Not Really Strangers

How Emma’s Torch is Building Community, One Kitchen at a Time

• USA for UNHCR • Season 2 • Episode 8

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0:00 | 41:13

Recorded on location at Emma's Torch — a restaurant and culinary training center for refugees in Brooklyn, NY with locations in the Washington, DC metropolitan area — Suzanne sits down with staff members Kira O'Brien and Alexander Harris and alumnus Giorgi Tabukashvili to explore what home, belonging, and hospitality mean when displacement is part of the story. Now in its tenth year, Emma's Torch runs an 11-week, fully paid culinary training program for refugees, asylees, and other newcomers. Giorgi shares how the program helped him find community when he was new to the U.S after fleeing his home country of Georgia, and how it propelled him in his career as a restaurant manager. Kira, a lifelong New Yorker, shares how living in New York City on 9/11 inspired her to advocate for refugee communities, and “Chef Alex,” a self-described “Jersey Boy” who leads the Emma’s Torch culinary training program in New York, offers a window into how the organization prepares its students to thrive in the restaurant business. At the end of the episode, Kira gives all of us the same “extra credit assignment” she gives her graduate students: to dine at a local restaurant owned by a family whose ethnic background is different from our own. Because, as this entire conversation illustrates, sharing a meal is how strangers become friends.


Topics Discussed: 

  • What home means when it is no longer a place — across languages and experiences of displacement
  • Emma's Torch's mission: refugee empowerment through culinary education
  • The 11-week program model: classroom training, the EEE framework, and live cafe operations
  • Culinary skills as a pathway to long-term employment including recipe literacy, language acquisition, and consistency under pressure
  • Job retention and wage growth as program success metrics, not just placement
  • Giorgi's journey: leaving Georgia, crossing through Mexico, arriving with no English or network
  • How Emma's Torch graduates become mentors and trainers for the next cohort
  • The hospitality industry as a vehicle for welcoming new Americans
  • "We are strangers even to ourselves" — on self-discovery and belonging


Episode Resources:


Resources:

SPEAKER_01

Hi, I'm Suzanne Ahlers, and this is Not Really Strangers, the podcast where we explore just how connected the refugee experience is to our everyday lives and the social issues that matter most to us. Thanks for joining us for another conversation with a brand new guest here to share the story of how they came to realize that their story and the refugee story were intertwined. By the end of this episode, you'll see that in this global community, the distance between us is often much shorter than we think. Let's dive in.

SPEAKER_02

Welcome to this episode of Not Really Strangers. For our listeners, we went, we want to paint the scene for you. We are in Carroll Gardens, Brooklyn. We are at Emma's Torch. Cafe is downstairs. We're in the corporate offices upstairs, sitting around a beautiful shared table. And I'm here with Kira, with Alex, and with Georgie. And you're going to hear a little bit of their stories, and we'll put lots of show notes so that you find all the ways to support the work that they're doing after listening to this incredible episode. So we will kick off. And Kira, I'm going to start with you with a kind of an easy question.

SPEAKER_00

Where do you consider home? Ooh, um, okay, so it's an easy question theoretically, but I also think it's pretty complex. Um, I am born and raised in Brooklyn. I actually grew up about a 15-minute walk from this location right now, and my grandma still lives there with her little dog. And I uh, you know, so this neighborhood, Brooklyn itself has been my home for so long. I live in Queens. Um, but I think for me, what I consider home, especially as a queer woman in 2026, is in the relationships that I have cultivated with other people. Um, so in many ways, for me, home is any table where there's a seat made for me. Um and yeah, I think that's a big part of why I do the work I do. Yeah. Alex?

SPEAKER_04

I'm a Jersey boy. So uh yeah, I'll always feel at home here on the East Coast, and then specifically in New Jersey. I am I am made of corn, tomato, cucumber, and onions in the summertime. I love, you know, my my mind is filled with, you know, going down the shore in the summertime, you know, with my friends. Uh and uh talking about food, um, and specifically American food helps bring the jersey in me oftentimes. Uh so yeah, it's it's all about, you know, food.

