For as long as he can remember, Davante Burnley wanted to be a chef.

Growing up, his brothers wanted to watch "Power Rangers" or "Scooby Doo," but Burnley would fight them for the remote so he could witness Emeril Lagasse kick it up a notch on the Food Network instead.

One day, his mother was too tired to cook and instead let her son — who was always hanging around the kitchen anyway — prepare dinner. At nine years old, he already brought a little of his own essence to the table.

“My dad came home and he loved it,” Burnley, now 27, recalled. “He asked my mom what she did to the burgers because they were amazing. She told him, ‘Davante cooked dinner today.’ I was 9 years old and I actually seasoned my burger meat with a ramen noodle flavor packet. That’s a little bit of an homage to how I cook to this day. I’ll take things you wouldn’t even think about using to flavor certain things.”

Burnley’s route to the Detroit dining scene led him through culinary school at the Art Institute of Michigan in Novi and then the country clubs and hotels within striking distance of the Bloomfield Hills neighborhood he grew up in.

One of his brothers played football at Wayne State University with Ypsilanti native Justice Akuezue. The two met at a party and hit it off, both eventually finding their way to the burgeoning Detroit food scene — Akuezue behind the bar at cocktail meccas like Detroit City Distillery and Chartreuse, Burnley at the pass of upscale restaurants like SavannahBlue and 24Grille.

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In the spring of 2016, the pair hosted their first tag-team pop-up dinner experience under the moniker The Exchange, a nod to the old Steamboat Exchange, a black-owned bar that operated in New Orleans during Reconstruction.

“Within the last couple years, especially out here, you wouldn’t see as many African-American bartenders doing the craft cocktail thing,” Akuezue, 28, said. “There’s actually a couple more of us now, but the name is a nod to the fact that this isn’t something new to African-Americans. Cato Alexander used this to buy his way out of slavery. He bought his freedom by bartending.”

A former slave who owned his own bar in New York City, Alexander was one of the country’s first celebrity bartenders of any race. He served the likes of George Washington and other powerful white men and enjoyed the attention of the press decades before the Civil War.

Along with the dearth of black bartenders in Detroit, patrons at its restaurants are also frequently stratified along racial lines, with young black diners underrepresented outside of a handful of spots.

“Just being who we are as young African-American males in this industry and seeing that a lot of people who are our general age bracket and ethnicity don’t really understand the level of dining experience that’s out here… it’s just pretty much taking people out of their element,” Burnley said of his goal at The Exchange. “And I think them seeing two young African-American males doing it gives them some level of comfort to be like, ‘Let me trust this process because of who’s giving it to me.’ ”

Education, whether it be about the rich black history of bartending or about high-level cooking techniques, is at the heart of what Akuezue and Burnley are trying to do with The Exchange, which is now turning from a sporadic dinner pop-up into something more serious and permanent.

On Aug. 18, the eve of the third annual Detroit Black Restaurant Week, The Exchange is kicking off a months-long residency at YumVillage with a special dinner in collaboration with YumVillage’s Godwin Ihentuge, who successfully turned his popular Afro-Caribbean food truck into a brick-and-mortar restaurant in New Center earlier this year.

“We’re just making this into something real,” Akuezue said of the duo's plans. “Seeing what Godwin has been able to do is inspiring. Outside of the craft — like what we actually do — I don’t really know how to turn this into a brick-and-mortar. There’s a lot of resources out there, but Godwin is like an encyclopedia.”

Ihentuge, a former Quicken Loans banker, opened the YumVillage brick-and-mortar with the lofty goal of changing restaurant culture. In addition to offering revenue-sharing with his employees and being fully transparent with the restaurant’s numbers, he also provides space inside YumVillage for fledgling food concepts.

“Businesses open up every day without the data or customer base to back them,” Ihentuge wrote in an email. “By helping to alleviate the barriers of entrance to business and helping to answer the ‘what if?’ and ‘will they buy?’ questions, we help take a lot of the heavy lifting out of opening a business as much as we can.”

The previous incubator business, Culture In A Bowl, just left the space after posting nearly 1400% growth in sales from March to June. For the next iteration, The Exchange will serve brunch on Sundays in the YumVillage space, with frequent collaborator Gage White offering his Afro Sushi concept Sunday nights.

The kickoff collaboration dinner on Aug. 18 will feature five courses reflecting flavors from Ihentuge’s Afro-Caribbean palette filtered through Burnley’s fine-dining lens. Think: jerk snapper en papillote, suya chicken ballotine and plantains Foster. As always, Akuezue will be pairing each course with either a cocktail or wine.

“I think the Detroit food scene is making great strides in the right direction of getting people in the mindset of more elevated cooking, but what it’s missing is our demographic,” Burnley said. “And I think when we do events, it always gives our demographic — meaning young African-American people — that comfort and accessibility. We can dine on that same level and be educated about it. That’s why I think The Exchange is necessary.”

That approach goes hand in glove with Detroit Black Restaurant Week, returning for a third year bigger and more focused than ever. The Exchange/YumVillage dinner will kick off the week, which officially runs Aug. 19-25, with some 20 participating restaurants and five special dining events.

“I think this is the most restaurants we’ll have signed up, ever,” said Detroit Black Restaurant Week organizer Kwaku Osei-Bonsu. “Last year we had closer to 13 or 14, but this year we’re trying to push the envelope and get more restaurants involved.”

This is also the first year that the week has an official sponsor, the black-owned Uncle Nearest Whiskey, named for Nathan (Nearest) Green, the first African-American master distiller.

The sponsorship is a salient sign of the growth of Bonsu’s scrappy weeklong event, which garnered racist hate mail in its first year for its goal of celebrating black-owned businesses despite being promoted to everyone.

“This isn’t about black power," Osei-Bonsu told the Free Press last year. "This is about acknowledgment and equity. ... I think there’s a need for seeing representation of black-owned establishments in a city that is 84 or 85 percent black in such a way that recognizes that they’re black-owned but open for everyone to patronize."

Like other similar Restaurant Week promotions, participating restaurants offer patrons special discounted rates on certain items. But this year’s Black Restaurant Week programming also features a range of events that include a vegan cooking class at the newly opened The Kitchen by Cooking with Que, and a cannabis-infused meal at a location that will be disclosed to participants. Osei-Bonsu also said this week will feature an added focus on Detroit’s negatively stereotyped east side.

“That’s kinda the undertone of the entire week: awareness,” Osei-Bonsu said. “Whether it’s supporting black-owned restaurants, a vegan lifestyle, whether it’s cannabis, supporting the east side — it’s all about awareness for people that are here in the city. We control the narrative.”

Detroit Black Restaurant Week

Osei-Bonsu is still looking to add additional restaurants and food trucks to the official restaurant lineup. Email kwaku@blackmetroeats.com for information.

More details on participating restaurants and the week’s events can be found at BlackMetroEats.com.

For tickets to the Exchange/YumVillage dinner, visit exchangexyumvilliage.eventbrite.com.

Send your dining tips to Free Press Restaurant Critic Mark Kurlyandchik at 313-222-5026 ormkurlyandc@freepress.com. Follow him on Twitter @MKurlyandchik and Instagram @curlyhandshake. Read more restaurant news and reviews and sign up for our Food and Dining newsletter.