“Giving back has always been in my DNA,” says Chef Joseph ‘JJ’ Johnson.
Serving up Stories: Chef JJ Johnson Celebrates Culture
“I’ve always wanted to have some type of impact. My dad runs a nonprofit basketball program that we grew up with. When I got on the restaurant scene, I saw that food insecurity was so big in the community I was cooking in, right in Harlem and upper Manhattan, and I got creative with ideas for what to do to really help.” The award-winning chef and founder of New York’s FIELDTRIP, a fast-casual rice bowl eatery, has created a community-based dining experience that celebrates culture through the shared experience of rice. His mantra, "Rice is Culture,” was born out of the realization that rice connects us in one of the most important ways there is—through food! Each of the restaurant’s multicultural rice bowls features one of five different iterations of rice, all from different origins. JJ is drawn to not just the New York food scene but all the good that can come from it, and his diligent efforts toward the food industry have amounted to an impressive impact.
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“I’ve helped with the James Beard Impact Foundation, culativating programming with the foundation to make sure the culinary world is a better place. I worked with the New York City Food Bank at one point, and now with Rethink Food. They’re amazing, really utilizing chefs and restaurants to end this hunger crisis—it’s something we should’ve been doing a long time ago, and we hope to be feeding more and more people through Rethink and FIELDTRIP as we grow.”
With Chef JJ at the helm, FIELDTRIP is an environment for connection through food that transcends people, memories, and generations. His unique cooking style fuses different cultural flavors, including the Caribbean flavors that he grew up with and the multitude of flavors he has explored in his travels, a journey shared through mouthwatering recipes in his cookbook, Between Harlem and Heaven. “Cooking in Ghana really paved the way for me. I’m cooking who I am; I’m expressing myself on the plate. It might feel unique to people because they’ve never had those flavors before or traveled to those places, but to many, it’s the food of who they are. “When I wrote Between Harlem and Heaven with Alexander Smalls and Veronica Chambers, it was a book that we wanted to have an impact on the table, and help people understand the food of the African diaspora to realize that it’s more than just soulfood; it stems from culinary traditions. In that book, we told stories, we wrote recipes, we really leaned on each other to encompass that.” “I’m very fortunate to be able to tell stories through cooking. I try to tell young chefs, or any chef who's trying to find themself in the culinary industry, to lean back on your culture and your culture will help express the best parts of your food, because who knows you and your family better than you?” Watch Chef JJ on his TV show, Just Eats, airing on Cleo TV, and learn more at fieldtripnyc.com - chefjj.co