SPEAKER_02

It's yeah, yeah. Yeah. I love the sort of like the rooting, and also hear what you said just about how where there is space for you and where you are sort of safe in expressing kind of who you are and what motivates you is home. Georgie, what about you? Where do you consider home? What does home mean to you?

SPEAKER_03

And lately I'm really a bit lost about this question. Where my roots are from, and when I was born and raised, and where everything is familiar and have friends and all my memories. Now I'm here in New York. I'm rebuilding my future, so uh and honestly, it's not like home is not more like a place anymore for me. It's for like a feelings, it's like people, community, and there's a space where you feel like the uh safe and you can do what you love.

SPEAKER_02

Yeah, yeah. So Georgie took it in a direction um that I want to go back, and and Alex and Kira have you say a little bit more. So not just a place, but a feeling or a concept. You know, what is what does home mean in the places where you operate, work-wise, or is it this feeling of safety? Is it this feeling of sort of shared food and memory and legacy? Georgie has a story of displacement, and so automatically almost sort of versions of home that are multiple. But what about for both of you? What does home mean from that more almost like philosophical or abstract perspective?

SPEAKER_04

Definitely when you think about the space that we've created here in Emma's Torch and bringing people in and this being our new community together, uh, you hit the nail on the head with something like a concept of a place where you can be safe. Um, and that's kind of our first and foremost in my mind. When you're home, uh you're safe. You're safe to be, you know, with uh people that you know and or want to get to know and be comfortable and you know, have great conversation and work on yourself, have fun. Um yeah.

SPEAKER_02

Yeah, when I walked up to the cafe just earlier today, Nick and I took the subway out. Again, for listeners who can't see the beautiful space that we're in, you approach this cafe and it's got this beautiful sort of you know, art blackboard outside, big windows, every seat taken, I think when we came in, sort of a range of ages, people having coffee, people having, you know, sort of a late breakfast or early lunch. You all like know everybody who comes through the doors, like everybody's saying hi to everybody. Everybody's giving, you know, Georgie got his like special espresso, like a real place of belonging, um, is what I saw. Kira, what's your what's your home version there?

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, I think, you know, Alex was talking about how we created this, and I I want to take it almost like a step further. It's it's how you co-create, right? It's this active process of us all doing it together. Um, to me, for home isn't uh a passive act. It's not a place, and it's something that we are engaging in creating together at all times because we constantly have to be thinking about how are we growing? How are we supporting each other? You know, and I think it's when we think about home as too static of a place, we attach a lot of nostalgia and we stop thinking of it as something that can be a really empowering place to feel like we can jump from. You know, home is a place where, you know, I go, I go home at the end of the day, I see my partner and my cats, and I feel safe. And through that safety, I can energize and prepare myself to go out and do more. Yeah. I think I feel my most restored when, you know, all my friends come over and we have what's called family dinner at my house, right? From there, I feel like I can go out and do anything. Yeah. And so for me, home is this place from which we can all, you know, sink our feet in and feel really rooted, but also feel really supported in going out and really fulfilling, you know, our dreams, really feeling that sense of self-actualization. Um, yeah. And so I think for me, it's important that we recognize that there's multiple things.

