CLEVELAND, Ohio – Chef Brandon Chrostowski is starting to look like a culinary rock star on a world tour.
He has cooked in Poland, Ukraine, Israel, Africa. Now, the founder of Edwins Leadership & Restaurant Institute is on the go again, headed for a weeklong trip to Greenland this month.
Chrostowski believes food is a universal language, and as such he hopes to “make an impact in the world” with the trip, in line with his mission at Edwins. The Cleveland Heights restaurant hires and trains recently released incarcerated individuals for all aspects of restaurant work.
He insists the trip is not political and doesn’t reflect his personal beliefs. It’s about coming together to cook and create community dinners.
“The idea is just cook, and community, and use food on the table as a safe place for dialogue,” he said.
Greenland has been in the news since President Trump publicly announced intentions to acquire the island, which is sparsely populated but strategically located: It sits between North America and the Arctic, and is conducive as a vigilant lookout for missiles.
He pauses when asked about what reception he expects as an American.
“I think people are cautious,” he said.
“There’s always tourism there in Greenland – it’s part of their economy – but now it’s just different with their disdain for our country. I don’t want it to be like that. And food should never had to suffer for politics.”
He said he’s taking a “respectful” and simple approach to help bring people together at the table.
He has been persistently researching the trip for two months and is going through church contacts.
“If people don’t trust you, what’s the one place where everyone will normally trust? The church. I’m Catholic, so I figured I’d reach out to this priest, who also happens to be a Franciscan friar.”
His priest contact was “open to the idea of using the community as his church, and I am looking at the kitchen table as our best way to communicate.”
After a layover in Keflavík, Iceland, he will fly to Nuuk, Greenland’s capital. It’s not a bustling metropolis; ferries and planes are needed to get around Greenland, the world’s largest island. The mountainous nation is about 80% ice capped with a continuous permafrost over the northern two-thirds of the country.
Greenland’s population is 57,713, about the size of Springfield, Ohio. Geographically, the nation is roughly more than three times the size of Texas.
Sometimes, flights get canceled at the last minute because of weather and other issues, he said, and he won’t need a car to get around in Nuuk. Chrostowski said only about one in 20 people has a car. The temperature right now is comparable to Cleveland’s.
As de facto culinary ambassador, he said he wants to use his visit to get to know the land, the people “and hopefully bring some of the flavors back to Cleveland.”
Those flavors include seal blubber, whale, narwhal and reindeer, he said. A specialty is kiviaq, which consists of small seabirds packed into a seal skin, which is sewn and sealed with fat, then left to ferment under rocks. Kind of an arctic version of traditional kimchi.
“We don’t even have an ambassador there,” Chrostowski said. “Our ambassador is going to be food. Conversation at the kitchen table.” The United States does not have an ambassador to Greenland, since the nation falls under Denmark’s governance.
He’ll fundraise and go out of pocket for it, he said. People can donate to Edwins noting it’s for the Greenland trip.
“Food is the middle; it’s benign,” he said. “I don’t play politics. I play food. That to me seems to be the only way to communicate nowadays. There’s no other ways to do it, other than maybe music.”
Dining and Cooking