No matter where you are… Eat Well My Friends!
Comfort food is hearty. When hearts are heavy, they need gravitational and emotional equilibrium… food that reassures us that we will survive.
MEET THE CHEF
Desi Reé (Owner & Head Chef)
She was just a shy girl from Gary using her grandmother’s ideas about food to cook for her baby brother and practice recipes from the Food Network. Going to college with friends opened her world of cooking while studying health and child psychology at Ball State University. Suddenly food became the perfect way to show love to friends (and a future husband) while making some money simultaneously.
In 2006, pregnant with her first rainbow baby, she began studying food and nutrition to stay busy while handling third-trimester cravings. Out of collegiate habit, she took plenty of notes and began experimenting with snacks. Soon the idea of looking up historical recipes became more than an urge. After a while life as a Mom took over and while she wrote and cooked plenty, these notes became a notebook of "stuff" on the shelf.
In 2014, she discovered the term food desert, and that notebook came out so fast it was like she never stopped writing. Her whole food history was in Chicago and Gary, so the thought that people weren’t eating well didn’t sit right. After having a few giveaways, her family noticed the issue wasn’t just the lack of food. The new generation of parents needed to know what to do with certain foods when they did get them.
In 2017, SoCo Kitchen was born to show real food to real people. The food, especially soul food, being marketed in that area had gone from prize-winning cuisine to cultural insults in the form of greasy chicken and tone-def snacks. It was time to share where to eat and how to do it for us. It was hard work yet interesting to uncover the background of how our ancestors lived so long eating as they did back then.
Moving to the “Chambana” area was like coming to a home away from home. It felt like a bigger version of Miller Beach, her favorite area in Gary, Indiana. This place is where foodies grow together and she is happy to add to the collective.