Preview

In the Cut with Ghetto Gastro

By: Jon Gray, Pierre Serrao, Lester Walker
Narrated by: Jon Gray, Pierre Serrao, Lester Walker
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Episodes
  • Trailer
    Jan 9 2023

    Street-to-table is the only way to break bread on the block. It’s nourishment through the food, the flavor, the vibes—if it ain’t fresh, it ain’t served up.

    Join in on a trip down the sidewalks of the Bronx with culinary collective Ghetto Gastro for In the Cut, a gastronomical deep dive into the dishes and cultures that shape the New York foodscape. From “Chopped Stease” and hood Chinese to “Twerk n Jerk” and mofongo, Ghetto Gastro takes us through the origins and legacy of the borough’s food culture.

    From restaurants to bodegas, each episode explores an iconic dish through unfiltered conversations with tastemakers, cultural experts, and neighborhood icons like Questlove and Black Thought, Von Diaz, and A$AP Ferg.

    After choppin’ it up on the block with guests, they take their recipes back into the kitchen to lead listeners in a hands-on cooking demo with their signature spin.

    So grab a plate, take a seat and get your ears ready to feast—with Ghetto Gastro everybody eats.

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    1 min
  • Chopped Cheese
    Feb 2 2023

    Let me get a chopped cheese, salt, pepper, ketchup please! Ahmir “Questlove” Thompson and Tariq “Black Thought” Trotter roll up to the Ghetto Gastro table to test if the Uptown-born Chopped Cheese sandwich has the ability to win the hearts of the two Philly expats and cheesesteak lovers. Later, Jon, P, and Les head to the lab to cook for you their version of the hood favorite, “The Chopped Stease”.

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    17 mins
  • Mofongo
    Feb 2 2023

    Jon, Pierre, and Les explore the relationship of African-descended and Latino cultures in and beyond NYC with cookbook author and scholar Von Diaz. Inspired by their conversation, the guys hit the lab to make some “Mofongones” - a dish made from a combination of plantain cooking techniques enjoyed throughout the Latin America-diaspora.

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    18 mins

Ghetto Gastro on creating In The Cut

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About the Creator and Performer - Ghetto Gastro

About the Creator and Performer

Ghetto Gastro is the Bronx-born culinary collective from Jon Gray, Pierre Serrao, and Lester Walker. The group has notably defined its own lane, merging food, fashion, music, art, and design. Claiming both the beauty and grit from the streets with the aspiration and aesthetics of the finer things, Ghetto Gastro’s interdisciplinary approach celebrates the Bronx as a driver of global culture. The crew masterfully blends influences from the African diaspora, Global South ingredients, and the pulse of hip hop to create offerings that address race, identity, and economic empowerment.
Since launching in 2012, Ghetto Gastro has gone from hosting underground parties to spearheading large-scale brand campaigns and events with leading fashion designers, artists, and entrepreneurs. Their collaborators and partners include figures like Virgil Abloh, Nike, Cartier, the Serpentine, the Museum of Modern Art, and many more.
During the onset of the pandemic in 2020, Ghetto Gastro prioritized Bronx grassroots initiatives and mutual aid. In recognition for feeding their community, the group was nominated for the Basque Culinary World Prize. In 2021, Ghetto Gastro launched its namesake consumer goods brand of pantry items inspired by ancestral ingredients. The collective released a custom line of kitchen appliances, CRUXGG, across Target stores nationwide, and recently launched their cookware line with Williams Sonoma. Black Power Kitchen is their first cookbook.

About the Creator and Performer - Jon Gray

About the Creator and Performer

Jon Gray is cofounder of Ghetto Gastro. He aims to shift social narratives by celebrating the culinary, blending a background in fashion to create immersive experiences, product design, and unique storytelling.
From Co-op City, Gray’s mother and grandmother taught him about the arts and challenged him to innovate as a way of life. When a rebellious adolescence almost put him behind bars, Gray used the experience to imagine a greater vision for himself. Inventorying his passions and pastimes, he made Bronx-driven gastro-diplomacy his career and mission.
In 2019, Gray delivered the TED Talk "The Next Big Thing Is Coming from the Bronx, Again." Gray is a Civic Practice Partnership Artist in Residence at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. In 2021, he served as guest curator at the Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum, where "Jon Gray of Ghetto Gastro Selects" featured an Afrofuturist theme.

About the Creator and Performer - Pierre Serrao

About the Creator and Performer

Pierre Serrao is chef and cofounder of Ghetto Gastro. Serrao uses food as both an expression of culture-driven creativity and a tool to create health sovereignty.
Raised between Barbados and Connecticut, Serrao worked in restaurants throughout high school, then graduated from culinary school and the Italian Culinary Institute for Foreigners in Piemonte. He worked at award-winning restaurants in New York, Barbados, and Italy, styling an approach to cooking influenced by ancestral practices and innovation.
The desire to create a culturally sound and iterative expression of food led Serrao to join forces with Jon Gray and Lester Walker, rounding out Ghetto Gastro. Fueled by international travel, enthusiasm for learning, and sheer curiosity, Serrao explores ways to bridge the global pantry with creative entrepreneurship.

About the Creator and Performer - Lester Walker

About the Creator and Performer

Lester Walker is chef and co-founder of Ghetto Gastro. Walker brings unrelenting imagination, competition-ready technique, and skill at layering flavors to Ghetto Gastro’s iconic events, offerings, and storytelling.
A native of the Bronx’s Co-op City, Walker discovered cooking at a pivotal moment in his teen years. New York City’s Careers Through Culinary Arts Program inspired him to pursue a career in food. Spurred by the speed, focus, and creativity of cooking, Walker worked up the fine-dining line in award-winning kitchens in New York, Washington, D.C., and Miami.
Walker’s cooking merges the roots of NYC-based Black American foodways with the cuisines he studied professionally: French, Italian, Indian, and Southeast Asian. In 2012, he won Chopped on the Food Network. That same year, seeking ways to explore historic and modern Black culture through food, he partnered with Jon Gray, fellow Co-op City native, to launch Ghetto Gastro. With Ghetto Gastro, Walker aims to create art by intentionally pairing food with ideas that represent and celebrate where he comes from.

Behind-the-scenes with Ghetto Gastro at Sundance

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What listeners say about In the Cut with Ghetto Gastro

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Excellent storytelling

Love the different characters and their roles as storytellers on the show, top notch A1.

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    5 out of 5 stars
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Triple Treat!

Good day to everyone! Food! History! Heart! What is not to LOVE! Another helping please?

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The Real Deal

This group gives such an amazing unique and authentic experience to food. Its bigger than dining and taste, it's about CULTURE, and I truly appreciate that.

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Love it!

Ghetto Gastro really changing the game in the food world and keeping it unapologetically BLACK ✊🏾

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