54So cornbread we use as a base. And the dishes had iterations. Like we've done cornbread with creme fraiche and cucumber. But none of these things were just, they didn't work like properly. But then we were like, oh, let's just make it, let's make it opulent. And then we built the storytelling into it once we found that. So when you think about cornbread, that's a collaboration between enslaved Africans and indigenous Native Americans, right? Because that's an American ingredient, corn. Then you think about the crab, again, with the crabs in a barrel. So like having that layered storytelling in the dish.

4:30And then caviar, you know, which often people reference as the pinnacle of opulence. Like you think caviar, you think truffles, right? When you think something is expensive. Like when you're on a date and they're like, do you want that supplemental caviar or truffle? You look at it across the table like, take it easy. But yeah, so it's something that is not necessarily European. It's really like Middle Eastern. You know, when you think about coming from the Caspian Sea, Persia, Russia also connects to that. So, and it's black. So you wanted to put the black at the top of the dish, you know, so to think about how these things could stack up to have a narrative.

5:07So tell us about Ghetto Gastro. Well, Ghetto Gastro, it's a collection of individuals from the Bronx. We use food as a vehicle to tell stories. So it's me, my partner Lester, my other partner Pierre. And we started just doing a lot of like creating experiences like around the world. Really started doing house parties at my house. Now I'm remembering my first time having caviar was caviar that Lester took from his job at Madison Square Garden. that they had like extra because he was the sous chef at the Delta Suites. So they would order all these crazy ingredients like foie, guai. And often they didn't use them all.

5:45So he had a lot of caviar. I remember he took some foie. He made a beautiful torchon. I used my food stamps and go to Whole Foods or go to the farmer's market, get some produce. And we would host these dinner parties for friends at my tiny West Village apartment. And this is in 2012. And then from there, we just started doing projects with different collaborators like brands or art institutions. And they wanted the essence. And it's really about highlighting the reference material where we come from the Bronx, you know, looking at hip hop as an exercise in postmodernism, like assemblage, like taking things that people don't imagine go together and creating a new vernacular.

6:25When you describe yourself, are you a chef? Are you a cook? I've typically called myself the dishwasher within Ghetto Gastro because my partners are like formally trained, restaurant trained chefs. Whereas me, I'm good with the menu in my hand. I handle like the business in a creative direction. I would like to think my palate is incredible just because I've tasted so many things. And I have a deep love and knowledge and respect for the people that use their hands. I don't have the skill to make it all work on a plate, but the concepts are there. So it's a great collaboration. You talk a lot about collective, and I was wondering if you could tell us what collective is.

7:04What is the meaning of a collective? I think convening and being a part of a collective and community is essential to me because I never really took the time to become really good at anything but assembling people. So I kind of need other people to help make things that I want to exist in the world. So it's kind of been a means of survival for me, like a necessity. Like, and it started, I think, early when I was really young and most of my friends were a lot older than me. So when they drew, they drew way better. And I was like, I'll never get this good, but I have a lot of ideas. So can I use them as a vessel to help create the ideas that are in my brain and look the way I want them to look?

7:42Because my hand wasn't able to create what I was thinking. And is it for profit? Is it, it's a business? Absolutely. And then what about your work in the Bronx? The community efforts that we do, I feel like, in my opinion, growing up how we grew up and where we grew up and still having family members and relatives and dear friends that might be living below the poverty line or not have certain access, it's not like we just escaped the reality. So it's unfortunate, but it's also I do love the ground and the fact that I still live in a community that I grew up in. You know, so you're dealing with issues of broken homes, incarceration, all of these things that come with generations of systemic oppression.

8:24But for us, we focus on food. Food is our tool, right? So we work with organizations. I like to say we try to empower and provide resources to people that are actually doing the work. Like we have a platform and we talk about it, but we work with the Savreda family. They own La Mirada, which is a Oaxacan restaurant in the South Bronx, but they're undocumented. it. And when the pandemic hit, they just started using the food that they had in their pantry and cooking for families and just not charging them. So we saw that work happen. We're like, oh, we need to support this. And then we partnered with Rethink Foods, got some money from some brands, used some of our own dollars and just like started feeding people.

8:59And also people that were forgotten about, like people that were formerly incarcerated, elders that couldn't like walk down from NYCHA to go get to the soup kitchen. Like, so delivering it to their door at the height of the pandemic. And they also have a community garden. So we've been doing a lot of work. with them in the Bronx, and then some art organizations, some stuff with Lauren Halsley, South Central LA, some organizations we work with in New Orleans, and we try to spread it out. South Bronx is one of the poorest areas in the United States. Yeah, I don't know if it's still accurate, but it definitely had the poorest congressional district in the country, which always shocked me.

