Dark moments, harrowing journeys: New book chronicles migrants' path to NYC kitchens

Arya Sundaram

Published Jan 5, 2026

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The scene inside a busy restaurant kitchen.

FG Trade/Getty Images

Arya Sundaram

Published Jan 5, 2026

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Marc Meyer, chef and co-owner of several New York City restaurants, including Shuka and Rosie’s, has compiled interviews with 27 of his past and present immigrant restaurant workers in a new book titled “Voices from the Kitchen.”

Meyer said the book was planned years ago, but it arrives at a salient moment, with the Trump administration in the midst of what it pledges to be the largest mass deportation operation in U.S. history.

The restaurant workers profiled in the book come from across the globe, including Ecuador, Colombia, Burkina Faso, Gambia, Bangladesh and Ireland.

The workers, identified by their first names, recount harrowing challenges in their homelands and during their journeys to this country.

Among them is Jakeline, a former nun from Lima, Peru, who tells of being robbed at gunpoint while working for a black-market currency exchange. Rosie, from a small town in El Salvador, recalls traveling inside a tanker truck with other migrants on her journey to the U.S., with the benefit of only a 3- to 4-inch-wide opening in the vessel to breathe.

And there is Angel, from Caracas, Venezuela, who describes being kidnapped twice in his home country for being a student activist. Meyer says restaurant kitchens are a meeting place for these many diverse people and their stories. He recently sat down with Gothamist to discuss the book and his takeaways from compiling it.

The conversation has been lightly edited for length and clarity.

Why did you want to put this book together?

My hope is that readers can understand that this country is built on immigrant people coming here and believing in this system and working here. We wouldn't have produce from the fields. We wouldn't have staff to run our restaurants. We wouldn't be able to build restaurants. We wouldn't have people who can put up drywall and do plumbing. And everything that is done that we have that is produced is by the hands of people who've come from other parts of the world. And you don't look and think much about that.

How do you think New York City's restaurant scene compares to other cities, particularly when it comes to the experience of immigrant workers?

It’s been quite a while since when you had American kids lining up at the door to work for you. In San Francisco, I have a friend who has a restaurant. In Northern California, in Sonoma County. My son works in Los Angeles. I know people in Texas. I know people in Philadelphia and up and down the eastern seaboard, in Florida. Everybody relies on people who come from different worlds and different countries. Restaurants are one of those places where if you can work, if you can follow instructions, if you can learn through observation, if you can be a compatriot, if you can show comradery, you can thrive.

In working in a restaurant it doesn't take an advanced degree of any kind. As long as you can read and are open to following instructions, you learn on the job. You learn how to do things. You become that person others can rely on and trust. And so it becomes a world unto its own that thrives and succeeds because of people's willingness to work together.

I think these are stories in the book that could be told that would represent any city in America, I believe.

You write in the preface, "All of us had something that we needed to leave behind—a need to hide, to escape, to break the patterns of the past." What did you mean?

As far as the individuals, they were living in circumstances that we can't imagine. The difficulties in being able to go to school. Not having shoes until they were 9 years old. Being stabbed by your husband, for example. At 15 years old, driving a fruit truck 8 hours to the coast to pick up the discarded vegetables that were not suited for export. Selling dollars on the black market just to survive. Supporting a family with barely enough. All those things.

And even in the case of American kids at a time where you didn't fit in. Education didn't provide you with anything, or there was no desire to take an advanced degree or anything else. Intelligent and well-read, but unsuited for Wall Street or getting a law degree or something like that because of a path that was marked by extreme emotional challenges in family life or something of that sort. It’s the place that we all came from. And we arrived in the kitchen.

Did you notice any other commonalities in the stories that you collected?

I always think of Jakeline, who, I think, her father left her when her mother was still pregnant. She was selling dollars on the black market in Peru. And had $30,000 stolen from her at gunpoint by bandits on a motorcycle after she was given money to change, and paid all that money back, gradually working and working and working. Can you imagine? And she's this petite woman. And then came to the United States.

I think of one person crawling into a hole in an empty tanker truck with six or seven other people to travel hours and only being able to breathe out of the little square opening. Somebody else who was sexually abused by their father. I think of a person being kidnapped at 15, 16 years old because you were an activist on the streets in Caracas.

I think there are these dark moments, some more emotional, some more experiential, that have us. Whether you're talking about the past 20 or 30 or 40 years, or you're talking about the 19th century, when people found New York a haven.

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Asylum Seekers

Race And Justice Unit

economy

food

new york city