“Refugees are welcome here,” says Brooklyn restaurant Emma’s Torch, which is also an eight-week training course that teaches refugees and human trafficking survivors the basics of cooking and serves up dishes made by its students.
“Food’s universal in that, my memories of cooking with my mother and grandmother here in Potomac, Maryland, are not that different than somebody’s memories of cooking with their grandmothers in Burkina Faso and that that could really be used as a tool to promote social change,” said Emma’s Torch founder, Kerry Brodie.
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Emma’s Torch started as a pop-up in 2017, after Brodie realized there was no establishment for refugees like the one she had been mulling over for years. She quit her job as a global press secretary for Human Rights Campaign, graduated from the Institute of Culinary Education where she won the Wusthof Award for Leadership, and teamed up with chef Alexander Harris. They created an eight-week program for up to 10 students that combines an English language course with culinary training for a locally sourced, seasonal American menu with fare like charred corn cavatelli, grilled branzino and a braised beef brisket.
“So many of our students are women who’ve never been given any opportunity to learn at all or to work outside the home,” said Brodie. “And they come here and they’re told you know, ‘You stand on your own two feet.’ We’re here to support you. But this is your journey and your investment in yourself. And watching them make that shift mentally and make that shift in confidence is incredible.”
Nearly all of the students in Brodie’s program have gone on to find careers in the restaurant industry. A class was recently filled with students from Haiti, Central African Republic, Guinea, Jamaica and Honduras.
“In all cases there is a lot of growth that happens, whether it is growth in them as a person or different aspects of their personality kind of coming out of their shell a little bit, feeling at home in this new environment or in their culinary skill,” said Harris.
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“We’re learning particular techniques. It’s always amazing and it’s always different from person to person to person. To get those surprises in that person where, day one, you were like, ‘I don’t know’, to graduation and you say, ‘This person is everything that I would have hoped a cook could be’.”
Emma’s Torch opened in May.
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