9:34It's shocking, isn't it? It's amazing that in New York, you think poverty would be in Appalachia or in the South or in the West. Like a little town in Mississippi or something, my ignorance. I was like, all right, that has to be somewhere different. But no, it's like in New York City. What did they say? 80 blocks from Tiffany's. There was a movie that came out about how different things are 80 blocks from Fifth Avenue or whatever. Access to food is very evident in poor areas of the United States or in any country. I remember reading about the South Bronx. And if you look at the kind of access we have to food in other areas, that the access of fresh vegetables in the South Bronx was limited.

10:17It's so ironic. This is very true. The Bronx in general, not just the South Park, but when you talk about food insecurity or when you talk about poverty, the Bronx is highlighted. And the thing that's so ironic about the Bronx is that the largest food distribution center in the world of its kind is in the South Bronx. So much of the food that's in the Bronx leaves, but it not just leaves, right? the people in these communities are dealing with the effects of the diesel fuel emissions, right? So when you look at asthma rates in these neighborhoods, when you look at obesity or different, like hypertension, high blood pressure, all the results that come from lack of a healthy diet, the lack of access and how inconvenient it is to find a spot to get fresh food.

10:56Like Hunts Point with the food distribution center is actually one of the most food insecure spots probably in the city because it's so industrial and it's like broken up. But I also think there's a lack of, we also have to talk about desire, right? And I think culturally, so many of our foods, like when people think about black American food, they think about often what they call soul food. And I think all food is soul food. But when we look at the diets that our ancestors had, they were like more and more balanced. I think for us, it's also about creating desires. And I think you create the desire through the storytelling and also making it compelling and culturally relevant for like vegetables to taste delicious in a certain way.

11:35We worked, Sean and I, for a couple of years, we went to Edible Schoolyard. Do you remember that experience of trying to teach children about vegetables, about food through having gardens in the school? It could be on the roof, it could be in the car park, but to grow what she calls the Edible Schoolyard, do you remember? In Shepherd's Bush, where I live, I cook with a school there. I like to bring the kids to the River Cafe, so it's always a Monday in July, usually. The culmination of the working with them is that they cook a meal for their parents, the teachers the local community and everyone lays a table and they serve everyone and cook but i show them around the first of all i like hook them in by showing them the the toilets at the river cafe because i don't know if you've went but they're very bright and they're like wow look at these toilets you know i'm like gotta go check those out after this they're all like wow and i'm like guess who instagrammed the picture of themselves they love it and then we show them around and there's kids from diverse areas it's interesting to see the difference of what they know and often some of the north african kids know a lot about herbs and broad beans and things that other kids are just like eating fish fingers every night never even seen a broad bean you know it's nice to to see that played out with the young ones i think edible schoolyard is important because when you're able to connect where the food comes from and you have an emotional connection like if you planted a seed tended to a garden that carrot just like when you walk into a restaurant where the hospitality is great everything's going to taste better so it's Like, how do we make it so that knowledge doesn't get left behind in the school where it could also come into the homes and be reinforced?

13:08And some of the reasons why it's a lack of access in food in America, it's because the government subsidizes cash crops, right? So farmers are less inclined to grow fresh vegetables because of shelf life and more inclined to grow corn, soy, wheat. A lot of these Monsanto crops, it ends up destroying the nitrogen in the soil because people aren't rotating regularly. so the agriculture isn't regenerative. And also it drives the cost up of fresh vegetables. So when you're looking at calorie to calorie and when people are making economic decisions, it's often not going to be the freshest, best option for your health.

13:46Yeah. But it is also to do with all of what society values, you know, how we feed our children in school, how we treat people in hospitals, really what we value as a society in terms of feeding and educating people. That's a basic human right. We've got to put humans over profit. It's a human right to eat well and to feed up people. I agree. I agree.

14:29If you're struggling and feeling overwhelmed, it's important to do something about it. It can be as simple as talking to someone or just taking a deep, calming breath to ground yourself. Because once you start to address the problem, you can go so much further. The Huntsman Mental Health Institute and the Ad Council have resources available for you at loveyourmindtoday.org. Hey, sis. What if I could promise you you never had to listen to a condescending finance bro tell you how to manage your money again? Welcome to Brown Ambition. This is the hard part when you pay down those credit cards. If you haven't gotten to the bottom of why you were racking up credit or turning to credit cards, you may just recreate the same problem a year from now.

