Ghetto Gastro’s ‘Black Power Kitchen Cookbook’ Inspired by Black Panther Party

Black Power Kitchen cookbook but also a manifesto, a look at the future of food through an underserved perspective rarely given the platform it deserves. The cookbook is also a delectable culinary resource. So many of the recipes are so yummy that you don’t even realize many of them were vegetarian or vegan. Ghetto Gastro, however, written by Jon Gray, Pierre Serrao, Lester Walker and writer Osayi Endolyn is far more than just a collection of Black recipes.

The Collective

Ghetto Gastro founders Jon Gray, Pierre Serrao, and Lester Walker since establishing the Bronx-based collective in 2012, the trio have become a favorite of both the fashion industry and Hollywood itself. Ghetto Gastro collaborated with Wolfgang Puck on the Governors Ball menu for the Oscars, French designer, Michèle Lamy and while Rick Owens hired them them to cater their Thanksgiving dinners.

Black Panther Party

Social justice reform has always been the original mission of the trio; especially becoming clear during the pandemic, when the collective delivered thousands of meals to people in need across the Bronx, teaming up with the nonprofit Rethink Food to create a food program inspired by the Black Panthers’ free breakfast program. Even the design by New Studio, of the cover and graphics that remind you of the 1960s Black Panther Party posters. The title of its first chapter, “Food is a Weapon,” and the recipe for “Amerikkkan apple pie” reference the spelling used to indict America’s institutional racism and deconstructs a national classic.

“Food is always only a reflection of who voluntarily or involuntarily has been displaced. That means food content is inherently political by virtue of what you have access to, the systemic choices that affect that access, and what the dominant narratives have been about what your food culture means.”

Osayi Endolyn

This is the philosophy that transcends the pages of the collective’s first cookbook, Black Power Kitchen.