When Katie Owes opened her Brooklyn soul-food restaurant in 2014, “Tik Tok” was nonetheless only a Kesha track and her prospects consisted largely of household and church members. Eleven years later, the meals at Katie O’s (sure, it’s a play on her title) stays unchanged, based mostly on the recipes Owes’s grandma Peaches realized to cook dinner in North Carolina earlier than she moved to New York together with her husband of their late teenagers. Owes was at all times the sous-chef in her grandparents’ kitchen, serving to cook dinner for a revolving door of tourists. What’s now Katie O’s menu was her household’s Sunday dinner: crunchy fried rooster, shrimp, fish with home made tartar sauce, pork chops, smothered turkey wings with sides like garlic whipped potatoes ladled with gravy and collard greens flecked with smoked turkey. Owes’s restaurant was one thing of a hidden gem for over a decade till TikTok person Brandon Hayes — whose deal with is @cheatdayking — posted a video about Katie O’s for his 42,000 followers (he’d observed the storefront whereas he was on his technique to a distinct dinner), which was adopted by a cluster of movies this summer season that prompted a flood of recent guests — plus the block-long line that has change into a fixture on weekends.
The brand new reputation has required some changes. Simply earlier than service this previous Sunday, Owes moved up and down the lengthy kitchen house, checking in with a brand new rent who was portioning strawberries-and-cream pudding on the entrance and a tenured cook dinner within the again stirring the large stockpots till she reached one other cook dinner cracking eggs into separate lodge pans to coat totally different meats already marinated with Peaches’s red-hued, paprika-heavy spice mix. Owes’s mom, Sabrina, put a ending sprinkle of dried parsley on parts of potato salad. Hav & Mar’s former government chef Airis Johnson was additionally serving to that day, scooping syrupy yams.
The fried rooster is Katie O’s hottest order, however turkey wings are Owes’s private favourite. (They’re the No. 2 finest vendor.) To make them, she buys the wings from a butcher whose six-inch flats include a couple of rooster thigh’s price of meat every. That manner, a $25 platter of two with two sides — spicy cornbread dressing and really tacky macaroni amongst them — by no means appears paltry. After any errant feathers are eliminated, the wings dry brine in the home mix for a day or two earlier than they’re lined in a layer of butter and braised for a couple of hours. From there, the juices are separated and thickened into gravy whereas the wings return within the oven, uncovered, to brown earlier than smothering of their sauce.
The entire different entrées are fried to order, with batches of rooster in fixed rotation, plucked from the tray to fill orders as rapidly as they’ll, nonetheless scorching. “We undergo ten pans of mac and cheese a day, ten pans of turkey wings,” says Owes, who explains that the restaurant’s output, and her potential to manage the still-growing line, is restricted by its measurement.
Simply earlier than the posted 2 p.m. opening time this weekend, the shortening was nonetheless within the technique of turning clear — later than standard since the day gone by’s crowds had saved them open lengthy into the night time. “I left at one,” a fry cook dinner advised me whereas others stayed behind to maintain cleansing, inflicting the unavoidable delays that bled into today’s opening. A unique chef is available in at 5 a.m. to start every day’s prep, whereas Owes arrives a couple of hours later to remain till after the final buyer is fed. She’s been doing this on and off for all 11 years the restaurant has been open, however with this spike of surprising strain, she’s wanted to search out new methods to assist the kitchen sustain.
“Think about cooking Thanksgiving dinner for 300 folks daily,” Owes says. Her function now extends to line administration; when she lastly opens the door, there’s already a crowd of 45 folks and counting, most of whom have found her just lately on social media.
“My household’s from the South,” stated one of many two girls on the entrance of the road, who had come from Mattress-Stuy half-hour earlier than opening to strive Katie O’s for the primary time, and her Brooklyn soul-food experiences had been missing. She started to precise some doubts in regards to the wait at this operation simply earlier than Owes walked up with a container of strawberries-and-cream pudding, a handful of plastic spoons, and a mellifluous “I received you” — sufficient to revive her religion.
Fried pork chops resting within the kitchen at Katie O’s.
Picture: Tammie Teclemariam
Katie O’s solely sells takeout meals from Friday to Sunday; the remainder of the week is reserved for catering orders and charity. Because the opening, Owes has ready and distributed the very same restaurant meals as free meals by her church. (Owes formalized her nonprofit, Soul Meals to the Individuals, in 2021, after changing her restaurant to a neighborhood kitchen in the course of the pandemic.)
Now, Owes’s imaginative and prescient for the longer term includes an even bigger Katie O’s along with a devoted neighborhood kitchen “the place individuals who want meals are available, get a menu, sit down and order, and I get them without spending a dime,” she says. “Lots of people I discuss to, they don’t eat out. They’re in a shelter, they’re homeless. They’re the forgotten neighborhood, so I need them to return in.” Extra instantly, she’s elevating $100,000 for the upcoming vacation season, which can pay for her second yr of supplying 1,000 Thanksgiving meals and 1,000 pantries.
Owes by no means supposed to open a restaurant that made folks surrender whole afternoons with a purpose to benefit from the meals, however so long as the crowds maintain coming, she’s going to open her doorways and feed everybody she will be able to.
5 hours after opening, the road was simply so long as it had been all day, solely with a brand new set of people that had dedicated to the afternoon with folding chairs and conversations. A person from New Jersey who’d gotten there at 3:30 was chatting with some folks from Queens. They gave the impression to be having a good time. “You in line for 4 hours,” he stated. “You higher make associates.”
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