(upbeat music) - Hi, I'm Kae Lani Palmisano.

Each week, three different guests recommend their favorite restaurants, then try each other's picks and come together to tell us what they think.

Right here on "Check, Please."

(upbeat music) Hi, I'm Kae Lani Palmisano, and welcome to a very special episode of "Check, Please."

In March of 2020, we were days away from filming season two of this program when the COVID 19 pandemic forced us, and so many others to press pause.

In the ensuing months, the pandemic unveiled hard truths about the treatment and labor conditions of restaurant workers, and opened up conversations about what it really means to dine out.

Today, we wanna shine a light not only on the issues facing the restaurant industry, but also how people are moving forward and creating positive change.

I'm joined by Ange Bronca, former chef and owner of Sate Kampar and founder of Kampar Kitchen.

Stephanie Willis of Everybody Eats Philly.

And Nicole Marquis, chef and owner of Bar Bombon, HipCityVeg, and Charlie was a sinner.

Thank you all so much for being here for this conversation.

I couldn't think of a better way to have this discussion then with a potluck.

And everyone has brought a dish with them today.

Ange, let's start with you.

What did you bring for us?

- Well, I brought Nasi Lemak today.

Back home, when I was growing up, that's what we ate every day for breakfast, sometimes lunch, and sometimes for supper just before we go to bed.

And we also have a Samba, which is really interesting.

It's made with fermented durin's.

It's called Sambal Poyak.

- Stephanie, what did you bring?

- Yes, yes.

I just made a simple salad of tomatoes, cucumber, a honey balsamic vinegarette and feta cheese.

- And Nicole, what did you bring?

- So from Bar Bombon, which is a Latin inspired restaurant, we brought our Philly cheesesteak empanadas.

We also brought Spanish meatballs in a sweet pepper romanesco sauce, and the meatballs are made in-house with organic soy and organic grains.

All plant-based.

- Everything looks so delightful on the plate.

And it's such like a well-balanced meal.

Thank you so much for bringing the food.

I think the best place to begin this discussion is at the beginning when everything was disintegrating really, really quickly, and we were thrusted into the lockdown situation.

What was going through your mind?

Ange, I'll start with you.

- God.

I kind of remember all the things that just flooded through through my mind.

Like we didn't know what the pandemic was about.

Everyone was scared.

We didn't close our doors.

We just quickly turned the restaurant into a pickup location.

The kitchen staff wanted to continue to cook.

What we did was to completely change the concept of the restaurant very early on.

So we pivoted.

And I talked to my staff and I said, what should we do?

And... We had a very diverse team of staff at the restaurant.

Everybody decided to cook their own comfort food.

So our pick up menu became this hodgepodge of one day was, you know, food from Malaysia.

But then the next day it was food from Hong Kong.

And then next day it was Mexican food.

- Love it.

- And so that was what we did.

And then we cooked for frontline workers.

We started to get like big contracts of, you know, cooking a few hundred meals a day for the frontline workers.

And that was what we did until we had to close the doors of our restaurant...

Eventually.

- Yeah.

You touched on something really important, which I don't think a lot of people understand is that the process of running a restaurant versus running a takeout operation changes.

You can't just turn off those grills.

You have to actually revamp your entire business model.

- Yep.

- On the flip of a switch.

- [Stephanie] Yep.

- Essentially.

Nicole, how about you?

You had - you have, still, multiple restaurants and you had to break the news to them.

- Oh yeah.

I'll never forget March 16th of 2020 that Monday when the mayor announced that we had to shut our doors and within four hours.

You know, I went through a period, like many of us, of shock and grief.

I went into as many restaurants as I could to speak to our incredible staff.

I'll never forget.

The day I walked into one of our HipCityVeg locations and our line cook, James, who's been there for seven years.

He came to me.

We couldn't - we couldn't be more than 10 feet apart from each other.

And we wanted to give each other a hug in this moment, but we couldn't.

And he was crying.

And he said, thank you for trying to keep the doors open.

I don't know what I would do without this job.

And at that moment, I knew I had to get into action.

So I created a ad hoc coalition called Safe Philly Restaurants, which is joined by over 300 different restaurants and bars locally in Philadelphia.

And we began to advocate for emergency unemployment needs the PPP loan, federal aid, and began to speak at hearings at all levels of government, local, state, and federal to really advocate for the industry because we were in such dire need of help at the time.

- I don't think people realize that food is a really radical thing.

And food is such a big component of activism as well.

And Stephanie, you developed Everybody Eats, which was a program that brought food to people who needed it during a really transformative time in the city.

Tell us about Everybody Eats.

- Everybody Eats started in the summer of 2020.

Of course, when all the restaurants in the area shut down.

And one specific incident that happened that everybody knows about.

There was a lot of protesting and things that happened.

