'I don’t drink alcohol, so for me, if I’m trying to celebrate something, I drink a Coca-Cola — it’s like my own Champagne.' Read Ayo Balogun's GrubStreetDiet
The chef Ayo Balogun, victorious with pancakes. Illustration: Lyne Lucien “New York restaurants are like pirate ships,” says Ayo Balogun, the owner of Dept of Culture in Bed-Stuy; any job he’d had previously is by contrast “a pleasure cruise.” Not that the Nigerian chef is complaining: he thrives on the adrenaline rush. “There’s always a fire to put out, or one more thing to do, and that’s always fun,” he explains, sounding pleased.
Long story short, I’ve been involved in this lawsuit. I opened Trade Union in 2015, on Malcolm X Boulevard in Brooklyn — the neighborhood was completely different then. But then a real estate developer bought the building, and he tried to evict us. He did, eventually, find a way to evict us illegally. So you know what I did? I sued him.
Since I’d just eaten so much food, I wanted to go burn some energy in the pool. I walked the grounds a bit. I played tennis, not an actual game — just playing around — and then I went back up the hill to the restaurant. You have to know people who work there to go. You press the buzzer, and they come and look at the camera and make you wait. They know me — I’ve earned my stripes. It’s kind of like Soho House, but with stricter rules. At Soho House, you can always talk to somebody, but if these guys don’t open the door, you have no way of getting in.