Features

This Culinary Incubator Is Changing the Lives Of Black and Brown Culinary Professionals in Chicago

Retreat at Currency Exchange, artist Theaster Gates’s café and culinary incubator located in Chicago’s Washington Park neighborhood, launches careers and changes lives.

By Angela Burke

Published on June 5, 2023

Just after the final warming bowl of chicken udon soup prepared by chef Ariya Taylor had been served, the packed dining room turned dance floor at Retreat at Currency Exchange, a café and culinary incubator located in Chicago’s Washington Park neighborhood, was flooded with the sounds of the late house-music pioneer Frankie Knuckles. His record collection is one of many noteworthy archives that have been entrusted to Theaster Gates, the prolific multidisciplinary artist and social innovator who has breathed new life into this space. A trained urban planner, Gates transforms fading structures in predominantly Black neighborhoods into energetic cultural hubs where community and artistry can convene.

“The culinary community and the music community are allies and part and parcel to my work,” says Gates. Retreat at Currency Exchange has been a launchpad for local chefs, caterers, coffee brewers, and mixologists. The endeavor, an offshoot of Gates’ artist-focused charitable organization, Rebuild Foundation, is more than a rotating pop-up series. It is an investment in Black and brown culinarians through a formal program. “I don’t think of myself as a restaurateur. I’m an enabler. I’m a platform-maker,” Gates says. “In this case, it’s an opportunity to do what Rebuild does in general, which is to celebrate the local. Invite everybody in, and then through that period of incubation, people will be better than they were before they came. That’s my hope.”

Residents of the six-month-long program receive funding, professional development, and ongoing mentorship while navigating next steps to restaurant ownership or starting a food business. The resources participants receive serve as underpinnings for whatever bold plans they may have. Gates’ platform is modeled after his retreats for Black visual artists and has been designed as an oasis for a segment of the hospitality industry that is routinely overlooked and under-supported. At Retreat at Currency Exchange, being vulnerable, taking up space, and exerting creative license while being Black or brown is celebrated.

Theaster Gates (middle right) with (from left) Jason Vasquez, Ariya Taylor, Ellison Park, and Zandro Zafra at the coffee bar inside Retreat at Currency Exchange — Lucy Hewett

Another branch of the Rebuild Foundation is the design- and art-centered Dorchester Industries Experimental Design Lab, Gates’ partnership program with the Prada Group, which further allows Gates to highlight Black artists and showcase artistic diversity to a global audience. Its inaugural cohort includes 2022 F&W Best New Chef Damarr Brown, the celebrated Chicago-based chef whose work honors Black foodways at the acclaimed Hyde Park restaurant Virtue. “I just want to amplify great culinary artists of color,” says Gates. “I do think that when I say ‘art’—and I’m saying this from my artist’s perspective—I’m saying people who are experts at what they do, and they figure out the best ways to present their craft in interesting ways.”

Gates’ mission and philosophy across these multiple disciplines makes it possible to mention a memorable meal in the same breath as a work of art. There’s something profound and powerful about a visionary who affirms young Black and brown culinarians, letting them know that they are seen.