This Organization Is Teaching Incarcerated People How to Cook, Including a Five-Course Meal for the Public

For some people, a job is a job. For chef Brandon Chrostowski, it’s a way of life. He grew up with a lot of energy and not a lot of direction, going in and out of jail — not prison — as a teenager. But all that changed once he found the right restaurant. 

Chrostowski started working in a kitchen in his late teenage years, meeting a chef who took him under his wing. Once his mentor had taught him everything he could, the young man went to the Culinary Institute of America on scholarship; that’s where he realized he wanted to be the best.

After graduating he went to apprentice under revered chef, restaurateur, and cookbook author Charlie Trotter (“the best in the country” at the time, as Chrostowski notes), then going on to work in two- and three-Michelin-starred restaurants in Paris, before returning to the United States to do a stint at Le Cirque in New York City. Then he got a call that changed the course of his career.

Chrostowski was told that another kid he came up with through kitchens in Detroit — learning to emulsify mayonnaise and julienne together for the first time — had been stabbed to death in their home city. He realized that while he was cooking with copper pots and luxury ovens in a high-end restaurant, one of his friends and former colleagues hadn’t made it that far. From there the chef knew he wanted to help prevent people from going down dark pathways, and made up his mind: “I’m going to build a restaurant that’s a school.”

Today, Brandon Chrowstoski is a 2023 James Beard finalist for outstanding restaurateur and the founder and CEO of Edwins Leadership and Restaurant Institute, a nonprofit organization that’s working to teach incarcerated and formerly incarcerated people the requisite skills to work in professional kitchens, and support them as they start their culinary careers after schooling.

The organization has become an ethos for Chrowstoski, and the chef emphasizes that “Edwins is also a declaration. Education wins. And since 2004, I’ve been trying to do this thing that could impact the world, right? Change the face of re-entry. So it’s not like a nine to five — you know, it is a way of life.”

One of the driving forces behind Edwins’ mission is to humanize people who have been incarcerated; both making them feel human again and showing to the outside world that they are regular, real people who may have been dealt some difficult cards in life. To demonstrate the latter, on August 15th at Ohio’s Grafton Correctional Institution — the site of Edwins’ first of two in-person training programs for people currently in prison — incarcerated men cooked and served a five-course meal for the public.

Edwins officially started in 2011 with Culinary Club Classes at the Grafton Correctional Institution, where men learn all of the skills needed to work in a professional kitchen —from proper knife handling to safety and sanitation certifications.

In addition to restaurant-focused classes, the program at Grafton also started a garden in 2014. Chrostowski notes that the garden was difficult to get right at first — one of the early locations was too low down and kept flooding — but about six years ago they found the perfect spot on the grounds for the small farm, and now crops like tomatoes, corn, and peppers are thriving. 

The men are deeply invested in the work, with Chrostowski pointing out that “it shows, it really shows inside the product. It’s almost like biodynamic farming. Everyone’s so closely in tune with the product that you can’t make mistakes….. Our guys, they know more about the garden than we do. They know what works out there. We brought garden volunteers, like master gardeners, in at the beginning and then they just kinda rolled with it from there.”

The menu at Grafton’s recent five-course dinner showcases both the fine dining techniques and proficiency in gardening that the men are learning. The meal, which started with a roasted beet salad with goat cheese and greens, finished with a corn cake topped with blueberry compote and Chantilly cream. (Chrostowski noted that the corn they grew this year was particularly sweet, which lent itself to a dessert.) Each dish was paired with a mocktail as well, like the roasted lamb with tomato Provençal, served with a corn “liquor” drink that included smoked corn-infused cherry syrup, allspice, clove, and cherry. 

There are currently about 20 men enrolled in the class at Grafton, and ten of them helped prepare the dinner while ten did front-of-house service. The gardeners who grew the produce were invited to enjoy the meal, and the rest of the seats were made available to the public. 