So restaurant- or drug stores, grocery stores, corner stores were completely decimated.

So, I reached out to my chef friends to see what we could do to help this one specific community.

And they were like, "You know what, we're chefs, we can pull up with some food."

So I was like, all right, let's do it.

And initially it was just supposed to be 50 meals.

Each of us were gonna make 50 sandwiches.

And in two days it kind of snowballed into something that was greater than what we expected.

And we were to get a lot - We were able to get a lot of support from our restaurant community friends.

So we were able to feed over 600 families on one specific day.

And we provided them with essentials.

Anything that you could have gotten at a grocery store that they weren't able to to receive.

And again, this is at a time during the pandemic, when a lot of resources weren't available to specific communities, black and brown communities specifically, and we were just able to be of support.

And it's, it's really humbling to see what we've done and what we've created.

Now, two years later, we have a space that we're able to prepare these meals for the community.

We've gotten a lot of support from a lot of you guys, which is really great.

So yeah, it's been, it's been a journey.

It's definitely been a journey.

- When the pandemic was happening.

Like as, as everything was falling apart very, very quickly, we understood that it was going to disrupt things for everyone, but it was going to be most disruptive to marginalized communities.

They are and were, and still are feeling the brunt of it.

- You know, before the pandemic, kind of food that I serve and the kind of food that a lot of immigrants serves, what I call underrepresented cuisines.

Because you know, it's not the mainstream.

It's not... very often it's not things that people know about or, you know, customers come in and look at our menus.

"I can't even pronounce this.

I don't know how to order," you know, like, so those are the kind of food that we served.

And a lot of immigrants here in this country first and second generation have chosen to serve.

Before the pandemic, I think Philly has become known to be this very diverse food scene.

The pandemic has caused all of that to almost just crumble.

Right?

And on top of that, most of us who are restaurateurs, we know how diverse our kitchens are.

- Yes.

- A lot of, a lot of chefs, immigrant chefs, chefs of all different diversity.

A lot of chefs who have chosen to make underrepresented food couldn't make ends meet.

So, last year I decided that look, I think we are gonna create this platform called Kung Pao Kitchen.

I took the idea from a nonprofit dinner that I used to do called Mojiba dinners, where we brought all kinds of - - (overlapping) I remember.

Yeah.

- Yeah!

That was beautiful!

...was so much fun.

This was days - This was before the pandemic where people could come together and sit in this one big long table and share a meal.

We have like seven different chefs come in.

And every chef made a dish from their heritage and we talk about it.

And uh, So we took that idea and made it into a delivery box to shine a spotlight on all these different flavors that exists here - - Yeah.

- in Philly.

And it exists here.

These are people who live among us and cook all these wonderful food that you might not have heard about.

You might not know how to pronounce, but it's okay because we assemble this box of flavors and we write a very descriptive menu to explain to everyone what it is, who the chef is, you know, and their culture and their influences and things like that.

- I love that story because it shows the positive things that come, that came out of the pandemic.

And I think one really positive thing that we're all realizing is that restaurant workers truly are essential.

- Yes.

100%.

- We had to pivot and shift just like you.

All of a sudden we're completely delivery and take out where at Bar Bombon, it was a very small percentage of our revenue came from delivery.

And in one day, we went to four platforms on delivery and had to do entire takeout model, which is very different.

- [Stephanie] Very different.

- From the packaging, to the way you cook, to the menu, redesigning all that... that takes so, so much work.

And one thing that we decided to do pretty early on during the pandemic was to change our pay structure as well.

We realized that... we want to encourage careers out of, out of the different jobs in the restaurants.

And so we launched '15 for Our Families,' which is our initiative to pay a starting wage of $15 an hour and guarantee that to all of our employees.

That's a jumping off point to a career that you can build out of the restaurant.

And we found that to be tremendously important during this really unpredictable time, when we really wanted to show our commitment to the employees.

- Stephanie, as the pandemic was starting and things were very quickly shutting down, you were in the restaurant industry, but from a different capacity, what was going through your mind as things were happening?

- Yeah, so I was working as a private chef for one of the Philadelphia 70 Sixers.

And as you know, the NBA never shuts down.

So, I'm literally in his house preparing his meal.

He's on - I'm watching the game, he's playing the game.

I had my son with me and I hear an announcement.

I heard it vaguely.

And I was like, what?

What's happening?

The NBA is shutting down?

Like that does not happen.

And it kind of catapulted into this thing where I worked harder than I ever worked.

Once everything shut down because I was, you know, at his house all the time preparing his meals and working with other athletes as well.

Coming from the restaurant industry and knowing friends that were really struggling being servers and being chefs and being line cooks that just couldn't make ends meet.

And were having a hard time feeding their families.

I knew that I had to do something.

