It can be scary to be a refugee. New York's famed culinary scene is teaching these newcomers how to thrive

CNN

a day ago

Alpha Oumar Diallo hunches over a kitchen counter at a library café in Brooklyn, his nose hovering above a plastic container of brownie batter. Eyebrows furrowed, he tries to pinpoint where this batch went wrong.
'I don't know what you did,' chef Ashley Fils-Aime lectures from behind him, both hands on her hips. 'But I can tell you it's shiny and dark and not as solid as the other mixtures.'
Diallo and his classmates groan. Can they at least give it a go in the oven, they ask.
Fils-Aime shakes her head.
'Throw it away,' she says, 'immediately.'
However stern, the rebuff is also gentle. It could never match what this man was facing just three years ago.
Back in his native Guinea, Diallo's evenings had been a blend of watching soccer and baking. As he kneaded dough for bread, biscuits or cookies, his shouts of 'Goal! Goal! Goal!' echoed through the kitchen, replaced with disappointed grumbles when his favorite player missed a shot.
But as his west African nation's government began to tighten personal and press freedoms, Diallo joined thousands protesting in the capital Conakry. Military personnel brutally beat him, he says, leaving scars. He got arrested, he continues, leading to three months curled up in a tiny prison cell, tortured and starved, the agonized screams of others being electrocuted within earshot.
After another arrest for protesting – a two-month ordeal – Diallo's family urged him to leave, he says. So, in August 2022, he set out on a grueling, two-week journey through Senegal, to Turkey, across the ocean to Nicaragua, Honduras and Guatemala, then an 11-hour nighttime walk through Mexico to the US border in California.
With little more than a backpack, Diallo eventually made it to New York with the help of his uncle. He struggled for months to find work before a new friend – aware of his love of baking – told him about a special school tucked inside a Brooklyn Public Library branch near historic Prospect Park that teaches newcomers like him how to cook.
In a city long celebrated for gastronomic excellence and diverse international cuisines, nearly 60% of New York restaurant workers are foreign-born, many having brought a wealth of culinary knowledge. Not all arrive, though, with the skills to survive in a professional kitchen. And refugees can face peculiar workplace stresses rooted in the political violence or extreme poverty they fled. For some, the Trump administration's immigration crackdown now exacerbates the strain.
Diallo holds up his cell phone to show a photo of his six sisters and mother, still in Guinea, where safety and freedom – especially of girls and women – are not guaranteed. He has requested asylum in the United States and hopes eventually to bring his relatives here, too.
He kisses the screen and smiles. Tears begin to fall.
'Anywhere I go, anywhere I am,' he says, 'I'm thinking about them.'
Also never far is Diallo's work ethic: 'I learned it from the advice of my father,' he says. 'A man has to work for himself, for his integrity, for his honor. It isn't easy, what we go through to get here or what we have escaped.'
Diallo kisses the phone screen again and wipes his cheek with a small towel.
Then, he turns to grab a fresh container for the next batch of brownie batter.
About 15 minutes away by bus, at this cooking school's other café, a quiet morning slips into a busy afternoon, soft light spilling over every table. In the corner by the windows, two gray-haired friends trade cups of coffee, pausing to contemplate flavors. Eyebrows lifted in approval, they dive back into a passionate exchange of stories.
Migrants shape every corner of the place, which like its counterpart at the Brooklyn library is called Emma's Torch to honor the poet whose verses on the Statue of Liberty's pedestal beckon the world's 'tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free.'
Ani Tsetskhladze, in a black apron and a cap, chops up onions, peppers and mushrooms for an omelet sandwich soon to be served to the table where a couple, immersed in playful banter, sip glasses of red wine.
Her apron bears a simple quote: 'In the eyes of the stove, we are all equal.'
'After my first week here, I realized I didn't know many things about myself,' Tsetskhladze says a few minutes later, sitting with her hands in her lap. 'I was always a very quiet person inside. But now I see I am very competitive. You come here and you start learning, and you immediately want to be the best.'
The soft-spoken mother of three immigrated from the former Soviet republic of Georgia with her husband – her love since they were 9 years old – and their three children.
'The Georgian government is now pro-Russian, and there is severe discrimination against minority groups,' Tsetskhladze explains. 'Everything went from worse to worse for us. I was on the street demonstrating, and we were tired. For our children, I would like a better life.'
Georgia's ruling party recently passed a 'foreign agents' bill likened to Russian laws used to silence dissent. Hundreds of arrestees have alleged beatings, torture and other ill-treatment by law enforcement, while opposition politicians have faced public assaults.
In Tbilisi, Tsetskhladze was an actress who quietly dreamt of attending culinary school, an ambition she could not afford. Breaking into New York's competitive theatre scene, especially with a language barrier, proved challenging, so when Tsetskhladze found Emma's Torch, it felt like destiny.
Tsetskhladze and other migrants in this kitchen are among over 500 students at this school who are paid to get culinary training, funded by private donors. The non-profit's mission is to empower them and help them gain employment, confidence and financial independence while overcoming the challenges and traumas of forced migration.
