Four years ago, Lucas Denton was shopping at the Scratchbread Bakery in Bedford-Stuyvesant when he noticed a large man, seemingly unfamiliar with that part of Brooklyn, gesticulating and speaking loudly on the sidewalk in what Mr. Denton described as “an Elven language.” His impulse was to welcome him to the neighborhood, he recounted recently, “and maybe calm him down a touch.” Mr. Denton, then in his late 20s, had developed an appreciation for fashion but food culture remained alien to him; so it signified nothing when the man said that his name was Claus Meyer.

One of the most celebrated chefs in the world, Mr. Meyer was expanding his empire in New York, but epicurean glamour had long ceased to be a meaningful driver of his ambitions. In his native Denmark, he had started a philanthropy called the Melting Pot that taught prisoners how to cook, and he later opened a restaurant and a number of cafeterias in Bolivia to train poor young people for jobs in the food world. Mr. Meyer mentioned that he wanted to do something similar in New York and Mr. Denton told him that perhaps the worst and stupidest thing he could do was open a fancy restaurant in an underserved neighborhood.

A tall, thoughtful graduate of Bard College, Mr. Denton spent his adolescence battling addiction and chronic homelessness and had been volunteering with substance-abuse and literacy programs in Brownsville, Brooklyn, which for decades has had some of the highest rates in the city for poverty, violence and failing health. Any impulse toward good works, he instructed Mr. Meyer, ought to be directed there.