In spring 2020, chef Stephanie Willis looked around her family’s West Philadelphia neighborhood, worried by what she saw.
First came the coronavirus pandemic. Then the murder of George Floyd, asphyxiated on video for nine excruciating minutes by an officer of the law. The largely African American neighborhoods of West Philadelphia responded with peaceful protest, then uncontrolled emotion.
“Philadelphia kind of went crazy, we rioted, we were angry. There was just a lot of emotion going around, specifically in Black and brown communities,” Willis said. “The grocery stores, corner stores, drugstores were completely decimated, leaving this neighborhood that was already a food desert even more so of a food desert, with no access to fresh food, healthy food, or any other options.”
Willis, a private chef in South Jersey’s Cherry Hill who gained prominence on the Fox food show “MasterChef,” sprang to action.
She wore out her phone’s contact list to enlist a tight crew of high-powered Black chefs to bring food to a neighborhood that now had little access to it: chef-activist Kurt Evans, “Chopped” alums Aziza Young and Gregory Headen, Zagat’s 30-Under-30 honoree Malik Ali.
Under the name Everybody Eats, the quintet set about bringing meals to the West Philly neighborhood where some of them had grown up. Nationally known restaurants such as Vernick and Kalaya stepped in to donate time and meals. The chefs brought in a DJ to make the “giveback” feel like a party with free food, rather than a dour handout.
“We try to bring a whole vibe,” Ali said.
The mission snowballed from there. What was initially planned as a one-time food giveaway became an ongoing effort to fight food insecurity across the region and country. The chefs have since handed out birria pizza in North Philly and Thanksgiving meals in Camden. They’ve held pop-ups as far away as San Antonio, Texas, and Cleveland, Ohio.
Now Everybody Eats is dropping permanent anchor in the central Overtown district of Chester, Pennsylvania — a onetime shipbuilding boomtown midway between Philadelphia and Wilmington — taking over most of a 12,000-square-foot food hall named Vittles that had all but emptied during the pandemic.
“A friend of mine reached out and was like, ‘Hey, I know you guys are extremely busy doing all the things and feeding people, but there’s this really cool space I think you’d be interested in,’” Willis said. “So I went down and checked it out, and I was blown away. I was like, ‘This is perfect.’ And it’s an underserved neighborhood, a Black and brown community.”
With a spacious shared kitchen, the chefs set about creating four restaurants under the nonprofit umbrella — an Everybody Eats burger bar, soul food kitchen, taqueria and build-your-own salad and sandwich spot. Willis also brought in friend and entrepreneur Charles Bowie on a seafood counter called The Perfect Catch, serving up shrimp baskets and blackened-salmon cheesesteaks.
The modern food hall space, furnished with long tables and a perma-parked produce truck bearing the name of Oak Grove Farms, still bears signs from former restaurants that couldn’t outlast the economic ravages of the pandemic. Ray’s Diner, owned by Raymond Tillery, is the sole business to remain at Vittles since it opened in early 2020.
But the chefs see a bright future. Through consultant and former Chester economic development head James Turner, they’re connecting with schools to offer culinary training and jobs in a city where more than a third of residents live in poverty.
The food hall, which bills itself as the first in Delaware County, could be an essential component for an Overtown district that lacks many food options to bring people in, Turner said — an attraction he hopes will inject fuel into an arts-driven revitalization that had been stalled by the coronavirus.
“When I met Stephanie and Malik and the rest of the people here, I saw they had heart and vision,” Turner said. “There are things that you see are mission-driven, and you know that it can make a big difference.”
The kitchen will act as a commissary for the group’s future food giveaways, which Everybody Eats has held twice a month across the region since June 2020. Community fridges are in the works in Camden and Chester.
The kitchen for the nonprofit restaurants will not only support the food giveaways, it will act as a home base for the chefs’ private catering businesses. Rather than rent someone else’s kitchen to prep food for Philadelphia Eagles players or the birthday party of 76ers coach Doc Rivers, the chefs plan to instead rent the kitchen from Everybody Eats and put the money back into the community, Evans said.
Even the port-a-potties they rent for their food giveaway events come from a Black-owned business, said Evans, making their nonprofit a school in circular economics.
“We’re real Black at Everybody Eats,” Evans said, laughing.
The chefs plan to draw on their high-end backgrounds to keep the food fresh and scratch-made, said Willis, while tailoring tastes to the neighborhood.
The food hall has been operating with a limited menu while they work out the details, but already they’ve installed at least one dish they hope will be a trademark: a monstrous half-pound Wiz Wit burger loaded with caramelized onions and chopped ribeye, slathered with house-made Cooper Sharp wiz and garlic-onion aioli.
As Ali built a Wiz Wit on Wednesday, switching between bubbling cheese pot and toasting bun, the kitchen filled with the familiar chop and slap of a spatula on thin-sliced steak that might as well be the rhythm track for all of Southeastern Pennsylvania.
“We’re famous for cheesesteaks, so we figured we might as well put a cheesesteak on a burger,” Ali said. “Why not? And it’s delicious.”
The taco bar, meanwhile, will offer a take on the slow-stewed and spiced birria that has become a recent national obsession.
The grand opening of Everybody Eats at Vittles is planned for Feb. 5, to dovetail with Black History Month. The team is keeping some of the rollout’s details close to the vest, however.
“You’re just going to have to come out and see,” Willis said.
Vittles Food Hall is located at 801 Sproul St., Chester. Initial opening hours are 11 a.m. to 5 p.m., Monday to Friday. Details at everybodyeatsphilly.org and instagram.com/vittlesfoodhall.
