Three years ago, on New Year’s Eve in Havana, artist José Parlá introduced Craig Dykers, a founding partner of the architecture firm Snøhetta, to Jon Gray, one-third of the Bronx-based chef troupe Ghetto Gastro. The two began what would become an ongoing conversation about the intersection of food and the built environment, a dialogue now manifest in the real world at the newly completed Burnside, an intimate, flexible café and culinary event space for the Tokyo creative agency En One. (Health restrictions have prevented Burnside from kicking off its programming schedule, which will be solidified once the pandemic lockdown lifts.)

Ghetto Gastro is a food collective that uses cooking to activate conversations around food inequality, race, and class. The group served as both muse and close collaborator on the project’s design, which was envisioned by a Snøhetta team led by Anne-Rachel Schiffmann and Mzwakhe Ndlovu, with help from the local firm Kooo Architects. We spoke with Dykers about how the designers expressed the ethos of Ghetto Gastro, which will be among the first groups to hold court in the Burnside kitchen, once it’s safe to do so.