SPEAKER_02

Yeah, yeah. And that I love the idea of going back home in order to be prepared for the work that's ahead, the moment of recharge, the restoration with the partner, with cats, with sort of family dinners in order to be renewed, to do it all again tomorrow, in pursuit of the mission here, which is actually my next question. So, Kira, back to you and Alex and Georgia, you know I'm coming next. Um, talk a little bit about Emma's Torch. Like give the listener why it was created, give us a little bit of the sort of history and this beautiful space here in Brooklyn.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, for sure. Um, so Emma's Torch, um, our mission is refugee empowerment through culinary education. Yes. Um, we are in our 10th year, which is pretty amazing. It's pretty amazing for in general, but thinking about the last 10 years and of what we've seen as a country, you know, I'm incredibly proud of the work that we've been able to do. Um, our model is an 11-week fully paid culinary training program for our newest neighbors. So, students start with us and do four and a half weeks of classroom training that is 60% culinary skills and 40% what we call EEE Equity, employability, and empowerment skills. So, really thinking about what it means to create a classroom that is trauma-informed, scaffolded for English language learners, and recognizing the fact that our students, like Georgie, have had amazing professional experiences in their home countries. We are not erasing that. We are trying to build upon it and help them harness it in such a way that they will then thrive in the United States. So after four and a half weeks in classroom, they are then moving into our operations, which are cafes and a commissary kitchen in Brooklyn, as well as in the DC metro area, where they learn on the line. And so what that really means is they are getting the what I call getting the reps in. Um, the practical application of what we've learned in the classroom comes alive when you've got tickets stacking up and you know, a kid at table four is crying and there's a bachelorette party, there, you know, one too many mimosas in and there's free change, right? That's when your use of things like coping skills or, you know, all the skills that not just get you a job, but keep you gainfully employed. That's really what we're honing in on. Um, and then once our students graduate, we support them uh in job placement and then for the next two years to ensure not only that they are getting a job, but that they're staying there and that their wages are increasing over time.

SPEAKER_02

Yeah, there's there's two pieces there that we'll that we can explore more. One is like it's not just important to end the storage that you're getting a job, but that you're staying in the job. Um, and that, you know, kind of like that that longevity in a role, it feels so important to me. And that you're also balancing, and Alex, this is your question right around the culinary education program. You're learning how to work in a kitchen, right? You're learning food service, you're learning hospitality. But if that's not matched with feelings of management, of self-coping, of regulation in a very intense kitchen environment, you won't stay in that job. So, Alex, talk a little bit about um what the culinary education program means at sort of maybe a more granular level, especially for listeners who might be in this industry themselves or might be foodies like me, who just like love the tour of the kitchen that I got downstairs. And Alex, I show I told you that I didn't know that the menu was built in such an intentional way so that your students are getting exposure to maybe a wider diversity of sort of food prep than they might in a cafe like this, because you are intentionally trying to prepare them for a big, busy kitchen outside of the MS Torch kind of universe. So tell us a little bit about the culinary ed piece.

SPEAKER_04

Yeah, when it comes to culinary education uh here in MS Torch, a lot of the thought around what we're going to do starts with a really important question from uh that we have to ask ourselves. We're the subject matter experts, right? We're the chefs, we're the managers, we're the educators, we're the Americans. So given all of that lived experience that we have in this industry and in this country, we've got to do it all over again from you know a period of starting at zero. How would we do it? Yeah. Right. And so uh what we're thinking about around uh culinary education and preparing somebody for a job is the technical skills and some of the quote unquote uh intangible things that going that go along with getting and keeping a job. So we really want to introduce our students to this idea of the hospitality industry and what that means, and then slowly build uh concepts from there. So we're gonna get into the technical part for our students and uh being non-native speakers of English, right? Well, language acquisition, English language learning, vocabulary, these are really, really important things uh that we're gonna hit hard right from the beginning.

SPEAKER_05

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04

Um, and then what can be a little cultural piece that you might not think about too much um before having this experience is uh numbers, how they relate to measurements, and then reading a recipe is something that people oftentimes in this country take for granted a little bit. And you know, in in many other places, it's a little bit more of an oral thing. And here is a paper in hand. I have to put these things together in this way and then reproduce this thing. Right. Um, so reading that recipe and then that next part that I said, reproducing something. This is a really important uh skill that is critical uh when you think about working in the hospitality industry, being consistent as a part of a business. It's your job to make sure guest A has the same experience as guest B and guest C. And then that's kind of the last piece. Um making sure that our students and graduates understand that they are learning a thing and that that is very personal to them. Um, but that thing that they're learning is help them provide a great experience when they are in that other business or starting that business of their own. So really understanding how you take the language to the technical skill, to the presentation of those things to the guest.

