Cooking up community and creativity
Cooking Crew member Fenelys (front) plates sticky chicken under the supervision of Chef Bean (rear) Running a restaurant isn’t easy. AS220 has offered a variety of food options since the ‘90s, from a cafe counter to a sit-down eatery. In alignment with the values of our youth program, our kitchen also offered entry-level jobs and training to young people. Even in the best of times, it was hard to make the numbers work – but the pandemic and changes to downtown office occupancy and foot traffic were the last straws. After a period of dormancy, we’re now remixing and rethinking what our kitchen can be. The kitchen at AS220 has been cooking at full throttle since July, not as a commercial business, but as an educational space. The Cooking Crew, a group of young people taking part in AS220’s Summer Jobs program, are being introduced to the culinary arts under the watchful ey