GradyWood is the supper series I co-direct with chef Jason Wood. We have staged several large dinners, most recently a benefit for the Queens Country Farm Museum which was held in a historic 18th-Century farmhouse. We featured pasture-raised rabbit from farmer Julie Engel, in addition to many delicious things grown on site by farmer Michael Grady Robinson. Photographer Este Lewis, who has been documenting our dinners, created some gorgeous photographs.
If you would like to be notified of any upcoming GradyWood events, please join my mailing list, above.
Food writer Leslie Pariseau wrote this article about one of our events last year:
Underground, but conscious: GradyWood supper club
by Leslie Pariseau
On a Sunday night in a darkened industrial building in Brooklyn, a small gathering of strangers clinked glasses, broke bread and ate cheese. A cluster of tables was set simply with mismatched silver and lighted candles, and every so often a bevy of servers would emerge with steaming bowls and fresh bottles of wine. A shaggy, blond little boy bounced between his parents and guests’ laps as the conversation rose and lulled over the course of three hours. GradyWood was making supper.
“We'd been talking for a while about how to stage a communal dining experience that would also activate a broader dialog about food and city life”, says Sara, the Grady of GradyWood supper club. Part-local food celebration and part-underground dining experience, GradyWood is a collaboration between Sara, a media producer and her beau, chef Jason Wood. Their five dinners have taken place in a large, open space pieced together with found objects and rustic furniture, which doubles as a green entrepreneurial office during the day. “We wanted to reproduce the feeling of a cozy dinner party at a larger scale— that feeling of community that you get from a long and intimate meal, but don't usually find in a restaurant”. Wishing to spark deeper engagement with food among guests, Sara and Jason began cooking suppers contextualized with a cross-section of the local food community: “There's something about sitting and consuming a multi-course meal, whether it's with strangers or friends, that is deeply nourishing, and gets people thinking creatively and collaboratively”.
That night many had come for the pleasure of meeting Essex Street Market cheese monger, Anne Saxelby, who led a post-dinner tasting; others had ventured out by word of mouth and were mingling with the building’s long-time owner or admiring the eclectic scattering of desks around the space. Jason was in the open kitchen stirring pots, glass of wine in hand as guests traipsed through sniffing the air with anticipation.
Underground supper clubs have trickled beneath the surface of dining culture for some time, toeing the line between a shared-cost dinner party and a home-catered affair. GradyWood has jumped ahead of the trend treating dinners as an opportunity to educate and support the surrounding community. “In all seriousness, I think we like to consider GradyWood as having one foot in the underground supper club world, and one foot in the above-ground world of food activism,” Jason chimes in. They credit their origins to their “big brother” forerunner Coach Peaches, an occasional restaurant, which also ran out of Brooklyn.
The guests were fed well. Sara and Jason paid tribute that evening to some of their favorite local suppliers incorporating their ingredients into the rustic autumn menu. Tangy apple soup preceded a hearty plate of braised collard greens, butternut squash galette, and turkey sausage topped off with crunchy roasted parsnip slices. SchoolHouse Kitchen’s chutney and mustards were paired with Hot Bread Kitchen’s focaccia, while Saxelby lauded the “stinky and problematic” Hooligan cheese from Cato Corner Farm. Stuffed with cheese and sherry, the diners stretched their limbs and settled back into their chairs for a late-night sampling of Brooklyn-made truffles. As they sipped the dregs of their wine glasses, Sara could be heard in the kitchen wrapping extra galette and parsnips, “Who wants to take home leftovers?” Most everyone was sent home with a package of leftovers and a very full belly.
All photos by Este Lewis.