Fundraising dinner showcases the talents of two dozen Black Detroit chefs

A new culinary event that aims to shine a light on the Detroit area’s Black male culinary professionals and beverage experts — while also helping the next generation of chefs — is having its first event Monday.

Billed as the Black Excellence Culinary Symphony 2024, the multi-course dinner is at chef Omar Mitchell’s restaurant Table No. 2 in Greektown. While this event is to raise money for new uniforms for students at Breithaupt and Golightly Vocational Centers, it's part of a bigger movement to unify and uplift 500 chefs of color in the city.

Mitchell is joined by nearly two dozen chefs to craft an eight-course meal featuring wine pairings from Chuck Jackson Jr. and cocktails by Andre Sykes, both spotlighting Black-owned brands. Some of the chefs involved include Lloyd Roberts of Adachi, Shawn Loving of the Detroit Athletic Club, Mike Ransom of Ima, Jermond Booze of Detroit Food Academy and others.

Many will work together on presenting a dish. For example, the fish course will be crafted by Mamba Hamissi of Baobab Fare, Godwin Ihentuge of YumVillage and Maxcel Hardy of Coop Caribbean Fusion.

Organizer Phil Jones, a chef and community food specialist, said this event is part of a bigger, growing movement. He's kicking things off with an event spotlighting Black male chefs because that's how he identifies and "it's an easy starting place ... but the goal is much bigger than this group of Black male chefs."

"Our goal for this portion of the project is to give 25 students from Breithaupt and Golightly Vocational Centers full uniforms," said Jones. The students will not only get customized chef uniforms but also kitchen-safe footwear. "One of the issues that happens with competitions and events is that our kids here from the City of Detroit, while they have very legitimate institutions of learning, they may not always have the resources to look as good as kids from other cities."

"They're going to be able to say that Black and brown professional chefs from the city of Detroit support us," he said.

Chef Jones also talks about the importance of highlighting the work that has been going on in the Detroit food scene for decades while there is currently a focus on outsiders coming in in the form of social media influencers, grabbing headlines and causing uproars over good and bad reviews done by personalities who may be on to the next city a day later.

"Mr.ChimeTime and the Hungry Black Man, they've garnered a lot of attention and I don't fault them, that's capitalism," said Jones. "It's for likes, clicks, etc. It's for all kinds of stuff that's not supportive of our food scene here. The biggest problem is that Detroiters are feeding into this, and they're not feeding into the very many projects, the tremendous numbers of people that are really affecting Detroit food. They're not respecting the work that has been going on for decades now.

"They're getting responses for someone's harsh criticism of our food scene and they're not talking about the winners," he said, citing the forthcoming Detroit People’s Food Co-Op on Woodward, which has kitchens available for community use. "This is a member-owned store that focuses on the positive of Detroit, but we're willing to talk about someone from the outside coming in to review our food but we're not talking about this fantastic thing that is happening in the city of Detroit right on Woodward."

Jones calls Monday's event a starting point of the Black Excellence Culinary Symphony. On March 4, a similar event will happen for the vocational schools featuring Black women chefs in the area, also taking place at Table No. 2. Details will be available soon.

Monday’s dinner starts at 6 p.m. and is $125 per person, which includes the meal and beverages; tax and gratuity are extra. Reservations can be booked through Table No. 2’s page on OpenTable. Table No. 2 is at 1045 Brush in Detroit.

mbaetens@detroitnews.com