Chef Jonny Rhodes built a revered Houston restaurant. His next mission: Fighting ‘food apartheid.’
By most accounts, Houston chef Jonathan “Jonny” Rhodes has already achieved tremendous success. Just a few years removed from culinary school, he has worked in several Michelin-starred kitchens and is running his own celebrated restaurant. Nonetheless, he says, everything in his career has brought him to this moment, confronting food justice against the backdrop of what is perhaps the biggest movement against anti-blackness and police violence in history.
“We talk about that stuff all the time in the neighborhood, honestly, because our community is constantly harassed by the police,” says Rhodes, 29. “I see it every night when we’re closing up shop at 11 o’clock. Nobody would have called the police, there would have been no incidents,” and yet six police cars pull into the neighborhood. “It’s like they’re hunting.” Police violence is one of the many ways black Americans are denied freedom, Rhodes says. Freedom here, he laments, is conditional. “We’re literally treated like tenants. The second we step out of line, it’s like, ‘Well go back to …’ or, ‘This is my country…’ ”