Ring Ghetto Gastro's Bop Line

October 14, 2024

Bronx-based culinary collective Ghetto Gastro, founded by Jon Gray, Pierre Serrao, and Lester Walker, recently unveiled their 'BOP LINE' campaign through @ghettogastrogoods with none other than wellness guru-in-chief, actress Gwyneth Paltrow. In what feels like a tongue-in-cheek nod to Goop’s ever-expanding wellness empire — where a jade egg and a detox tonic are considered life essentials — THE BOP MOBILE flips the script, embracing flavor over fasting.

Upcoming installments will feature actors Michael Ealy, Siddiq Sanderson, Jerrie Johnson, and rapper Malibu Mitch. But the real showstoppers are Ghetto Gastro’s newest toaster pastries: Brown Sugar and Sweet Potato, now available at Target.

Because sometimes, the real 'clean eating' is just a damn good pastry.

By Enzo Holdt
Video by Ghetto Gastro

Culture

A New Year in Chinatown

Moving away from home and into the city for work, I did exactly what I had been aggressively coaxed to do growing up: I held my breath with deep pride and put my back into my job. And somewhere between commuting, grinding and traveling, I lost the bandwidth to think about home. Yet on the day of the parade, I felt uncomfortably emotional, missing my fishbowl bedroom, the dwarf cherry trees in my backyard, but more than anything, my family on Chinese New Year.

Shortly after arriving, my friend who I attended with asked me what surprised me most at the parade. At first, it was the number of people who had showed up for the festivities. The streets were lined with an impressive crowd even before 2 p.m., the time the parade began. We had barely secured a spot where we could watch the parade in viewing distance.

But if my friend were to ask me again now, I was mostly and extremely taken aback by the diversity of the crowd in attendance. Men, women and children from every march of life looked on and cheered as ornately decorated floats and presenters inched past.

I was born in Massachusetts, but my mother and father are both immigrants from Vietnam and China, respectively. While I had the privilege of navigating the intersections of not one, not two, but three diverse cultures as a first generation American, celebrating the start of the Lunar New Year was a strictly confined ceremony that took place after school—largely separated from my life as an American student. There was never really any mention of it in school save for my Mandarin class, where my peers and I hosted a small local celebration with group presentations and express-catered Chinese food like lukewarm lo mein.

Standing still at the parade with my hands in my pockets, it was then and there that I felt my identities—the ones that I had compartmentalized over the years—collide like the crashing cymbals in front of me.