15:07When you do feel like you are bleeding from these high interest rates, I would start shopping for a debt consolidation loan, starting with your local credit union, shopping around online, looking for some online lenders because they tend to have fewer fees and be more affordable. Listen, I am not here to judge. It is so expensive in these streets. I 100 % can see how in just a few months you can have this much credit card debt and it weighs on you. It's really easy to just like stick your head in the sand. It's nice and dark in the sand. Even if it's scary, it's not going to go away just because you're avoiding it.

15:39And in fact, it may get even worse. For more judgment-free money advice, listen to Brown Ambition on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. The River Cafe is excited to announce the return of our Italian Christmas gift boxes. Our alternative to the traditional hamper, they bring you all of our favorite ingredients and food and homewares from the River Cafe kitchen, the vineyards, and the designers from all over Italy. They're available to pre-order now on shoptherivercafe.co.uk. So you grew up in the South Bronx? I grew up between East Harlem, the South Bronx, and the North Bronx.

16:20I spent the majority of my time in the North Bronx. And North Bronx is on the way to Connecticut, right? On the way to Connecticut, Westchester, upstate. It's like right on the border of Westchester County. And tell me about growing up. What was your home like? So my childhood was interesting because my mother, single parent, we lived on the floor in Co-op City, which is a Mitchell-Lama kind of rent-controlled, lower middle class housing. They created opportunities for people to get homes and like have fixed rent and be in a beautiful community. My grandmother lived on the same floor as me. So it was like a real and my grandmother and my aunt, my aunt, so it was like a firm matriarchal situation.

17:03It was I was the only male in my family. It was my great grandfather who had three daughters, my grandmother being one of them. All of those daughters, except my aunt Sheila, she didn't have children. They both had two daughters. And then my mother had me. So it was like all of these women and then me. So even at a young age, I felt like I had to take care of things. Like I had a burden that I just self-imposed. Nobody like put pressure on me. Everybody was doing fine. But I felt like I needed to take care of these women that took care of me. And they're all educators. So I grew up like with knowledge being important.

17:32I always struggled with my behavior though, allegedly. Did you feel that you had to take care of them food-wise as well? Did your mom cook? My grandma's not going to listen to this. My grandmother wasn't the best cook, which is probably why my mother went hard to become a great cook. And my mother's also just a different type of person where it's like she gets interested in something and she studies. So my mother has two culinary degrees, one from the Natural Gourmet School of Cooking in New York, and she went to a special pastry school in Chicago. Whereas me, when I'm interested in something, I start a business and learn about it just from doing the thing.

18:05But I was able to benefit from my mother taking these courses and learning how to do the thing. And so, yeah, she's a really good cook. But my mother often worked during the day at a hair salon. She used to wash Lenny Kravitz and Michael Jackson's hair. I want to say it was John Atkinson is the hair salon she worked on on Fifth Avenue. That job exposed her to a different type of eating. So she was going to the French bakery for lunch or the Italian spot or the Indian curry spot. So naturally, I kind of inherited that curiosity about food. So she often didn't have time to cook because after work, she would go work on her college degree.

18:42And then at night, it was just us. She picked me up from my grandmother's or the babysitter or whatever. And then we'd go out for dinner. That was like our bonding time. And at this moment, I was living in East Harlem, like 100th Street between 1st and 2nd. And Metro, in a project called Metro North. So we go to the Upper East Side often. And I remember this restaurant called First Walk. It was a Cantonese restaurant. And we would often just sit there eating. And I remember it was this older woman, an older Jewish lady. She was a regular, too. So we would eat there and see each other all the time.

19:12And I asked her. I was a social kid. I asked her about, you know, what she ordered. She was like, oh, yeah, I always get the lemon chicken. And then that night I ordered the lemon chicken. And I was like, this is not good. And I told her what she should order and why she should order that. And I want to say it was probably the orange chicken or the sesame chicken. And I was like, it has a sweetness. It comes with the broccoli, fried garlic. And this is how I was thinking about ingredients and the assemblage of things coming together to make a dish. And I remember she tasted it the next time we were there.

19:43And she was like, you know what? I ordered what you said I should order. You're such a remarkable boy. And I remember the confidence I felt. Because, you know, your parents and your family members tell you you're excellent, you're great, you can be anything you want. But getting that external validation gave me such a boost in confidence. And I think subconsciously I just associated food with that feeling for the rest of my life. It took me as an adult to like spin the block and come back around to knowing that food is where I find joy. And the communion with people and all of the things that food brings, the window and the culture.