SPEAKER_02

Yeah, I love it. I love it. And I mean, you're right. I would not have thought of the recipe piece of really having to learn how to read and follow a recipe and to deliver a consistent product, not just fat for customer A, B, and C, but for customer A, who comes back like week after week for your crispy chicken sandwich. Like he or she wants the same crispy chicken sandwich. And how do you how do you reproduce consistency to build the loyalty to the brand? Um, so Georgie, tell us a little bit about your story, which of course is interwoven with what Kira and Alex had just shared. And I'd love to hear a little bit of your journey to the United States. And I love the story of how you found Emma's Torch or how Immus Torch luckily found you, and a little bit of what your current work is. Because when you walked in the cafe downstairs, we're talking celebrity siding. Like there wasn't a person in the kitchen who didn't come out and embrace you. So your legacy is very apparent. I'd love to hear your story.

SPEAKER_03

So uh I came into the into United States, maybe 2022, end of the 2022, and I left Georgia because I was a politically active and I was like a co-founder of the Pro-Western Libertarian Party, non-parliamentary, but it was really nice try. So, and we were forced to leave well like in almost like in 12 days with no plans. So, and we came here, came throughout the lake, like we tried to come in country with like visas and things like, but unfortunately, if you are not in Georgia and you are out of Georgia, you have to go to Georgia to get the visa. So, none of other countries giving you the US visa unless if you are in Georgia. So we could not take that. So we took the really long way. We came from Mexico and we go we went through the long process, and we came here, no language at all, no, we don't you don't know the culture, you don't have the confidence, you are lost. So we had like a me, one, my wife, and three children, and it was quite hard, but was challenging as well, but was really interesting the process. So, and I was trying to find the job in the culinary industry because I really last lately in my country, like the last two years, I was doing the same. I was like in the hospitality industry, I changed my my career fully. So, and I started like trying to find some job, and I found accidentally the page where I was looking for the like the government page, where it was like a lot of projects, and there was a like a culinary project from MSourge, and it was like you get paid, you are prepared for the culinary industry. So I I applied and I had an interview with the Chef Alex and Sierra, so and I got here. So the thing is from Emma Sorge, besides that, what the Chef Alex mentioned, the thing is uh when I started here, so people around you who sitting, they say you are the same people as you, like if they have the same problems, same story, same same feelings, and you're standing like uh like get some empathy, you know. Not not only that that people, you you're you're reflecting yourself and understanding where you are, what you're doing, and what you want. So after the master, I got I mean, I was really better person where before I started, because like that's not like besides that you have the like experience, you have like a your story. In this country, it's really hard to restart from the scratch. Because like, especially if you had already went, if you already went through all the real life to start from the beginning, it's really hard. So after that, I got my first job with help to the M Storage and the restaurant Blue Smoke, and I started as a like the support of the store. And that time, that was really interesting time because I I couldn't think much, so I was mostly listening to people. Yeah, yeah. And in that moment I realized that if that skill just to listen, I was really missing a long time. Interesting. So then I I get promoted as a manager with the daily provisions. Um now I'm like in the at the daily provisions in the same neighborhood in the Cobell Hill. And I have some like uh alumni from the mastoch in the kitchen. Oh awesome. Yes, and like that's that's that's a community. That's what I was saying that the home. Now now I feel that I'm the I'm the part of this community. And this people, this community accept me and get me and make me better.

SPEAKER_02

And love you and admire you for what you've done. I mean, I hope the listener heard there was sort of a couple, you know, leaving your home country in sort of 12 days, barely two weeks, just to sort of sit with that, right? Imagine look around your home right now, wherever you're listening to this podcast, and could you could you do it? Could you just sort of pick up in two weeks' time and go on a journey that you don't even know where it's gonna take you? You know, you know it's gonna take you someplace you hope better and safer than where you are, but it's a journey that for you sounds like it stretched over months. And then you end up in the United States and like what a happenstance to find this sort of advertisement for Emma's Torch and to say this is an industry that I've been in, I have something here. And, you know, to fast forward, um, just the contribution you're making to this industry and to your community and to Emma's Torch alumni, all of it. I mean, it's a really um yeah, it's a beautiful story. And I love the act of listening piece.