It's very heart wrenching to know that personally, you know people that have no idea what to do, how feed their families.

- And you did this as a mother.

- As a single mother.

- [Kae] Yes.

As a single mother.

And in addition to everything else closing down, people's offices closed down.

Schools closed down.

- [Stephanie] Schools closed down.

So my son, thankfully, the player that I was working with was very - his family - he comes from a very, very good family.

So he understood.

He's like, listen, whatever you need to do to make sure that you and AJ are straight, let's make it happen.

So it was definitely a pivot and an adjustment, but we did every - I did everything that I could to make sure that we were safe and that he was safe.

And my son was good.

It was a disheartening time, quite honestly.

And fortunately for the pandemic, Everybody Eats was born and were able to do this and continue this work at a very high level.

So it, you know, for all of it to be so crazy.

There was something - there's a little silver lining there, for sure.

- Absolutely.

And, and power to you, cause it was already a really discouraging situation.

- [Stephanie] Yes.

- And then, you know, things shut down in March and by June, George Floyd is murdered.

And the understandable response of protests throughout the city occurs.

And that's really when Everybody Eats is really born.

- [Stephanie] Yes, absolutely.

It was - I remember sitting at my table with my son and he was six at the time, and...

I was in tears.

I was literally crying my eyes out.

He's like, mommy, what's wrong?

He's trying to comfort me.

And I - I didn't know how to tell him - cause he doesn't really know like race like that.

And I don't expect him to yet, but I couldn't hold it back.

I couldn't, I couldn't.

And I understood the angst and I understood the anger and I understood why things happened.

I didn't necessarily understand why it happened in the neighborhoods where we're from, you know?

And how the people that live there for generations and generations are gonna be able to support themselves already in a time of need.

So, I just knew that by myself I wouldn't be able to do anything substantial.

But with help.. - Yes.

- [Stephanie] We were able to create this really, really amazing thing.

- (overlapping) You really pulled together an incredible community of people and made light of something that was really, really dark and hard.

And also, too, really a wonderful thing to show your son.

- Yes.

- That like, yes, you can really - Yeah, that food is a form of activism.

- It's definitely a vehicle for sure.

- [Kae] Yeah, absolutely.

And in addition to it being a form of activism, it's also - I think we touched on this, a viable career path that everyone deserves to have dignity and everyone deserves to have a living wage.

And I know here we have people that are really pushing toward that.

Ange, this was something that was always a part of Saute Kampar.

And you were super low key about it.

I mean, I didn't even know about it.

You never mentioned it.

- No, no, we never did because you know, when we opened Saute Kampar in 2016, I was a new being in the industry.

From the very beginning, I could not believe how low wages were.

We never started with minimum wage.

We always made sure that everyone could take home at least a good living wage wage, which is 15 and above even from 2016.

- Yeah.

- So, it was tough because our food was not expensive.

We didn't have liquor.

We made a business - we made the business work with paying everyone a living wage from the beginning.

But nobody knew about it.

And at that time, nobody cared about these issues.

We did it just because of the background that I came from and I just couldn't bring myself to pay so low.

But nobody cared about the issues.

So we never talked about.

- I know for Nicole, this is a really big initiative for your restaurant group.

- Yeah, absolutely.

Even though we were coming off the heels of the most difficult economic time that restaurants have ever faced, we felt like it was our moment to really tell our employees, we value you.

We want to show you that you can build a career here.

And you know, I also in many ways want to tout the benefits of working in a restaurant.

I totally agree with you that eating at a restaurant is a form of activism.

You show with your dollars, what you want to support.

You wanna support a woman owned business.

- Yes.

- [Nicole] A Latina owned business.

- Yes.

- We're both single moms.

- Yes.

- You know, our customers coming in there are supporting that.

And also for us, I think eating at a plant-based restaurant is a form of activism.

- Absolutely.

- You're showing with your dollars, I care about the environment, about sustainability, and about other living things, all animals.

And I care about the workers.

The restaurant industry is the lifeblood of our city.

- [Kae] Yeah.

- [Nicole] Of so many cities.

And I just find it a fantastic place to, to show your activism and also to work in.

- Stephanie, Everybody Eats has evolved over time.

It started out as a pop-up that was bringing culturally relevant foods to the communities that need it the most.

And now you are in a brick and mortar location, the Vittles food court in Chester.

But in addition to bringing food to that area, you're also mentoring youth.

You're preparing the next generation of restaurant workers and chefs.

- Yes.

I think it's very important for us, for me specifically, to help change the landscape of underserved communities, starting with the youth.

You know, we want to be able to be an inspiration and a motivation for kids.

So if I can inspire somebody that looks like me, that walks like me, that talks like me to really want to dive into this business... That's the goal for me.

So yeah, we've been mentoring some kids from the local high school.