20:15Even growing up in the hood in the Bronx, you go to the Chinese spot and you understand like, oh, people eat with things other than forks and knives. There are chopsticks. Let's learn more about this. And I'm just a super curious person and I love history and people's stories and, you know. So interesting. I think also it's the sort of thing that even the young guys who I work with at the cafe there's people of all ages here and I always say to the chefs there's no shame in wanting to have a night off work because you've always felt like if you're a chef you have to work really long hours there's no shame in going out and saying I want to read about food or I want to go and cook and cook with friends or go out and eat as groups and they don't eat in places I imagine that Ruthie frequents but they're together and talking and you know more than ever you see people trying to put their phones away so they actually communicate and over a meal of whatever it is and they have a constant dialogue about food it's really important we're really bad people to go out for dinner with though because if i go out with my partner i try not to talk too much about the food because it's probably boring for a not and i'm just like trying to keep that to myself so i'm not like this is just like too much soul or this isn't plated how i want it and it's every day is that conversation with yourself about what you're eating and where you're eating isn't it you gotta just pick better friends that I want to talk about the food.

21:30Like my friend Dream is sitting here now and she has a concept called, I don't know if she trademarked this, but food top. So it's like, it's like knowing people that you'll kind of submit to with their restaurant recommendation. Right. So she's probably the boss of most of her people in terms of picking a spot where we're eating. I'm probably going to pick what we're ordering. She says I'm her food type, where she'll trust me to make the right judgment on a restaurant or someplace to go. And then I have one person, my friend Giorgio from Italy, who I don't want to use my brain. If I'm in Italy with him, I'm like, yo, Giorgio, wherever you take us, I know is good.

22:04Do the thing. I don't want to have to think about it. So it's like being able to bond. And like I've built community. Food is usually the connective tissue. Like if we love food, we're going to like have deeper conversation. We're going to break bread. We're going to do things and vibe. And I think also people that care about what they put into their body and like the ritual of that and how important that is really have a different value for life. Like not people that just have a bunch of money and want to go to all the fancy spots. And it's just like another thing to do just to check off Michelin starred restaurants.

22:33But people that like it could just be getting a bagel or a cinnamon roll from a bakery or like knowing the right bodega in New York to get the chopped cheese from. But like people that consider that part of their day, I think are like really great people to be around. So it's very revealing. The restaurants that people like or where they'd like to go or what they choose to eat in a restaurant. I think it tells you a lot about a person. And that's why sometimes when you do have to recommend someplace that you would like, you really are thinking, well, that is telling a story about me. This is true.

23:02We might have to get some like restaurant therapist. That might be a whole other lane of practice. What do you think about, say, if you eat out and you're with friends and you're trying to break down what that is and what's good about it? Is it the combination of the food that's on the plate or is it a combination of the people or the room or the lighting or where you are in the world? You know, because often I think amazing meals are more than just food, aren't they? They're about an atmosphere where people feel like they're welcome. They're sitting on a comfortable chair. but trying to create that setting is also part of what makes that experience so good, isn't it?

23:43I think the hospitality starts before you walk in the door, like from how do you book the restaurant, like what's the story of how you got there? Were you not able to get a booking and you just walked up and they took care of you? I have some crazy stories that are just, we never thought we were going to be able to get a table and I don't know if it made the food taste better, but it does elevate the experience. So I think all of those things come into place, but flavor is of the utmost importance as well. And different people have different priorities. Like Ruthie said, you can tell a lot because some people are strictly ambiance and they'd be like, oh, the food is great in this place.

24:14And then you go and you're like, I don't know about the food. It's a lot of pretty people in the room, but I don't know if the food is really hitting. But then you can have really good food and have an arrogant waiter, you know, that makes you feel small or insignificant. I always say to the person who answers the phone to take the booking, this is your first introduction to the person who's going to come here. how you answer the phone, how welcoming you sound, how you feel. It's the most important job is that receptionist answering a phone to take a booking. You know, I think it tells you a lot.

24:41And until from that moment when they book the table to not when they've left the table, not when they've paid the bill, not when they've kind of walked out and said goodbye. It's when they're in their car and the door is closed, then they're not yours anymore. But up until that moment, they're kind of yours, I think. The first impression is essential. Like you said, like that first barrier, like when you cross the threshold, into the realm, it should always be warm, welcoming, and considerate.

25:16When your car is making a strange noise, no matter what it is, you can't just pretend it's not happening. That's an interesting sound. It's like your mental health. If you're struggling and feeling overwhelmed, It's important to do something about it. It can be as simple as talking to someone or just taking a deep, calming breath to ground yourself. Because once you start to address the problem, you can go so much further. The Huntsman Mental Health Institute and the Ad Council have resources available for you at loveyourmindtoday.org. Hey, sis. What if I could promise you you never had to listen to a condescending finance bro tell you how to manage your money again?