the brooklyn kitchen

the brooklyn kitchen spawned from amateur cooks who were frustrated with the lack of cooking supplies available in their brooklyn neighborhood. that's when taylor erkkinen and harry rosenblum took what seemed like a good idea and opened their store, which was five years ago. crain's new york business wrote about them just a couple of months ago.

(courtesy of their site, the shop before construction)

i love this. first off, i'm envious at the very idea behind what they've done. they had a passion, saw a need that was in turn impeding that passion, and took the risk to assume that others felt the same and... made a business out of it.

(and how it looks today)

there's something to learn for all of us in this story, which crain's was wise enough to recognize as well. for me, this brings to light the subtext of every thing i've written on this blog. it's like saying, wake up, everybody. at what point was ingenuity and creativity replaced by mass-produced goods and foods. where did the home cooked meal disappear to? why, one hundred years ago, did over 40% of this country's workers classify themselves within the agricultural sector, and we now face a number that is less than 2%? how did agriculture become a multi-billion dollar venture for global corporations to control, pulling the carpet from beneath the country's small farmers?

the brooklyn kitchen is a prime example of how people, whether they're conscious of it or not, are in fact willing to engage this ongoing dialogue and exorcise the far more sufficient and sustainable ways and means of agriculture and distribution that began to disppear just fifty years ago.

(my papa, carving our christmas dinner pork shank)

harry rosenblum is the son of a friend of my grandfather, and yesterday it was my grandfather's birthday. this artcile was sent to me by him. i'd give anything to have sat at the dinner table with my grandfather when he was a boy. what did my g.g. cook for him back then? where did she shop? and how far did the foods she brought home travel before they wound up in her hands? have you ever even thought of how different food might have looked then? that's something i never even thought to ask my grandfather, but so easily could. all of these questions are.

as i often say, maybe i'm just a nostalgic idealist. maybe there's little to the cause and in truth, people are more obsessed with a place like the brooklyn kitchen because we as a people are eating more food than we've ever eaten before. but then why did the brooklyn kitchen just recently opened the brooklyn kitchen labs, as crain's highlights, where cooking classes are offered and filled constantly? people are finding their way back to the kitchen, and the bar has been raised when it comes to what they want to learn and who they want to learn it from. but is this a small movement, or the start of something far larger?

(the newly opened brooklyn kitchen labs and meat hook)

and how much do i wish they'd opened shop in chicago and not brooklyn?

happy birthday, papa. thanks for this.