CLEVELAND — It was a missionary trip to the small African country of Djibouti renowned Northeast Ohio Chef Brandon Chrostowski said will have an impact that will stay with him for a lifetime.
The Cleveland Edwins Leadership & Restaurant Institute founder spent a week visiting multiple refugee camps in the town of Ali Adee, distributing food and cooking supplies and teaching culinary arts to young women and men after reading multiple reports about conditions in the impoverished country.
"I started watching what was going on in the Middle East, and the biggest crisis right now is Yemen and seeing refugees flee into a country called Djibouti," Chrostowski said. “That food, it really was powerful what we did in that kitchen, being together with these young men and women was the most powerful moment I ever had in culinary arts.”
Christowski, who has completed culinary missionary work in Israel and Ukraine, said the trip to Djibouti really taught him lessons about the human condition in countries that don't have even the most basic supplies and resources.
“There wasn’t but one oven that we had to go seek out in this whole encampment of thousands of people, and there was no electricity to generate it, because the school only has 4 hours of electricity a day," Chrostowski said. “I mean nothing, I mean nothing, there’s not a cup for water, nothing and there’s more joy in this place than you’d find here in Cleveland and in Northeast Ohio.”
Christowski, who is also cooking and serving gourmet meals to Cleveland's homeless this winter, said the experience in Djibouti was so poignant he and his wife Catana will be going back to the African county sometime in the next year to build a teaching kitchen for refugees.
“I really felt a very strong connection to this camp and to the refugees I was working with, and I always believe there’s a way out and through food there’s a way out," Chrostowski said. "We really want to build-out a kitchen there, like a kitchen you teach out of, a kitchen people could use because there’s nothing there.”
Catana Chrostowski told News 5 that she spoke to one of the refugees, who was using her husband's cell phone, and it was clear the culinary trip was having a big impact.
“She said no one comes to visit us, no comes to teach us anything like this, no one had ever come to the camp in the time she’s been there, so it was just so meaningful to her that someone from across the world cared," Catana Chrostowski said. “It had a huge impact on Brandon, just cooking with the refugees, getting to share that time with them. It was just great to see how food and cooking food can transcend language barriers, cultural barriers.”
Brandon Chrostowski said he'll be seeking corporate donations to help with the construction of the Djibouti teaching kitchen in the coming months but said residents here in Northeast Ohio can contact Edwins Leadership & Restaurant Institute if they'd like to help.
Chrostowski said the trip left him with a message for everyone here in greater Cleveland.
“Make it the best world you can," Chrostowski said. "Teaching what you teach, giving what you can, or just making the moments you have more positive would be my message coming back from a place that is really destitute.”
