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How TMK Found Its Path

What started as two friends catering office lunches and private events around New York City quickly evolved into something much bigger. This is the story of how we went from migrating from kitchen to kitchen to feeding the city as The Migrant Kitchen.

Humble Beginnings

In October 2019, two friends—Nas and Dan—teamed up to create The Migrant Kitchen: a long-dreamt-of catering business that focused on providing meaningful opportunities for immigrants to showcase the cuisines and cultures of their home countries while earning more than just minimum wage. In doing so, they had absolutely no idea (like any of us) that COVID-19 was about to turn the world upside down…

Once COVID hit NYC, Nas, and Dan quickly pivoted from their standard catering operation to serving food to frontline healthcare workers fighting against the pandemic. As COVID continued to change the way we lived and ate, our operation quickly grew into something much greater. Within the next few months, TMK was serving over 60,000 meals a week to food insecure communities across NYC.

"What started out on March 13 with 100 meals to hospitals and shelters quickly grew to 6,000 meals a day to 13 hospitals, four food pantries, three homeless shelters, three senior centers, public housing complexes in the Bronx and Queens, a Queens mosque and dozens of Covid-19-infected families."

-Richard Morgan, The Washington Post

There's No Stopping Here

Now we're getting back to our original mission - this time we're sharing everything we're cooking with the entire city.

Our locations in the Upper East Side, the Upper West Side, and Central Park serve American food inspired by immigrants. We aim to prove that shawarma and carnitas are just as American as hamburgers and apple pie.