They are learning everything from knife skills to people skills, to preparing for our give backs, preparing for service.

And we're very excited to continue the work that we do and lead the next generation.

- You know, the restaurant industry is one of the best industry for them to get started because there is no barrier to entry.

- No.

- [Ange] ...in the restaurant industry, but mentoring puts them ahead.

We mentored three CCAP as well.

- Same, same.

- [Ange] Yeah!

- And that's the, yeah, the same program.

- [Stephanie] Yeah.

- [Ange] So I'm one of the mentors at your CCAP too.

And Jacob was my mentor, Jacob, who is now the chef at Cafe Roaster's.

- Wow!

- He is amazing.

And - and through this whole program, he just, he just got a James Beard fellowship.

So he - - [Stephanie] Oh my goodness!

- Yeah.

- [Stephanie] That's wonderful.

- He's gonna be going to New York in a couple weeks.

- For people who go to restaurants... What are some things that they need to understand when they are maybe looking at the menu?

I think there's a huge discussion about like, oh, these prices, they're too high.

And it's like, I don't know you dine in, you're going out for an experience.

You are not just investing in the food, but you're investing in... - Everything.

- [Kae] ...everything, the effort and the time that it takes to build up these restaurants, you're investing in the expertise.

You're investing in the experience.

And also too, you're investing in the staff that's there so that they could have a livable wage and then they could take care of you without the worry in the back of their mind of how they're gonna make ends meet.

- Exactly.

But on top of that, chefs who make underrepresented food and ethnic food has a price ceiling.

And it's always been there.

Right?

Where people will say, well, I can get this so much cheaper in Chinatown.

So, they compare the prices to the countries where these people come from.

And of course, you know, with exchange rates and things like that, it - yeah.

I mean... - We saved you a trip to Malaysia though.

(laughing) - Exactly.

But it's not the apple apples comparison because people don't understand, like, you know, to make good quality food, no matter what kind of food you're making, what culture you're making, you're still buying your ingredients here.

- Yes.

- [Ange] The labor is still here.

So, you know, the labor - we are all trying to do better with, you know, paying our staff.

So, the cost of the food - - (overlapping) Oh my gosh, it's crazy.

- .... [Ange] it doesn't matter what food you're eating...

It's gotta - it is gonna come with the same cost.

- Yeah.

Especially now, everything is tripled.

The cost of everything has tripled.

I remember last year, getting fryer oil at like less than $30 now it's like $59.

- [Kae] Wow.

- [Nicole] Insane.

- It's insane.

Insane.

So everything costs.

When you see the markup for the restaurant diners, please just understand we're doing our best.

- [Ange] Exactly.

- We're trying to make it work.

- During the pandemic, I had to actually restructure a lot of my recipes and use local ingredients.

Try to figure out how to change a few things to address the cost issue.

Cause I can't - you know, like when you make ethnic food and you're trying to get unique flavors from another part of the planet you have to understand that is a very expensive thing to do right now.

- Do you experience that Nicole?

Bringing up the Latin flavors for your restaurants?

- It's Latin, but it's also plant-based.

So, many of our ingredients are considered specialty items.

You know, we're in a, such a unique time.

It's totally unpredictable.

Inflation is real.

- [Stephanie] Yes.

- But I think people in general are starting to really understand that.

- I think a lot of our viewers, they love restaurants and they love food and they are celebrating these communities and they want to be able to support your initiatives.

How can folks help Everybody Eats?

- You guys can come to the food hall and visit us.

We are at 801 Scroll Street in Chester.

Reach out on all of our platforms.

That's where you can find what we have going on.

- Ange, How about you?

How can people support your initiatives?

- You go to Table 22/KamparKitchen, and you can find us there, sign up to be a member.

And once a month you get this beautiful box with a, just a array of different flavors, a menu, and stories of all the chefs who contributed to that box.

- And Nicole, I know you've got a lot going on, but how - what are some ways that diners can help out your initiatives?

- Well, you can visit us BarBombon.com Bar Bombon is in Rittenhouse Square in Philadelphia.

Also supportandfeed.com is the charitable organization that we work with.

Every dollar that you donate goes to preparing a plant-based meal to someone in the community in need.

Also hipcityveg.com There's ways to support on our website as well.

And we have restaurants throughout Philadelphia.

You can visit.

- Thank you all so, so much.

I wanna give a huge thank you to my guests.

Ange Bronca, Stephanie Willis and Nicole Marque.

I hope this special was enlightening and that we can all continue this conversation as we move forward together.

Join us next week for a brand new episode of Check, please!

Philly Celebrating the restaurants our guests love.

We're thrilled to be back and I hope you'll join us.

I'm Kae Lani Palmisano and I'll see you next time.

Salud, salute.

(glasses clinking) - Check, please.

(laughing) (upbeat outro music)