Black millennials sporting natural hair sipped mimosas in the name of a good cause on a Sunday afternoon. They gathered at Streets, a Williamsburg restaurant, to enjoy a music, poetry and a bottomless soul food brunch.
At noon, the brunch got off to a slow start. But attendees filed in around 5 p.m. and stayed to enjoy the atmosphere until 10 p.m. As people ate, local DJs spun the top 40 tracks as well as R&B and Caribbean hits.
With a love for brunching in Manhattan, Danielle Ligonde, 39, organized the Brunch & Soul event shortly after her move to Brooklyn from Long Island. Her first soul food event, Brunch & Soul was a part of a series of day parties and events scattered throughout the food-friendly borough.
Ligonde, a full-time marketing manager and part-time event planner, describes her events as parties in “unexpected venues” with an “exquisite attention to every detail.” This time she wanted more than to showcase her signature style; she wanted to celebrate self-empowerment.
Partnering with the Urban Peace Squad, a nonprofit encouraging mental wellness and self-healing to underserved communities, Ligonde created a brunch menu that did justice to southern cooking. Chef Kingsley John helped, but not without adding his own Caribbean twist.
With items like jerk pork hash and rum punch on the menu, John let his heritage shine. The $40 three-course meal began with a mixed green salad and followed with a choice of chicken and waffles, French toast with garam masala, jerk hash or Caribbean shrimp and grits. The meal was topped with dessert and a choice between a bellini, mimosa, and rum punch.
“It was ingrained in me from the way I was brought up,” he said of his love for food. John was inspired by his grandmother who owned a bakery and ran the plantation he grew up on in St. Lucia, an island just shy of 400 miles off the coast of Venezuela.
John recounts watching his grandmother as she cleaned the animals and “danced on the cacao,” a common Caribbean practice used to polish the beans into an earth brown sheen. “It was just part of us growing up,” he added. These experiences pointed John toward his passion: cooking the food he’s always known.
Having immigrated to the United States over 30 years ago, John noted that his was not the traditional path into the culinary industry. He moved quickly up the ranks from dishwasher to busboy, then to runner and garde manger. “From there, it’s history,” he explained.
Knowing the event was for a good cause that would give back to the community, John wanted to do his part.
Towards the end of the event, following readings by two poets, representatives from Urban Peace Squad spoke about their mission and role of their organization in the community.
While the event boasted lively music and community building, the aroma of fresh fried chicken and grits floated out of the restaurant and into the streets of Williamsburg, enticing people to step inside and try something new.