Culinary careers also can present invaluable opportunities for immigrants, especially in New York, where they can embrace their full identities – including their knowledge of native dishes – in the rich mosaic of ethnic restaurants.
The menus at both Emma's Torch cafés – plus one in Washington, DC, and its catering operation – reflect this diversity. Dishes like the black-eyed pea fritter salad and North African shakshuka are inspired by students' cultural identities. The menus are part of the curriculum, so students learn how to master every recipe.
'We also learn about the history of food, especially talking about colonization through food. What does it mean to have certain flavors, like hummus, that originated in some countries now be seen as the norm in others?' says Kira O'Brien, Emma's Torch's chief impact officer.
While 60% of the culinary program curriculum is divided into fundamentals, covering skills like knife techniques, kitchen sanitation, food safety and recipe reading, the remainder focuses on equity, employability and empowerment. A 'Know Your Rights' workshop, for instance, helps migrants understand the law and learn self-advocacy. Students also learn to read a paycheck – and protect against wage theft and employer exploitation.
Some workshops are led by Natalie Manukian, a program specialist whose lesson on a recent day focuses on how students should research restaurants, using three specific examples. The daughter of Armenian immigrants, Manukian wears an evil eye pendant over her black turtleneck, her hair in an elegant, messy bun.
'This is the country of immigrants,' she says. 'Whether you were born here or your parents were born here, somebody in your lineage immigrated to this country, and no one should have the right to decide who can or can't be here.'
Vicheslav Komotopchyk prefers not to dwell on his trauma. He leans back against the wall, his classmates listening as they cook, and recalls the day he fled Ukraine after Russia's 2022 invasion, one of some 10 million Ukrainians now displaced by the war.
'Take your time,' he says he first told his children as they prepared to flee. Fifteen minutes later, a missile flew past their kitchen window, striking a few blocks away and shaking their house, he says.
'After that I told them, 'Never mind, hurry!''
Within minutes that day, Komotopchyk's wife, three children and father-in-law – along with hastily packed backpacks – were crammed into a minibus, he continues. They drove for nearly 28 hours, he recalls, slowed by heavy evacuation traffic until they reached Warsaw, Poland.
'I don't like to think about it,' he says, shrugging. 'We did what we had to do, that's it. I can't keep counting: How many rockets? How many bombs? How many people died?'
Almost every student at Emma's Torch has a story like this: fleeing war or violence, driven by the choice to pursue a safe future for their families or lose everything.
'When you're working with folks who have experienced trauma, there are certain things that we try to be really mindful of,' O'Brien says from a table in front of the library café.
In New York, where waves of undocumented immigrants and asylum-seekers arriving by bus from Texas have ignited national debate, sudden shifts – in public policy or daily routine – can be devastating. Some 234,000 migrants have come through the city intake system since spring of 2022, with more than 41,000 still relying on shelters, Mayor Eric Adam's office told CNN in April.
'We try to make sure they're feeling psychologically safe,' O'Brien says of Emma's Torch's students. 'But when you have ambiguity about your own physical safety on where you're going to live and things are out of your control, they become really scary, especially for survivors of forced migration.'
The cooking school collaborates with other non-profits to make sure each student gets health care, shelter, food and access to immigration lawyers. Meanwhile, instructors teach with a focus on transparency and accountability.
'If I'm going to say, 'Hey, can you bring this upstairs?' I'm going to say, 'Hey, can you bring this upstairs because they're going to need it later for service?'' O'Brien explains. 'That's very different from the experience a lot of our students have had, where it's been: 'Get in that line.' You don't know why you're in that line, you don't know what's gonna happen to your kids, you don't know anything.'
Students also are empowered to make their own decisions, from which marker their teacher will use on the whiteboard to new menu suggestions. The authority, O'Brien says, is deeply meaningful, especially to migrants living in shelters, where they have no say in where they sleep, what they eat or, sometimes, what they wear.
'Think about all the different ways across the migration experience that people lose pieces of their humanity,' O'Brien says. 'Trauma-informed care tries to help add those pieces right back.'
In the kitchens of Emma's Torch, migrants run nearly the whole operation. And for his part, Diallo isn't giving up on the brownies.
He pours out a fresh round of batter and slides the tray into the oven.
After one of his releases from a Guinean prison, his friends and family begged him to stop protesting. 'But I was not fighting for myself,' Diallo says with conviction. 'I was fighting for the future, for the new generation.'
Now, he longs for those evenings back home, baking interrupted by soccer chatter and the giggles of his mother and sisters. He yearns to walk the streets of his hometown, to hear his native language, to feel his land beneath his feet again.
Above all, he dreams of a homeland where freedom is not just a hope.
Diallo also wishes for freedom for himself in the United States, even amid his concerns the asylum process – already long and uncertain – will be more challenging under Trump's governance.
'If you don't have freedom, to me, dying is better,' he says.
In this New York kitchen, he can taste it.
The oven timer dings. The scent of brownies fill the air.
'And thank God,' he says, 'I am finally free.'