In the heart of Gainesville, a grassroots culinary program is doing more than just teaching kids how to cook.
Chef Empowerment’s Underground Kitchen Cooking Class works with ages 12 to 18 to combine skills such as sauteing, chopping, dicing and meat preparation. This year, each community class is hosted at Gainesville Housing Authority (GHA) properties including Horizon Sunset, Eastwood Meadows, Lake Terrace and Woodland Park.
Groups within each class get their own supplies and hot plates to learn to cook a meal step-by-step.
The program is made through the collaboration of Chef Empowerment’s Underground Kitchen, the GHA and The Links, Inc.
Freddie Jones, the GHA lead resident service specialist, has worked with the organization for two years. GHA is a not-for-profit providing affordable housing to low-income families in Alachua County.
The youth cooking classes originally started at Horizon Sunset as one Saturday every month in October, November and December of 2023, but the organizations aim to schedule them more frequently in 2024, Jones said.
The goal was to “spread the love” and have the youth gain a quality experience with quality food, he said.
“The youth have the experience to cook their own food and try the food that they cook,” Jones said.
Woodland Park hosted the latest class May 25, featuring knife skills, sauteing and food presentation. The class was a taste of a larger intern program for kids ages 12-16 called Chef Empowerment.
Culinary lessons are an important connection to an industry he doesn’t often see in low-income communities, Jones said.
“I just didn’t see a lot of those things growing up,” he said. “They’re afforded an opportunity that they may not even see for themselves.”
Cesar Uriel Cruz, a 14-year-old program participant, learned how to dice vegetables during the course, which he said sparked his interest in the culinary industry.
“I think I had fun talking to other people [most],” Cruz said.
Chef Empowerment Executive Director Carl Watts said the community-based organization offers mentorship and employment to interns and “at-risk youth.”
Watts’ Underground Kitchen is known for its Southern African American style dishes, featuring creations ranging from blackened catfish to creole shrimp and grits. He posts a daily updated menu to his Instagram page.
Before venturing into the culinary world, the 32-year-old Gainesville resident was a gang intervention specialist with the Gainesville Police Department’s Black-on-Black crime task force, where he specialized in crisis intervention and life skill development. His law enforcement background makes him more observant working with interns daily, he said.
Watts described “at-risk youth” as the circumstances or conditions that negatively impact a child’s academic or social success, including income, ethnicity and other demographics.
He finds himself befriending the interns and relays ways to support them to their parents. Keeping a close eye on them ensures they’re going in the right direction, he said.
“It’s not just about the food,” Watts said. “We have to build up the kids.”
During the pandemic, Chef Empowerment and Underground Kitchen aimed to support community partners like the Working Food Community Center to provide meals for families in need and lay the groundwork for the current youth cooking classes, he said.
Chef Empowerment currently has four interns participating in the youth chef leadership program in collaboration with the Working Food Community Center, and he said an additional 13 are employed by Underground Kitchen.
“The catch with youth is that you have to make this fun,” Watts said.
The Chef Empowerment program teaches interns everything from soups and sauces to baking and desserts.
The most important aspect of Watt’s teaching is nutrition science, he said. Underground Kitchen owns an acre farm in Alachua and a garden on restaurant property, which he said supplies the restaurant with ingredients that change with the seasons.
“My days are sometimes so stressful as a chef,” Watts said. “In the morning, it allows me to be in the garden, have some peace.”
Watts’ said morning gardening helps him “make a connection with the food,” emphasizing the respect interns gained from the farm-to-table experience.
“You didn't value it until you had to be out in the sun,” he said. “The goal should be to respect the product that you're giving people and to also create a journey from that seed to the table. That journey should end on the plate.”
Underground Kitchen is currently pickup only, but plans to add a dining area to the property by the end of this year that would provide a space for youth to learn hospitality and restaurant operations, Watts said.
Florida Bridgewater-Alford is the immediate past president of The Links, Inc., an international not-for-profit committed to enriching African American culture through friendship, with a chapter in Gainesville. She has worked with the organization for 13 years.
In March, The Links had a Black family wellness fair, featuring free mammograms, blood pressure checks and Zumba classes.
The Links partnered with Carl Watts in 2023 looking for ways to improve the health of local communities, she said.
“The health of a community is really measured, I think, by sort of the physical, the mental, the environmental and social wellbeing,” she said.
The Links’ theme this year is “fight like a link,” mirroring their overall goals for improving health disparities such as food insecurity. A community is stronger with collaboration, she said.
“We have to do this together,” Bridgewater-Alford said.
Contact Sara-James Ranta at sranta@alligator.org. Follow her on X @sarajamesranta.
Sara-James Ranta is a third-year journalism major, minoring in sociology of social justice and policy. Previously, she served as a general assignment reporter for The Alligator's university desk.
