Aproned Crusader Morgan Stewart
When Morgan Stewart, head chef of Remedy House, goes to work at that all-day, Euro café, she does so with a bigger purpose in mind: to use her food “superpowers” for good deeds. Like a humble food superhero, she tackles subjects like toxic restaurant culture and fairer industry wages with every dish she makes, seeking ways that food can make her community a better place.
“I think more about food or cooking as a tool that I’m using, rather than my identity as a person,” Stewart says, adding that even her journey to becoming passionate about a culinary life was a low and slow simmer.
“My first job in high school was making subs at a local gas station,” she laughs.
“I moved to Buffalo to start a PhD in Media Theory and thought I was leaving restaurants,” she adds. “But I found that in this Media Theory program, all I wanted to talk about was food.”
Thus started a trail that Stewart followed to Merge, a plant-based restaurant in Buffalo, where she evolved from hostess to head chef within just a few years.
“It was my first time working with other people and having a degree of mentorship,” she recalls. “I was learning what my relationship to the food was, and what the guest’s relationship to the food was, and how to meet in that middle place. That’s where my career began to take shape, where I started to realize that food spoke to me in a way that I didn’t realize growing up.”
After Merge closed in 2019, Stewart became the menu mastermind for the food and drink crew at Remedy House. The popular café in Five Points gained national acclaim from the likes of Bon Appétit for the “light fare that makes it easy to stay all day long.” Stewart attributes this quality to her relationships with local farmers and the collaborative nature of her team.
Shy and reserved, Stewart purposely avoids conventional chef-isms.
“I don’t think that I necessarily resonate with all that being a chef entails,” she reflects. “I think it’s easy as a chef to get a big ego where you feel, ‘Not only am I in charge of other people, I have all this creative control.’ But that’s just completely busted at Remedy House. I also don’t want to encourage the normalizing of burnout and grind culture.”
Yet undeniably, Stewart’s food is of chef quality. Her range is an asset that allowed Remedy House to thrive on a to-go model throughout the pandemic with comfort food takeout items like the Italian hoagie—a sandwich made of salami, capicola, ham, house relish, garlic aioli, herb ricotta and shredded lettuce, all on a house-made roll. This dish, reminiscent of Stewart’s sub days, was planned and prepped by her remotely from a nearby commissary kitchen.
Stewart takes on food industry issues like fairer wages with her plant-based, pop-up dinner series, Fat Hen Supper Club. Fighting for cost transparency, Stewart and her team pay their event workers above industry standards. They also spell out the details of the estimated costs of each event upfront for guests to see alongside the suggested donation ticket price (which is not required for entry). Any proceeds are given to local charities such as Journey’s End Refugee Services and Everytown Against Gun Violence, with a new foundation designated each time.
“We wanted it to be financially accessible and also find a way to connect the service within restaurants to service to the community,” Stewart explains. “We’re trying to help clarify to guests the reality of how much it costs to operate, which is one of the major factors that prevents restaurants from raising their prices so they can pay employees more. It’s hard to justify that to the customer when there’s not that transparency in all that goes into getting a plate on your table.” Most restaurant industry workers still rely heavily on tips, which creates a systemic power play between workers, owners and customers in order to offset the lower minimum wage.
While the supper club was put on hold for the past year, Morgan and Fat Hen co-organizer Nate Bailey are re-envisioning what the project will look like in the future, once diners are comfortable convening in person again.
Still, Stewart has more food fights she wants to win.
“I’m going back to school, hopefully, for urban planning,” she says, in hopes of doing research on how restaurants can become better neighbors.
“There is a lot of discussion both in Buffalo and any major city about neighborhood gentrification and the role that restaurants and cafés play in that,” she explains. “I’m really interested in that concept and how restaurants, which should be a space for bringing people together, can also do harm. I’m hoping that if I step out of the kitchen, into a space where I can devote my time to research, I can pull out some tools that can actually help.”
