Most places that are only open a few days a week are 100% pulling some fake scarcity bullshit. Restaurants want you to work so hard to schedule your meals around them. Katie O’s is the exception.

Not everyone can afford to keep their restaurant open only 3 days a week. Staying closed four days a week to feed people for free takes confidence. And if we’re honest, true confidence only comes from knowing you’re doing it right. Katie O's is doing everything right.                                      

Katie O’s is a mother daughter operation in Brooklyn, open to the public only on weekends. Friday through Sunday, you come for turkey wings, greens that are good for you, better-than-your-moms macaroni and cheese, sickeningly sweet yams, and the proof literally is in the pudding (see below where someone licked the bowl clean). 

Monday through Thursday, the doors close to paying customers and open to the community. During the week, they aim to feed 100 people a day for free. If they run out, they “find more food.” No one leaves hungry, just how it should be. Their team also prepares separate meals to stock a community fridge weekly with hot and cold meals, water, juice, and snacks. It serves Brownsville. East New York. Far Rockaway. 

(Math note: Katie O’s provides 20,800+ free meals every year that go to people who are food insecure.)

Before it was Katie O Soul Food, it was Grandma Peaches’ house in North Carolina. The family rule was and still is simple: food is love and you can taste the difference. If someone is hungry, they eat. If there wasn’t enough, it got figured out. 

Turkey wings are the anchor. Slow, seasoned, rich and juicy. Soul food that doesn’t need explanation or modern apology. This is damn good soul food just like grandma used to do, because it actually comes from a grandma who did.

And yes, save room for pudding. Or take some home. Always take some home.

(Loving note: If you or someone you know is food insecure in NYC, here’s a list of organizations Soul Food to the People partners with: Rethink Food, More Than a Meal, Hungry Monk, WANA Community Resource Center, and Good Shepherd Deliverance Church to feed the people of New York.)

Here’s the uncomfortable truth NYC hot spots hate to admit: you can taste when food is made with love vs. when it’s made for margins. This city is drowning in the second. Katie O’s is a rare and delectable example of the first. 

Go find out what the O in Katie O’s stands for. Go take your swing at a turkey wing and lick the bottom of the banana pudding bowl.

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