Overall, Chrostowski says they were able to bring the dinner together fairly quickly. One day he and a student were in the garden, tasting what the chef and founder describes as “the sweetest yellow beet [he] ever had,” and they knew they had to showcase it somehow. Their initial idea was to enter the produce in a county fair, but then they thought that a public meal would highlight its flavor more — six weeks later they were serving the courses.

A day in the Grafton course typically starts with a lecture, followed by hands-on learning, which Chrostowski emphasizes is the most important lesson. After that, he says, “We cook and we eat, we all eat. That’s probably the sweetest part, that’s what keeps our antennas up. People love to eat what we cook, and they learn how to make roasted whole salmon or béarnaise sauce.”

For many men, learning to work in a restaurant gives them a clearer path to re-entering public society. Speaking to how the program can help him once he is released from prison in a little more than two years, student Efrain Paniagua-Villa, remarks that it will allow him to “explore the new opportunities that they have available for us, because [Edwins] has an abundance of things they can help us out with. They got the restaurant out there, they got the butchery, they got different locations that they can set us up in, and housing too.”

The Edwins curriculum teaches men practical skills that they can use to get a job once they’re released from prison, but it also gives them intangible benefits, like the opportunities to find joy in learning and build relationships with others. One of the students at Grafton, Greg Sigelmier, says “It’s a community in here. The more that we come together and make a dish, the more that we get to know about each other and the food.”

Since starting classes at Grafton, Edwins has grown exponentially. It now includes a campus in Cleveland, Ohio, that trains formerly imprisoned people to work in the culinary arts, digital programs that provide education on professional cooking at nearly 700 prisons across the country, and a self-named, fine-dining French restaurant that opened in Cleveland in 2013.

The Edwins school and campus in Cleveland is even more robust. Its curriculum involves six months of classes and training, and provides students with amenities and services including housing, child care, health insurance, a fitness center, and help setting up bank accounts. Not only is tuition free, but students also receive a stipend. 

The institute also owns a fine dining restaurant, bakery, and butcher shop in Cleveland, which students will spend time rotating between during their six-month enrollment. After they graduate, Edwins doesn’t stop supplying support; instead, the institute will help graduates find employment opportunities. If there are spots available at one of its own three establishments, former students can certainly work there, but considering that Edwins has roughly 700 graduates they can’t employ everyone. (Chrostowski estimates that about 70% of the employees at the butcher, bakery, and restaurant are from the Edwins school).

Even after finding a job, individuals can always rely on Edwins for career advice and a home base. This longer-term support system is important to the founding chef and CEO. He emphasizes that Edwins is about building a positive and constructive culture, saying “It’s not just one and done. Oh, a job. Check the box. It’s not like that. It’s a way of life and we’re family forever.”

Chrostowski and Edwins aren’t the only ones working to set formerly incarcerated people up for success in the food industry. The New York-based Center for Community Alternatives focuses — as its name suggests — on community-focused alternatives to incarceration and aids formerly incarcerated people in reintegrating after their release. Part of those efforts include employment coaching, such as a program that teaches individuals all of the essentials to be a line cook.

Minimum custody individuals at the Turney Center Industrial Complex (TCIX) — a prison located about an hour outside of Nashville, Tennessee, which focuses on rehabilitation through work training and education  — can participate in the farming operations technology initiative. In the program, they learn the ins and outs of modern farming and its equipment, and as part of the 16-month course, participants also work at the Turney Center’s farm, growing the crops themselves. The produce they yield will eventually be distributed to other prisons in the state, so more incarcerated people can enjoy the fresh fruits and vegetables.

The purpose of all of these programs is to treat incarcerated people as, well, people. Even for men who may be incarcerated for life, learning to garden and cook still holds meaning and gives them productive ways to spend their time in prison, beyond the simple joy that everyone gets from eating something delicious. For Chrostowski it’s all about respecting people’s humanity. After all, the chef says, “Having someone feel like they’re human again is the biggest thing that we can deliver on through food.”