SPEAKER_04

If I could hit on one thing, you said in your introduction of Georgie Emma's Torch being lucky to find Georgie. Yeah. Um, and uh you are absolutely 100% hit the nail on the head with that. There's a in the story that Georgie mentioned, and I told you not to be modest, um, there's a hard work element in there um that is a little bit glossed over. Um, Georgie really worked well with us to quote unquote luck his way into this job, but at that first job, you did get a promotion fairly quickly. Yeah. Yeah. Um before during your time at Emma's Torch, we had a conversation about your goals. I remember that, yeah. And it was a very aggressive goal. And despite your thoughts of restarting and um your language level, you know, in English, you said, in X amount of time, I'm gonna work my way through and I'm going to become a manager. And one of the really special parts of working at MS Torch is when you have a graduate and a little bit of time goes by, and then you get that message. Yeah. And I got that message from you, Georgie, saying, Hey, remember that conversation that we had? It just happened. I'm a manager now at Daily Provisions, and like the smile of the Song Kira's face, and on mine right now, you couldn't smack it off my face because I was so genuinely excited and happy for that progression that we, you know, been fortunate enough to have with you together. Um, see you, you know.

SPEAKER_00

I'm not just happy for you in a lot of ways. Like I think about all the other MS Torch students that you are now training in the same way that you were saying how you know you were feeling lost and and looking for that community. You now create that at Daily Provisions and not just, and again, we're both gonna call you out for being modest. So Georgie also was sending. Down to DC to open to do the front of house training for their new opening. So it's not it's not just that you're doing the work for you. You are now creating pathways and somebody for you know, somebody to look up to for other people that are new in this country. Others, almost towards graduates, look up to you. For us, that is that's the goal. Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_02

Georgie, what does it feel like to hear?

SPEAKER_03

Sometimes I don't believe that they're talking about me.

SPEAKER_02

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03

But thing is, thank you, Chef Alex. The thing is that when we are hiring now people, and mostly I have the I I'm doing the interviews, like what I get from MS George. So you are I'm not looking for the hands, how they are doing things. You can look in the eyes and understand. If he wants work, if he wants to do the things, you can hire.

SPEAKER_02

Yes. Yeah. And that, I mean, that's the there seems to be like a real values sort of thread here, right? That you can learn life skills and you can figure out how to make a nice broccoli tart, but it's what's in the eyes and the heart that is driving you. And I'm just thinking about, I wasn't at that conversation, obviously, between Alex and Georgie, but this idea that like you can speak it into existence. I want this for myself, I want this for my family. And I don't know how I'm gonna get across the barriers that are in front of me, but I'm going to. And what an incredible support network you all have built, Harry, and this torch. So, Kira, I get to now have a little storytelling from you. I don't understand that you have a story yourself of forced displacement, but you've dedicated your entire almost professional career to working with refugees and asylumes, thinking about displacement and so many resettlement, I think was an earlier part. So tell the listener a little bit, like what sparked your passion, what drew you in? Like, what is it about this community that so um energizes you?

