For Walker—who studied at Johnson & Wales University in Miami and would go on to work in kitchens at Jean Georges, Buddakan, and Eleven Madison Park—movies provided the entry point to a culinary career. “I was a big fan of Scorsese,” he says, “and the main thing that brought all of the goons together was food. Shit like that was inspirational to me. I wasn’t really inspired by the cooking channels.” Just as Ghetto Gastro was getting off the ground, Walker won an episode of the Food Network’s competition show Chopped. In the episode, speaking about the life he was up against at a young age after the death of his father, he admits, “Cooking saved me.”

Lester Walker found his culinary inspiration in the movies. “I was a big fan of Scorsese,” he says. “The main thing that brought all of the goons together was food." Meron Menghistab

Walker, who has a son of his own, is Ghetto Gastro’s flavor czar. (That flavor extends to his deep acuity for language; he unloads phrases with the blaze of a machine gun. “We got the Ice Lord,” he tells me with a grin, gesturing to dessert specialist Livingston, “and you can call me the Spice Lord, also known as the W.O.L.F., Wizard of the Lingo Finesse.”) From his time working at a trio of Southeast Asian restaurants in the city, the 37-year-old became enthralled by the flavors used in the kitchens—jaggery, fish sauces, chilis, lemongrass. Those years and those experiences changed his whole perspective on cooking. Now he says he likes to make people contemplate the alchemy of a dish, “to trick the senses out a little bit.”

Livingston, 31, grew up close to Gray and Walker before moving to Connecticut for a handful of years and settling back in Pelham Parkway for high school. After studying at the Art Institute of New York City, Livingston landed an externship at Marcus Samuelsson’s Riingo. He parlayed that experience into work at Thomas Keller's Per Se, and soon after at wd~50, the 65-seat New American restaurant that was making waves for its pioneering use of molecular gastronomy.

It was during his time there that Livingston met Gray, who came into the restaurant one night and soon introduced the idea of Ghetto Gastro to him. At the time, Livingston says he thought it seemed “very organic, very guerilla.” Still, he tells me now that he only “put about 25 percent into the company” during its early years, a time when he was ascending into the upper echelons of the culinary world.

In 2015, Livingston, who’s got a baby face and a quiet, single-minded presence about him, landed one of the most coveted positions in the fine-dining world: head pastry chef at Noma, the Michelin-starred Denmark eatery considered to be one of the world’s elite restaurants. Living in Copenhagen limited his commitment to Ghetto Gastro, still just an upstart enterprise—but after Noma temporarily closed in 2017, Livingston decided it was time to go all in. “I made the decision: Let me just jump on faith,” he says. “And it’s been rocking. I’m the happiest I’ve ever been.”

The last component was Serrao. In 2014, after training in Italy, a stint at New York City’s Rouge Tomate, and working privately for clients like Diddy, Jay Z, and the Beckhams, he came onboard. Serrao, 30, joined at a make-or-break period for Ghetto Gastro: Walker was working in DC and Livingston would soon be headed to Noma, which meant Serrao managed the kitchen, broadening Ghetto Gastro’s diasporic bona fides (his father hails from Barbados, where Serrao lived on and off as a kid). A fountain of black dreads spouts from his head, and he speaks with relaxed confidence. “For me, it’s like, we’re not just making food or making something that looks good,” he says as N.E.R.D.’s “Lemon” rattles through the kitchen. “It’s being able to tell the story behind the dish.”





1 / 8 Chevron Chevron Meron Menghistab

In 2016, for an event hosted by the artist Hank Willis Thomas, Serrao devised a deconstructed apple pie dessert that was inspired by the social-justice movement Black Lives Matter. (“It’s about as American as killing black men,” he says.) Some plates even included a chalk outline. “At the time, race tensions were high,” Serrao tells me. “I didn’t think it would still be generating conversation.” But it turned out to be glaringly representative of their mission statement as a collective: a dish that marries the personal and the political into an urgent, unflinching provocation—that also happens to be delicious.