Chef’s Lab at Refettorio Harlem
39 w 119th Street | New York, NY 10026 I Inside the Emanuel AME Church
CHEFS LAB x UNDERGROUND
A culinary jam session featuring Quie Slobert, Chef Osei “Picky” Blackett, and the Free Food at Refettorio Harlem Culinary Interns .
Performance by Chrybaby Cozie
OCTOBER 19
6:30PM to 9:00PM DINNER (6:00PM VIP RECEPTION)
About the Evening
The Chef’s Lab is back with a fresh ensemble and its culinary interns, ready to throw down a party with a hip hop dance legend. At 9am, the chefs get the list: the week's ingredients — produce and provisions recovered from the farmers, distributors, and markets across the city.. No menu. No plan. By start time, a multi course dinner is on the table. In between, it's a full culinary jam session, old school Harlem: improvisation, flow, and alchemy. You can expect Chef Quie’s southern influence, Chef Picky’s Caribbean flare, and the diversity of cuisine Chef Levar and Chef Michael have been come to be known by.
The Chefs
Chef Quie Slobert— Charles Pan-Fried Chicken, Harlem
Chef Osei "Picky" Blackett — Free Food Harlem and Everything Oxtail
Chef Levar Fulmore — Bronx Cookspace and Free Food Harlem
Chef Michael Lesser — Free Food at Refettorio Harlem
The Free Food Culinary Training Participants
The Performance
Chrybaby Cozie — Harlem LiteFeet and Hip Hop dance pioneer
Mission: Every seat supports Free Food at Refettorio Harlem's three-course community dinner program — currently serving 900 meals weekly across three programs — and our culinary training initiative for justice-impacted New Yorkers building real kitchen careers. Every week our kitchen recovers surplus ingredients from farmers, distributors, and food producers and transforms them into three-course meals served free to the Harlem community — over 225,000 lbs of food recovered since 2023. Free Food at Refettorio Harlem was recently featured in the New York Times and presented on the floor of the U.S. House by Rep. Jim McGovern.
The Chef's Lab is an opportunity to showcase the mission and raise support for Free Food at Refettorio Harlem's three-course dinners with dignity program — currently serving 900 meals weekly across three programs — Wednesday and Friday community dinners, Thursday Night’s Family Dinner, and a Tuesday Farmers Market Style Pantry and Lunch — addressing food insecurity, food waste, and especially social isolation. Every week, our kitchen recovers surplus ingredients from farmers, distributors, and food producers who practice sustainable, responsible agriculture — and transforms them into three-course meals served free to the Harlem community. Since 2023, the program has recovered over 225,000 lbs of food from entering the waste stream. The program also runs a culinary training initiative for justice-impacted individuals, providing professional kitchen skills towards meaningful employment in the food industry.
Free Food at Refettorio Harlem was recently featured in the New York Times and presented on the floor of the United States House by Rep. Jim McGovern.
Collaborators
Chef Quie Slobert - Chef Quie Slobert is a Harlem native, a trained chef, and the COO and co-owner of Charles Pan-Fried Chicken. He met James Beard nominee Chef Charles Gabriel during the pandemic, when both were out feeding Harlem's homeless — a partnership that began in service and went on to grow a Harlem fixture into multiple Manhattan locations, with Slobert building the modern operations behind it. He is the creator of Cooking with Shirley's Son, a youth cooking and community program, and his work keeps one through-line: hire local, open doors for formerly incarcerated New Yorkers, and keep food moving to the community through giveaways and church-partnered feeding programs.
Chef Picky - Chef Osei "Picky" Blackett is Free Food at Refettorio Harlem's new chef. Born and raised in Trinidad and Tobago, he worked his way up from a custodian at the James Beard Foundation to chef-owner of Picky Eaters, the Trinidadian rum bar Ariapita in Flatbush, and Chef Picky Events and Catering — becoming a leader of a young generation of Caribbean chefs, with cooking that pairs Trinbagonian flavor and American technique. His pop-ups and concepts — Everything Oxtail, Wings by Chef Picky, On D Pavement — have taken him from Brooklyn to the Paris Olympics and Pebble Beach Food & Wine. At Refettorio Harlem, he brings that energy to the mission: three-course dinners with dignity, and real kitchen training for Harlem's next generation of cooks.
Daniel “Chrybaby Cozie” Holloway is a Harlem-born pioneer of the Lite Feet movement—a high-energy freestyle dance that emerged in the early 2000s as part of the continuum of hip-hop culture.
Chrybaby has worked with top artists including Chris Brown, A$AP Ferg, A$AP Rocky, and Doug E. Fresh. As a respected educator and cultural ambassador, he has taught at institutions such as Broadway Dance Center, Peridance Center, Jacob’s Pillow, Princeton, Yale, USC, and internationally in Taiwan, Switzerland, India, and Canada.
He is the founder of The Breakfast Club E.A.T. (Earning All Together) and Lite Feet Nation—organizations focused on youth leadership and cultural preservation. He currently serves as 1/6 Directors of Moptop Universal at Peridance Center, Adjunct Lecturer at Hunter College, and Program Manager for Creative Netwerk in New York City, bringing dance and DJ education to hundreds of underserved youth.
Supporting Partners
Need to know
Donation ticket is final and non-refundable
Event is wheelchair accessible
Allergens and General Questions to Refettorio team hello@refettorioharlem.org
Location
39 119th Street, New York, NY 10026 (inside Emanuel A.M.E Church )