Chapter One
Our Story
Brooklyn has never had one kitchen. It has a hundred of them, stacked on top of one another, and every evening the smell of all of them meets in the same hallway. We grew up in that hallway — an African American family with Southern food on our own stove, greens and cornbread and a gravy that took all afternoon.
Downstairs was a Puerto Rican family whose sofrito you could smell before you reached the landing. Around the corner, a Jamaican bakery that opened before the sun. Down the block, Dominican rice, Trinidadian roti, Mexican birria on a Sunday. Nobody was asked to give anything up. People simply fed each other, and everybody's cooking got better for it.
Love Story is that hallway, plated. Collard greens finished with sofrito. Mac and cheese fried like a croqueta. Short ribs smoked low and then dressed in mojo. Not one culture borrowing from another, but a borough sitting down at the same table.
"Because the best stories always begin around the table."