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, it's a it's a great question. Um, I think part of it is just being a consummate New Yorker, you know, and my pride in this city and that I think that so much of the city, I know that so much of the city is created and only here because of the incredible immigrants that have built it. Um for me personally, I think that that moment that really inspired this for me was actually when I was a freshman in high school. Um, I went to a very small Quaker school that is about 15 blocks that way. Okay. Um, and I was in my freshman dance class, and the uh fire alarm went off. And we went outside and we were told that we had to go to our meeting house. And it wasn't until an upperclassman pointed up that I saw that this guy had been scorched. So it was 9-11 and we were being evacuated. Um, and very quickly the uh the remnants of the buildings were like blowing. I mean, we were right on the water. So um and that obviously was a huge turning point in everybody who lived here, our whole country. But the piece of that experience that I think struck me the most was what happened to my commute back and forth to school. Um, because I would walk down Atlantic Avenue, which if you are not a New Yorker or a Brooklynite, it is a very um, it's a historically very Arab neighborhood. Um, and overnight I saw businesses that I've known my whole life. I saw people putting these very, you know, pro-American, uh, anti-Islamic posters up, as if that was a dichotomy that made sense. Um and I just saw this vitriol for these people that I saw that were my neighbors and my friends overnight. And I made me realize the fragility of what we think of as home and as community. Um so I think in my reckoning of that, um, I was drawn towards social work specifically. So um my doctorate work is in social work and thinking specifically from an important empowerment framework, not of okay, how do we how do we're not saving anybody, but how do we create pathways for people to self-appulize and to feel empowered and like they are at home because I believe that I can only feel like I'm at home if Georgie feels like he's at home. Yeah. Right. We are only all safe when we're all safe. Um, and I think that I so I worked initially at the International Rescue Committee, specifically with youth and families. Um, and I got to be a part of reunifications and integrating kids into schools and thinking specifically about what it means to make supportive school environments for new arrivals. And I think it was funny. I graduated from that work in some ways, in the same way that my high school students had. And now as an adult, I'm thinking a lot about workplaces and what makes a workplace important empowering and supportive. Um because I think that it all depends on it, right? I think our our country depends on it. I think our economy depends on it, not because it's a a kind thing to do or it's charity, but because this is the fabric of who we are, right? These are the people that make America great. And so my whole career, my whole life to this point has really been about how do you cultivate, how do you create spaces for folks to feel safe enough to walk into that and to grab, grab the reins and and lead their own choice-filled lives. Wow.

SPEAKER_02

Thank you for that. That's a beautiful. I I didn't, you know, we've we've been communicating, Kira and I, over the last couple of weeks and months. And I'm not sure that I knew the role that 9-11 had played and that that image of Atlantic Avenue. And again, for listeners, get yourself to New York, get yourself to Brooklyn, really walk the streets of this city to sort of, you know, remind yourself that like our beauty is in this, right? Our beauty is in like all stripes, all types, and how cities like New York have worked hard over time to make this a model for what it means to be great in this country. Um, so that just takes us back. So it's actually a very nice segue to a next question. And Alex, I'm gonna start with you and then Georgie and then back to Kira. Um, the name of the podcast is not really strangers. And so I want to explore a little bit like what the concept of stranger means to you, Alex. Like, yeah, what does it mean to be a stranger? What do you think of when you hear the word stranger? Like, play on that a little bit for us.

SPEAKER_04

Um so when I think about stranger, um, I really just think a little bit more towards uh lack of familiarity. Right. And so, you know, in a lot of ways, like everything is strange. Everyone is a stranger, and then it's all about finding that environment or that through line in a thing or a conversation to understand where that familiarity lies, and then your building community.

SPEAKER_02

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Georgie, stranger.

SPEAKER_03

I've been a stranger a long time, but honestly, I don't feel like stranger anymore and not here and not anywhere, because like stranger it means like you can say like I don't know you yet.

SPEAKER_02

I don't know you yet.

SPEAKER_03

Yes. But I mentioned already where I was sitting in the MS church in the first days and I was looking at people around me. So that people were strangers.

SPEAKER_05

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03

But that's the for the reason why we're we we're not strangers anymore. That sounds really tricky, but that's that's the point. Because like we all are strangers, but we all we are strangers even for ourselves. So that so but when I'm when I started to try and understand that people and myself as well in that moment, I understand that there's no strangers. We all have like the same feeling, same hope, same fear, same needs. Uh we all have to pay bills and we all have to be happy, or we all want to be a happy. So that's that's I mean, I'm not stranger anymore.

SPEAKER_05

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03

And I'm trying to give the people understand that there's no any strangers.

SPEAKER_02

Yeah. There's something you said in there that I've asked this question so many times, but I heard something in in your answer that was also like, where are we even strangers to ourselves? And like how, what is this path to self-discovery? Um, I had never thought of it in that way. You know, I had never thought of like what have I learned about myself that was strange to me and that I am I'm either working through or I'm trying to better understand why Suzanne does this or why I feel a certain way. That's just like such a, anyways, just wanted to put a pin in there. That's like such a beautiful reflection that we too are strangers to ourselves on this path of self-discovery and and what you called earlier self-actualization. So, Kira Strangers, what does it mean to you? I mean, Georgie took my answer out there. I know. You guys are brilliant.

