Chef Ting is a visionary for whom food, community, and connection are essential ingredients.
Cooking was a passion from childhood on. “I was 7 when I had my first dinner party. But it was quickly communicated to me that food wasn’t to be my ministry, even though, from an early age, I knew it was.”
Chef Ting says about pursuing food as a career growing up: “It wasn’t an option, because my mother said, if I am sacrificing to raise you, then with your gifts, you have to do so much more. And for her, cooking was not so much more.” She continues, “I was raised by a woman who was truly a queen of process queens, so my profession was around organizational development.”
Prior to her 25 years as a corporate strategist and innovative specialist, Chef Ting attended Georgetown Medical School, worked in the foreign service in Africa, and started a nonprofit during the Clinton administration: “All these things happened, but all through that time, I held on to the food.”
“There are some of us who are born with extraordinary sensory realities. So the world doesn’t always make sense to us as we try to operate in the space of logistics and time,” Chef Ting says, adding about her former career, “I did all these things that were about how we have a goal, chase it, and make it come to fruition, and then we’re proud of it. I mastered doing that, but it wasn’t my soul.
“My soul was really about food and human connection and humanity. While I was always able to have that going on in the background of my life, this is the phase where it gets to be in the forefront.”
And in the forefront it is. Chef Ting and Melissa Bradley have manifested their dream on multiple fronts. Three years ago, they began Black Joy, providing a sabbatical rest and restoration space for Black, indigenous, and people of color (BIPOC) leaders: “We are dedicated to the development of black and brown leaders and businesses, and to ensure that we are changing the financial reality for black and brown people on this Earth.”
At the same time, Chef Ting began Black Joy Food Love, working with corporate and private clients, offering food that enables and encourages people to choose vibrant, living options to nourish their bodies. They were initially hosted by Chef Anthony of the East Chop Beach Club and Chef Juli Vanderhoop of Orange Peel Bakery. “Their willingness to share commercial kitchen space fills a critical need for BIPOC chefs on the Island who need legal commercial kitchen space to be permitted,” says Chef Ting.
However, as of this summer, Chef Ting and Bradley are leasing a commercial kitchen in Oak Bluffs, in partnership with the current owners. “Black Joy Food Love kept wedging itself into other people’s spaces. So I put out as one of my rockets of desire to the universe to have a commercial kitchen space, and this opportunity came with ease,” Chef Ting explains.
She has big plans for the location. It will serve as a commercial kitchen for herself and then, hopefully, for other BIPOC chefs. The hope is then to open the location as a restaurant just before the summer season next year, with rotating chefs serving food, hopefully, of the Black diaspora, whether that be Louisiana, Kenya, Ghana, Guyana, or France.
Also in the works is Family Meal Fridays, where Island families will come to eat buffet-style on a pay-what-you-wish basis: “We want to positively impact people who are experiencing food insecurity here. We really want families to be able to eat for a reasonable price.” The idea stems from a tradition in the restaurant world, where one of the chefs on staff cooks a meal of the day for the rest of the staff: “The concept of ‘family meal’ in the restaurant is very near and dear to us. Also, in the Muslim world, Friday is the day of philanthropy. If you have it, you give, and if you need it, you receive.”
Chef Ting credits the Island with being able to bring her dreams alive. “If there’s something you want to manifest, and you set your intention, she will make it come to fruition. Martha’s Vineyard is a portal, and if you’re energetically connected, you realize that right away. The power, the energy, the freedom. What can come from it is pretty spectacular. I’ve been lucky enough to travel the whole world, and still find this one of the most powerful places on Earth, energetically and spiritually.”
Chef Ting’s ties to the Island began as a child: “My white mother and Black father first brought me here. If you grew up in Boston in a mixed-race family in the ’60s, there were very few safe places, and Martha’s Vineyard was one of them. My mother, with her $2-a-week vacation fund, was able to bring us here on vacation.”
The family initially stayed in a camper van, until they eventually could afford a house in the Campground: “As we became adults, we came with friends, and now families. Martha’s Vineyard is my happiest place on Earth. I’ve lived and traveled to 74 countries, and it’s still my favorite place.”
With a firm foundation and solid plans, all seems to be aligning on the Island for Chef Ting so she can share her greatest passion with all of us: “I’ve always lived my life where food is connection. For me, food is like the air that I breathe. I don’t know how to exist in the world without it.”
To learn more, check out blackjoymvy.com and visit @blackjoymvy.