Inside a Northeast D.C. storefront, a handful of immigrants sat at a table listening to someone go through all the ins and outs of American restaurant standards. From what you wear to how you groom yourself, all the way to the importance of clean uniforms and aprons, they heard everything that would be expected of them.
A few feet away, inside what is on the small side in terms of restaurant kitchens, a few more listened to instructions from a chef, looked over recipes and started preparations for lunch.
If it sounds a little bit like a classroom and a little bit like an actual restaurant. But it’s actually a nonprofit enterprise that’s both. It’s what makes Emma’s Torch such a unique venture.
The nonprofit that is hugely popular in New York City has opened its first D.C.-area location on Rhode Island Avenue NE, just south of the intersection with South Dakota Avenue.
Emma’s Torch gets its name from the poem written by Emma Lazarus inscribed on the Statue of Liberty, which says, “Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free.”
It offers a two-month program that prepares refugees, those here on asylum and victims of human trafficking to work in the culinary arts. Even if they don’t stay in the restaurant business, the aim is to have the skills they learn translate over into whatever they want to do.
“More than anything, they’re new Americans trying to build a new life here,” said Kerry Brodie, the executive director and founder of Emma’s Torch. “What we find really exciting is that our customers, our guests, get to be a part of their story, get to be a part of those people who are welcoming them here.”
The first month of the program is about learning the very basics of working in a restaurant, from the rules to the math to the interview skills, and everything in between. During their second month, they get to work inside the kitchen, preparing food for customers. And with Emma’s Torch now selling tickets for its weekend brunch club, that’s where you come in.
“It’s new American (cuisine) prepared by new Americans,” said Brodie. “It’s a lot of those classics that we know and love — waffles and eggs and other things that are familiar — but with a little bit of a global twist. So, shakshouka instead of your classic scrambled eggs, and other spices and dynamics that really played to the fact that our students come from all over the world.”
She estimates that citizens from about 25% of the world’s countries have trained inside an Emma’s Torch. The program in D.C. features students from places, such as Ukraine, Afghanistan, Ethiopia and Haiti.
For now, Emma’s Torch is only open on weekends but hopes to be open even more often in the coming months.
Brodie first began this program seven years ago in New York City, but being from Montgomery County, Maryland, she’s happy to have expanded into the D.C. region.
“We always say that people will come in once for the mission, but they’ll stay for the food,” she said.
To dine there, you need to sign up for their “brunch club” online and buy your tickets ahead of time. Eventually, she hopes to turn the Emma’s Torch location in D.C. into a full-time restaurant, similar to the one in New York, and thus, offer even more opportunities and embrace Emma Lazarus’ words that greeted immigrants sailing into Ellis Island.
“That poem has epitomized what it means to be American and what it means to be a light in the world for over 140 years,” said Brodie. “And we really want to live up to that legacy, to that idea that we can welcome in the stranger. That is what is essential to what it means to be an American.”