SPEAKER_00

Um, you know, I uh as I mentioned, I'm I grew up in quicker education. Yeah. Um, and that's a very big part of how I I see the world. And it's called the religious society of friends. Um and I think about that a lot. And I I think uh a stranger is a friend I just haven't met yet.

SPEAKER_02

Yeah. And and think of the cafe downstairs. Alex, I was just reflecting, like the uh the vast majority of people who walk in are strangers off the street, right? That's what you in a restaurant, or when I interviewed a musician last year, it was in our concerts. She's like, I'm looking at at a sea of strangers. Like I don't know the vast majority of people who listen to my music. And yet they're what they're what makes my industry alive. Like they're why I'm successful. So really just turning stranger kind of in and on itself, I think is sort of part of the is the exploration of this podcast. So so last question, and this is a super fun one. I'm not gonna put it to anybody first or second or third. You guys just come in because we are literally upstairs from one of the most beautiful cafe spaces in all of Brooklyn called Emma's Torch. And I know all my listeners are gonna come. And and the idea of breaking bread, you guys know this. This is how you condense distance between people. You have a shared table, you have a shared meal. So we have a dream dinner party happening at Emma's Torch. You can source anything, any chef in the world, including Chef Alex, who cooks for special events all the time. Like, what is the spread? Like, and you can have the same answer, you guys can riff on each other, but like what is that dream dinner party meal that we're gonna serve uh to bring people into the work of this pursuit of justice?

SPEAKER_00

This isn't fair. I'm a social worker up against two chefs. But you like good food. I do like good food.

SPEAKER_04

There's so many.

SPEAKER_02

I know.

SPEAKER_04

There, I mean, really to this question. Um, you know, for me, uh I know we're in this great indoor space, uh, but what it really starts with is being outside. Yeah. Right. For me, it starts with being out and getting a lot of stimulation from the things that are out in nature and all around us. Yeah. Um, in a lot of ways, sometimes creation of food starts there. Yeah. Um, and then what I would really like to see in this fictional dinner or fictional meal is going to be uh again in the vein of being outside. We're gonna cook outside as well. So a lot of food that's you know made on an open fire. Um and inspiration from nature. There's a lot of colors, there's a lot of different things happening. And so for me, that means a lot of different vegetables, either, you know, cooked directly on the fire, indirect heat, smoke. You know, we've got a lot of different uh variation in cooking techniques, uh, textures, flavors. There's not a specific food in there, I know. I'm not stuck in the question. You're aiming at beautiful fixture. Really, you know, for me, in any uh ideal um meal, it's a little bit more about that. It's the variety of what's happening to invoke a lot of excitement and start a lot of conversation.

SPEAKER_02

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Georgie, where where where's your head and heart with that meal?

SPEAKER_03

I tried, but honestly, I don't know about the food. And I think it's mostly depends who's gonna be my guest. But uh what I truly know, and I I'm sure that I'm gonna be really good host. And um for me it's most important how I'm gonna serve them or or uh instead of what I'm will do for them because uh even like you can have like a one pie or like at a huge steak, but for me it's more like a connection.

SPEAKER_02

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03

And I truly believe that I'm gonna be good host.

SPEAKER_02

Yeah, I believe it too. Yeah, and Nick and I were talking on the way out there of a place that we both know in in Washington, DC, and this reflection that like it doesn't really matter what's served, it's really how a place makes you feel. And of course, that improves the experience of this very vegetable cooked over the open fire picture that Alex has just painted, but you're combining both. So, Kira, help round out this dinner.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah. So uh I I sit squarely between you two on this. Um, I'm a bit of a one-trick pony when it comes to cooking. I make I have a dinner party meal that I love to make. Alex has actually come over and I've made it for him. Okay. Um, I love to make a ratatouille, um, specifically because I like that it takes all day. So I make each of the vegetables separate, you know, and I make a chicken on the side. And I like it for the same reasons that Georgie likes to host. I like it because it's a big pot right in the middle of the table. Yeah. Um, and everybody gathers around it. So in my dream dinner party, I mean, I had it last week. All my friends came over. Um, we had a couple bottles of wine. My cat regularly jumped on the table and tried to steal chicken. Um, don't tell my parents I said that missing amount of me. Uh no, my cat is very good. Um, but it's all about the fact that we are all together and we're sharing, right? And I think there's something about all of us digging out of one pot and passing things around that really to go back to your concept of home, like that's what feels like home to me.

