“I couldn’t dedicate any time to try to start to build a restaurant with the amount of time and energy I was putting toward a career,” she says, before correcting herself: It was “not just building a restaurant, but building a part of the local food community in Detroit.” I definitely appreciate living in proximity to people who don’t just look like me, but have similar cultural experiences.”Ībout five years ago, Goudia traded corporate food service management to focus on a dream she’s had since she was 17. “Detroit is a majority Black city and that’s beautiful when you’ve lived in places where you weren’t the majority. I think there’s a hospitality you don’t see in other places,” she says. “Detroit will get ahold of you and it won’t let go. Goudia left Louisiana for Detroit 20 years ago, but finds similarities between the two.

It also makes sense: Treat your friends like family.” Doing this definitely speaks to the way I was raised. There she grew up across the street from her grandparents, whose vast gardens fed her well. “I’m from Louisiana and I was raised not to waste food,” she says. “It’s actually really fun to be able to figure out what we can do,” says Goudia, who has rerolled dough scraps from Gratiot Central Market’s Pietrzyk Pierogi to incorporate into chicken and dumplings or tomato and vegetable soup with dumplings. She quickly and creatively determines what to do with food recently donated, some fresh from farms, markets and commercial kitchens, plus shelf-stable products from manufacturers and distributors and what’s in the freezer, awaiting its turn. Tucked neatly inside Jefferson Avenue Presbyterian Church, the kitchen’s mint green cupboards stretch along the back wall with a whisper of 1970s church events past as Goudia readies the jars, simultaneously planning the menu for the 200-some neighborhood families to which the church distributes weekly.

The jars, separate from Goudia’s regular work, are to go in pre-ordered boxes sold to raise money to offset the kitchen’s costs for the upcoming holiday meal season. The lead chef of Make Food Not Waste’s Upcycling Kitchen matter-of-factly shares her love for food preparation, feeding others and collaborating, as she fills Mason jars with still-steaming house-made strawberry-basil jam she and her team made from a sizable basil donation the nonprofit received at the end of September. And she’s grateful to be in the industry she loves: food.

But that’s how to get where she wants to go, she says. The hours are long when you’re juggling two jobs and three businesses in the food industry.

Make Food Not Waste’s Lead Chef Makes the Most of ItĮderique Goudia has a lot on her plate.

Fb Lead Chef