6 MB THE NEW YORK TIMES, SUNDAY, NOVEMBER 15, 2020Six years ago, Katy McNulty, the chef and
owner of the Pixie and the Scout, a catering
company, raised $40,000 through Kickstart-
er to create her dream kitchen in a ware-
house in Crown Heights, Brooklyn.
This summer and fall, she could finally
pay it forward.
As restaurants closed because of the pan-
demic, many of her chef friends lost their
jobs. So, down in business herself, she
opened the doors of her sustainably de-
signed kitchen to them. One day a laid-off
bartender came in to make mixers she was
trying to sell as a new venture. Things grew
from there.
Now, four or five colleagues are sharing
her space every month. As fall turns to win-
ter, the requests are increasing. “More
restaurants are closing all the time,” Ms.
McNulty said. “This seems to be a growing
thing, not a shrinking thing.”
Ms. McNulty is part of an expanding con-
sortium of chefs, restaurateurs and ca-
terers who are sharing their industrial
kitchens with those who have lost their own.
Some are doing it informally. Others have
begun official guest programs, featuring
different chefs in rotation.
“People in our industry can’t work from
home,” said Camilla Marcus, whose restau-
rant, West~bourne, closed in early Septem-
ber. New York City law dictates that anyone
selling food (beyond baked goods and
snack mixes) must have a licensed kitchen,
separate from a home kitchen. There are all
sorts of rules about equipment, shelf space
and piping.
When West~bourne closed, Ms. Marcus
still had catering orders she needed to pre-
pare, including 150 breakfast boxes for a
corporate client who wanted them deliv-
ered to employees’ homes.
Because a commercial kitchen was re-
quired, she turned to friends in the industry
and asked to work in theirs when they were
closed. Nate Adler from Gertie, a Jewish-
American restaurant, was one of them. “I
don’t want to say who else has let us into
their kitchens, because I don’t know if they
are supposed to do that, and I don’t want to
get them in trouble,” she said. “I will say a
lot of people are being very open and kind.”
Connie Chung, a chef who established her
reputation working for Eleven Madison
Park and the NoMad, experienced similar
generosity.
Her new fast casual Chinese restaurant,
Milu, was supposed to open in Manhattan in
June. But it was only a couple of weeks into
construction when the pandemic hit, and
operations kept getting pushed back. It fi-
nally opened last month.
This summer, Ms. Chung said she was go-
ing stir crazy over the challenge of develop-
ing a menu in her apartment. “A home stove
and a home oven are nothing compared to a
commercial kitchen,” she said. “When you
are recipe testing, using the proper equip-
ment saves you so much time.”
Fortunately, Daniel Eddy, the owner of
Winner, a bakery and restaurant in Park
Slope, Brooklyn, invited her to participate
in his Friends & Family Meals, a weekly
guest series. There, over two weeklongstints, she was able to perfect several dish-
es: her mandarin duck and pork and fennel
won tons.
It also helped her cultivate new
customers. “There are definitely people
who have come to Milu and said, ‘I tried this
at the Winner pop-up and wanted to try
other things,’ ” Ms. Chung said. On the flip
side, Mr. Eddy appreciates the new
customers walking into his bakery because
of cooks like Ms. Chung and Shirwin Bur-
rowes, a former chef at Uncle Boons and
known for his jerk pork over coconut rice,
which he made recently at Winner.
Eli Sussman, a chef who owned the Mid-
dle Eastern restaurant Samesa in Williams-
burg, Brooklyn, with his brother Max Suss-
man, had to close it down in September.
Since then, he has been doing guest appear-
ances, too. His most recent was early this
month at Niche Niche, a wine-focused
restaurant in the West Village. The gigs
have helped him maintain his skills and stay
relevant in the food scene, he said.
But like most chefs, Mr. Sussman is very
particular about his kitchen setup and still
yearns for what he had before. “We built ev-
erything from scratch,” he said. “We creat-
ed a space exactly how we wanted it, where
everything was ours.”
Now, Ariel Arce, the owner of Niche
Niche, is considering keeping her guest
chef program indefinitely. “I am thinking
about turning this restaurant into a full-
time space for chefs not just who lost their
restaurants but also for those who have
been working for five to 10 years and have a
really good idea and a platform to show it,
she said. “Like an incubator.”
Mr. Adler from Gertie is hopeful that en-
abling other chefs to use his kitchen will
help offset his costs. “We are paying rent on
the space all the time,” he said, “so if there is
someone who wants to work Mondays and
Tuesday, when we aren’t open, or Wednes-
day or Thursday nights when we aren’t
busy, something is better than nothing.”
While Ms. McNulty hasn’t yet chargedpeople for the use of her catering kitchen —
besides a few colleagues who have made
contributions — she is considering doing so
in the future. “It is definitely something we
are seriously thinking about for 2021, how
our lease can be shared across a few differ-
ent businesses and what that would look
like,” she said. “It’s the sharing economy.”
Claire Sprouse, the owner of Hunky Dory
in Crown Heights, lets visiting chefs, who
are there every Wednesday, keep all the
proceeds from their food sales (many do-
nate a portion to charity). But she collects
money from cocktails, her real money-
maker.
She started doing this during the pan-
demic when she had to lay off most of her
staff but was required to serve food in order
to sell drinks. The decision has helped in-
crease foot traffic, she said. “Our neighbor-
hood doesn’t have tourists, it’s a lot of regu-
lars,” she explained. “As people are staying
closer to home and not exploring other
parts of the city, they are excited to have
new opportunities to try different food.”
The special menu sells out every
Wednesday, said Ms. Sprouse, who has sus-
pended the visiting chef program for a few
weeks this month to construct tents for the
winter weather. But then, the guest chefs
will return. “It’s this very cool win, win,
win.”Out-of-Work Chefs Get a Lifeline: Kitchen Sharing
PHOTOGRAPHS BY ADRIENNE GRUNWALD FOR THE NEW YORK TIMESAbove, the chef Eli Sussman
and the cook Cody Aldridge
plating a course at Niche Niche
in the West Village, among the
spots where guest chefs
displaced by the pandemic can
take on gigs. At right, a
temperature reader at Niche
Niche. Below, Mr. Sussman
chatting with Ariel Arce of
Niche Niche. Bottom, a mezze
platter by Mr. Sussman.Guest programs take off as
the pandemic forces some
restaurants to shut down.
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