SPEAKER_02

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, that's beautiful.

SPEAKER_02

We will at some point do this shared meal together. And I love the, I mean, you know, I asked this question to every guest, and you can't believe how varied the answers are. And, you know, certainly people are like, I want a seafood tower, and you know, like they're like, hey, if if sourcing is no question and price is no limit, then I'm gonna do it upright. But everyone is sort of rooted in this same space of like they want a table that's interactive, they want to be grabbing, sharing plates, past that dish, like just a, you know, really, I think a note to end on is that we're in this together, this sort of desire to build community, a place of belonging, a place of safety. Breeds are coming from different paths. We'll take different paths after we've sort of had this shared experience together as humans. Um, and you guys have painted a beautiful, beautiful picture of what's happening here at Innis Torch. Uh, I'm proud to know you all now and really proud to be able to share this story through the work we do at USA for UNHCR. And if there's any final reflections from any of you, I invite them as we close out.

SPEAKER_00

Um, I'm thinking a lot about, you know, the question you said uh about the stranger and about something Georgie, you were talking about before, around what it means to walk into certain spaces. And for me, that is just it is why this industry is so important. It's why the restaurant industry is so important because it is rooted in the value of hospitality.

SPEAKER_05

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00

And I think that whenever we think about when when we're thinking about the future of MS Torch, it goes hand in hand with the future of the hospitality industry because those partners are the ones that are opening their doors and standing alongside of us. Yeah. Um, I teach at Rutgers University, I teach in their uh like a MSW program and I give my students an extra credit assignment. So I would love to be able to give it to your listeners as well. Um, so for a little bit of extra credit, I ask each of you to go to a restaurant owned by a family that is not of your ethnic background. Okay. And I'm not talking about Panda Express, talking about, you know, a restaurant that is owned by a family and have a meal. Yeah. And sit with that for a little bit because I think that's really that's how we we become more than strangers. We become friends.

SPEAKER_05

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02

That's beautiful. A good place to close. That place reminds me there's a place in Kensington, Maryland that I just read about that's owned by an Indonesian family. Uh, and the mother, and I think head chef, like get quit the job, cashed out her retirement, and started this restaurant that's gone on to be enormously. I'm gonna put it in the show notes because I'm not remembering the name of it, but it's on my list to go visit. And I'm gonna get the extra credit assignments in Kira and I will send you photos from my dinner there.

SPEAKER_00

Maybe we'll do a road trip. We'll come down with you.

SPEAKER_02

Yeah, well, you got Silver Spring in June or July of 2026, everybody, Emma's Torch in the DC area, but north, a little bit in Maryland, because that's really, I think, a better place to serve the community that you're looking to both serve and train. Um, thank you so much for taking time out of your work days in Emma Storch. And for Georgie, it's this day off. So if you really made an effort to be with us, and we appreciate the time that you've spent. Um, thanks, listeners. Until next time.

SPEAKER_01

Thanks so much for listening. Your time is valuable, and it means a lot that you've chosen to spend it here. You can find today's show notes, including how to connect with today's guest, at unrefugees.org slash not really strangers. That's UNREFUGES.org slash not really strangers. While you're there, I hope you'll consider making a donation to the organization I lead, USA for UNHCR, to help us provide more support for refugees here in the U.S. and around the world. If this episode was impactful, please take a moment to review the show and share the episode with a friend or family member. This small action will help us have a much bigger impact. Thanks so much. Don't be a stranger.