Immigrant Women Home Cooks Are a Fixture of NYC’s Restaurant Scene

Making dishes like kimchi and spicy crabs with my grandma in Flushing, Queens, while growing up sparked a lifetime of respect for the craft that immigrant women bring to the dinner table. Some of my favorite dishes are ones I was introduced to in home kitchens around the City: Indian poori freshly puffed from a deep-fry at my school friend's home in Bellerose, Queens; Italian-stuffed zucchini blossoms just picked from the garden in Flushing; Trinidadian pepper sauce with a bouquet of Scotch bonnets simmering on the stovetop over in Brooklyn's Crown Heights.The aromas and textures of this heritage cooking inspired me to create , a and pop-up series meant to give immigrant women their long-deserved spotlight for their skills as chefs. To learn more about how these women have impacted the City's restaurant scene, we spoke to a few immigrant women chefs and restaurateurs who have overcome the challenges of making it in New York.Their cultural recipes have for the most part managed to avoid the processed foods and convenient shortcuts that in most American kitchens after the Second World War. The immigrant woman home cook's craft frequently reflects generations of techniques using whole ingredients passed down from mother to daughter.However, the story's not all so romantic. Several women on Cooking with Granny confessed that cooking was foisted on them, just one example of how domestic labor get relegated as "women's work" around the world. As well, restaurant industry statistics show women make up a little over of restaurant employees, but only of head chefs and around of executives. The numbers reflect a difficult career trajectory in an industry that also grapples with a .Even armed with cooking chops, immigrant women face another layer of challenges. New York City's Small Business Services . Language barriers prevent access to understanding license and permit requirements, while matters of financial literacy and technology often hinder restaurateurs in building websites, social media or providing credit card options. Yet immigrant women chefs and restaurateurs do flourish here. Read on to learn how four such cooks have overcome different challenges to succeed in the City's culinary scene.Collaboration, not CompetitionWhen first-time restaurateur Beejhy Barhany, chef and owner of in Harlem, secured enough money for her Ethiopian-Jewish restaurant, she didn't know what to do next. Barhany had left Israel for New York City, sampling dishes like Vietnamese pho and Thai curry for the first time, reveling in the breadth of cuisines the City has to offer. But there was no Ethiopian-Jewish restaurant that spoke to her identity—one forged by a love for cooking so strong she learned how to butcher a chicken at age 12. "The way I look at it is, how do we show and celebrate the rich cuisine of Ethiopia?" says Barhany. That's when her Ethiopian Harlem community rallied around her. In particular, Barhany had the help of Almaz Ghebrezgabher, the woman behind Massawa, the City's longest-running Ethiopian restaurant. "She became a mentor to me," Barhany says. Ghebrezgabher taught her skills crucial to large-scale Ethiopian cooking like how to store massive amounts of perishables andwhere to source wholesale teff flour, the base of the spongy flatbread injera. Collaboration, not competition, was at play. "As long as you know who you are—and your own special market— you don't see [other restaurateurs] as a threat," Barhany adds. At Tsion Café, all the dishes remain true to the recipes Barhany learned from her family; her dorowat (Ethiopian chicken stew) simmers for hours in a berbere seasoning of 17 spices, while the injera ferments for three days before it bakes in the oven. Out of her coral-walled space, Barhany supports the Black community in the neighborhood through live music and poetry readings.About a 10-minute walk from Tsion Café is another Ethiopian restaurant, , which opened after the owners, an Ethiopian family, heard a real-estate tip from Barhany in 2017. Adjusting Generational Recipes to a New Market In Staten Island's Little Sri Lanka, centered in the Tompkinsville neighborhood, chef Viji Devadas can be found chatting up each table and making suggestions at her restaurant , known for its string hoppers (patties of noodles), rich mutton curry and coconut-braised jackfruit. At New Asha, the chili blend powers all the curries. While Devadas loves the fiery spiciness of northern Sri Lankan food, she had to figure out how to tame it for a broader market by talking to her guests and neighbors. And that balance takes an expert touch. Spice calibration of chili powder was one of the first lessons Devadas ever learned, watching her mother roast each component of a curry separately over a wood fire. Over-roasting the cumin seeds leads to loss of flavor; coriander seeds get toasted over a medium flame; and the big red chiles need to get crispy, explains Devadas. Innovating with NYC's Multicultural Influences They don't call the City a melting pot for nothing. At , a linchpin of Palestinian cooking in Brooklyn's Bay Ridge neighborhood, chef and owner Rawia Bishara reveals that one of her most popular recipe innovations came about totally unexpectedly. Since opening her restaurant in 1998—a dream delayed until both her children were in college—her eggplant makdous had been a hit. Her mother had taught her to cook, drain, stuff and cure eggplants for up to a year in silky olive oil while Bishara was growing up in Nazareth. But Tanoreen's kitchen staff came from Mexico, as is the case for many restaurants in New York City. For family meals in the back of the house, the staff was pepping up the dish with jalapeños and poblanos. "The peppers are strong, crunchy and thick," Bishara says. "You can do a lot with them. So why not makdous?" She recipe tested for a month, chopping every ingredient by hand—she doesn't like the look and feel created by processors—until she hit the jackpot: a deliciously stuffed presentation of Mexican-Palestinian cooking that's . Building a Future on One's Own Terms Over in my hometown of Flushing, Jin Yuan of TikTok-famous jianbing shop has built a small takeout-window enterprise based on her mom's Tianjin (China) home cooking. Starting at 4am, Yuan, her husband and his mother crisp up the baocui (cracker), inflate the youtiao (cruller) and tenderize the beef. Once the shop's open, up to 300 people a day stop in for her fresh jianbing, which can be likened to a crepe sandwich. "I'm doing this for my family," says the mother of two as her hands fly over two sizzling crepes. The work is not for the faint of heart. But in every corner of New York, I witness hustlers of heritage: at , whose Dominican empire that started in Inwood has expanded to five packed locations in Manhattan, the Bronx and New Jersey; , which started as a Mexican street cart more than 20 years ago before taking up a brick-and-mortar space in East Elmhurst; and , whose eponym caters to lines in front of her Greek skewer cart on an Astoria corner. For all the wear and tear that comes with running a restaurant, it's a courageous labor of love and finesse of technique for these immigrant women entrepreneurs. It's a love my grandma taught me to reciprocate a long time ago.Caroline Shin is the creator of Cooking with Granny, which promotes New York City's immigrant chef community.

Immigrant Women Home Cooks Are a Fixture of NYC’s Restaurant Scene

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