Belong Kitchen partners with Brennan's of Houston
HOUSTON, Texas -- Belong Kitchen's motto is "special people making special food." The Memorial-area non-profit kitchen employs young adults with intellectual and developmental differences and offers family style, grab-and-go meals.
"We started Belong for our middle daughter," said Kim Brown, founder and executive director of Belong Kitchen. "She was about to graduate from high school and she has intellectual differences. There are not many opportunities for young adults like her after high school. We decided we needed to create something that would provide a safe, nurturing place for her to go every day and to learn new skills, have transferable job skills, have fun, make friends and work hard."
Belong Kitchen now has a guest chef series, which allows its young chefs to train with Houston-area restaurants. In January, Brennan's of Houston welcomed the chefs from Belong Kitchen into the restaurant to learn to make signature Creole dishes like chicken & andouille sausage jambalaya and creole bread pudding.
"Brennan's is Houston, and it was just a real treat for our employees to get to go be in their kitchen and experience what a real commercial kitchen looks like," said Brown.
"It's putting together something for the kids to produce here that they can sell to their customers," said Alex Brennan-Martin, owner of Brennan's of Houston. "An awful lot of our customers live in this area, so its just natural for us."
"Working with the chefs is real fun," said Sous Chef Jose Arevalo of Brennan's. "I really like to teach them because I can learn a little bit from them the same way they can learn from me."
Following the training at Brennan's, the Belong Kitchen chefs were able to prepare their own Brennan's meal kits, featuring gumbo, rice, salad, garlic bread and pecan pie.
"Were really honored that Brennan's trusts us enough to execute and recreate their special recipes," said Brown.
For more information on Belong Kitchen and the guest chef series, visit belongkitchenhtx.org.
