On a spiritual level, the journey of 50Kitchen is a lot longer than the 710 miles between Dorchester, Massachusetts, and Chapel Hill, North Carolina. Executive chef and owner Anthony Caldwell said divine providence got him from where he was to where he is today. And where he was ... was prison.
“I didn’t have the perfect life,” Caldwell said. “But prison, in the long run, was a good decision, because it’s where I learned how to cook.”
Caldwell’s kitchen career began as little more than a way of earning enough good time to get his sentence reduced. There were plenty of other jobs available, but “those weren’t the jobs I needed in order for God to get me where I am now,” Caldwell said.
The head chef and corrections officer was an Archie Bunker-like character with a talent for turning ordinary food extraordinary. One day, Caldwell saw him sprinkling chopped parsley onto a plate.
“It blew my mind. He took this bland plate of food and turned it into a work of art. I thought, ‘I have to learn how to do that,’” he said.
Divine Intervention
Caldwell was released from prison in 2006 and immediately started working at a Legal Seafoods in Boston. Working on the outside began to shape Caldwell. He was married, owned a home, and worked two to three jobs to support his family. But a darkness lurked beneath the surface.During a family trip to Disney World in 2006, shortly after his release, Caldwell joined his brother for a night out at a bar.
“All hell broke loose,” Caldwell said. “By 2009, I was an alcoholic. There was nothing I could do without alcohol in my system.” On Sundays during football season, he and his friends would each contribute $15 to a booze pool and drink their way through the game. One night, during a drinking binge, they were passing rap lyrics back and forth. At his turn, Caldwell stood up and rapped: “I’m 50Kitchen! The boss with the sauce!”
“God does miraculous things without us even knowing it,” Caldwell said of his drunken burst of inspiration. He didn’t know God then, but he was about to.
Caldwell was on another heavy bender and had run out of booze. He said that he was about to go across the street for more beer when an ethereal voice said to him: “If you don’t stop drinking, your career is going to go downhill, and you’re going to die!” The phrase was repeated thrice, each time with a heavy, intense whisper on the “die!”
The point was hammered home. On Sept. 25, 2011, Caldwell walked into Jubilee Christian Church in Mattapan and asked God to deliver him from alcohol. Then, he said, the voice made an addendum: “If you stop drinking, and live your life for me, I will give you your own kitchen by the time you’re 50.” Caldwell hasn’t touched a drop of liquor since.
A Leap of Faith
Caldwell continued to work long and hard hours at a variety of different eateries around Boston, all the while remembering, but never acting on, the offer. In 2017, a year shy of 50, Caldwell had quit drinking and become a devoted churchgoer, and was working in the kitchens of Harvard University and running 50Kitchen as a personal chef service. But he had yet to acquire a restaurant kitchen of his own.Again, he said, God spoke to him. This time it was simple and ominous: “You can’t say I didn’t hold up my end of the bargain.”
Caldwell knew that he had to take a leap of faith. Not long after this decision, he received an email. Commonwealth Kitchen, a nonprofit food business incubator, was advertising a small-business pitching competition for an 850-square-foot commercial space in the Fields Corner neighborhood of Dorchester. The winner would get the space, along with free marketing and legal services.
Caldwell wrote up a business plan and sent it in. Soon after, he was selected to be interviewed.
“It was a neighborhood, ‘Shark Tank’-style pitch,” he recalled. They voted him in.
On Feb. 23, 2020, the ribbon was cut for the grand opening of 50Kitchen. The original idea was to bring a more classically French-style restaurant to the Fields Corner. However, owing to the large African American and Vietnamese populations in Dorchester, 50Kitchen’s menu became a fusion of American Southern and Asian flavors.
Caldwell would use traditionally Southern cooking techniques, including braising, grilling, smoking, and baking, but with an Asian twist. He simmered collard greens with kimchi, turned jambalaya into egg rolls, and deep-fried cornbread and drizzled it with honey. All were bestsellers.
“My gift is thinking outside the box, giving people the ‘wow factor’ with everyday food,” Caldwell said.
Another Chance
For eight days, Caldwell had himself a working restaurant. He was exactly where God wanted him to be. Then COVID-19 hit.“My chairs went up and I had no idea what to do,” Caldwell said. Against the advice of his mentors, Caldwell didn’t sell or close up shop. Instead, he spent the early months of the pandemic feeding more than 4,000 of Dorchester’s homeless.
“People needed help. So I stepped up to the plate,” Caldwell said. “I promised the community I would give back to a place I took so much from.”
This mix of philanthropy and community service was, unfortunately, unrecognized by the state when it came to Caldwell’s PPP loan. Despite all of his community building and press—he’d been on billboards around town, been declared one of Boston’s best chefs, and even appeared on “Chopped” with Martha Stewart—Caldwell was left without a penny to continue.
Fortunately, he said, God had other plans.
“He said: ‘The soil is in North Carolina.’ I just had no idea where,” Caldwell said.
The “where” ended up being Chapel Hill. A mix of things led Caldwell to this inland college town. It’s where his wife was born and raised. Caldwell’s family is nearby. And it’s a place with many restaurants where he could find work as he collected himself after the closure of his Boston location.
However, 50Kitchen wouldn’t be gone for long. Caldwell found a small space where the restaurant opened on May 20.
50Kitchen has a slogan: Beautiful food for beautiful people.
“All people are beautiful,” Caldwell said. “We were created in God’s image, and he doesn’t make mistakes. I am going to put 150 percent into what I do whether someone is 8 or 80, black or white, Latino or Asian. Because we all deserve something good to eat.”
If You Go
Location: 50Kitchen at the Blue Dogwood Public Market306 W. Franklin Street, Suite G
Chapel Hill, N.C.
