Jorge Guzmán has (chef) friends with benefits

As the definition of ‘chef’ has become elasticised in recent years, the notion of a chef as leader of a kitchen has also expanded. Chefs now frequently depart their home turfs and home kitchens to join forces with other leaders. Chefs are looked to in times of crisis, to feed and to lead. We also look to chefs to inspire. Jorge Guzmán recognises that he leads kitchens in the middle of America staffed with cooks who don’t often have the means or opportunity to travel and garner inspiration from world-class chefs. Guzmán’s enterprises straddle the Midwest with projects in Minneapolis, Minnesota and Dayton, Ohio, an area of 700 miles, bisected by Lake Michigan. So, he brings those chefs to his cooks, to cook alongside them, and simultaneously, to raise funds for missions close to those chefs’ hearts.

The dinner series Guzmán started to do this, cheekily entitled Friends with Benefits, is headquartered at Petite León in Minneapolis, where he’s part-owner. The impetus of the series is to “showcase cuisines of immigrants, Latinx, African Americans, women – groups that have not had the attention they deserve,” says Guzmán. Roughly a hundred diners get to experience this showcase at each benefit.

On an almost breathless high after this month’s collaborative dinner with Jeremy Fox, Guzmán tells me: “Jeremy Fox is one of the kindest people I’ve ever met and his presence alone in our kitchen brought a focused peace to all of us.” I had asked him how the dinner went the night prior, anticipating a rundown of how their disparate cooking styles came together or perhaps highlighting the success of a dish like Fox’s pork blood kishka with hoshigaki. Instead, Guzmán speaks of peace.

_{Claudette Zepeda and Jorge Guzmán. Photo: Eliesa Johnson}

Guzmán started cooking as a teenager 25 years ago in St. Louis, Missouri, thrown into a traditional French kitchen by a friend’s food purveyor father. It doesn’t take much of a stretch of the imagination to conjure up how this path would not have been simple for a child whose familial roots stretch far down south, to the Yucatán.

“Mexican food was considered cheap before Enrique Olvera. And it’s hard to find African American food in a fine-dining setting.” While perceptions are changing, Guzmán insists, “It’s always been the same food.”

As Guzmán speaks of the stories of the chefs he’s brought to Friends with Benefits, one can detect echoes of his own experiences.

“We started [Friends with Benefits] with Chef Cleo [Hethington]. He was named a James Beard Foundation Rising Star Chef in 2022 and at the awards, he happened to be sitting in front of me and I said ‘hello.’ He had the same story as all of us – it was hard to get noticed depending on the colour of our skin, our circumstances, even the food we cook.”

_{Eliesa Johnson}

Friends with Benefits continued, and its second iteration heralded a promotion within the ranks of Guzmán’s own kitchen, that of George Pramatarov, who headlined a Bulgarian dinner.

With the third dinner, featuring Claudette Zepeda, S.Pellegrino came on as a sponsor and the series continued to evolve, staying true to several tenets: the guest chef decides the charity that all net proceeds from the dinner will be donated to. It’s up to the guest chef to facilitate the donation; and the resulting menu is a conversation between Petite Leon and the guest chef, and the conversation weaves between alternating courses.

The conversation begins over email. “I’ll take courses 1 and 3 and you take 2 and 4,” explains Guzmán. Fox’s dinner opened with his amuse of matzo with gribenes and truffles and his first course of beets and smoked trout, leading into a second course of smoked lengua with caraway crackers, kraut and charred pickles by Guzmán and the Petite Leon team, who riff on the style and preferred flavours of the guest chef. Guzmán tries to take as much pressure off the guest chef as possible, providing staff for prep.

Fox’s dinner benefited Save the Children, Cleophus Hethington’s benefited Equal Exchange, George Pramatarov’s proceeds went to Green Card Voices, and Claudette Zepeda’s benefited Viva la Vida, a venture she founded in 2019 to assist the microbusinesses of single mothers throughout Mexico in importing their heirloom ingredients to the US.

_{Eliesa Johnson}

But it’s not all work when guest chefs land in Minneapolis to cook at Friends with Benefits.

“Claudette was here for four days and Cleo, too. Claudette came to my house, my wife gave her a massage, we went out to dinner and then we prepped with the team,” laughs Guzmán. “I make sure chefs have a goodie basket when they arrive – I got Jeremy Fox Cool Ranch Doritos and Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups after I called his wife and asked what he liked. These chefs travel so much and it’s nice to bring them something that reminds them of home.”

Guzmán also takes his guest chefs out on the town in Minneapolis. “With Cleo, we bounced around a lot. We went to Owamni and then to Matt’s.”

“Matt’s?” I ask for clarification. “Is that where you get a Juicy Lucy?” As an East Coaster who has only been to Minneapolis exactly once, even I had experienced the wonders of a Juicy Lucy, a burger stuffed with a molten core of melted cheese. It’s very good.

“Yes! The classic cheeseburger spot,” exclaims Guzmán.

_{Eliesa Johnson}

Back at Petite Leon, Guzmán observes of his kitchen team: “I think it’s good for them to see other chefs of this calibre. A lot of times, we don’t have the money to go stage with chefs like Claudette, who are also at the point in their careers where they’re not cooking every day and it’s nice to get them into the kitchen. We really revere these chefs.”

Finally, I ask Guzmán how else he sheds light on culture and race through the Friends with Benefits dinners.

“That’s the next stage of our dinners. Right now, it’s just been about the food. We need to find some forum or hold a discussion on why the chef is here. We need to talk about the difficulties of being a certain race or coming from a certain background and how it has affected their lives. We need to find another creative way to talk and show and do something besides dinner.”

_{Neil Bertucci}

Guzmán emphasises the importance of bringing outside chefs to Minneapolis. “We’re trying to become a top-tier food city and push the dining scene. Bringing in other amazing chefs helps you do that. I’m really thankful that they’re willing to come, take time out of their lives and that means a lot to us.”

Next up for Friends with Benefits is a dinner with Lamar Moore on 4 December. Moore is clearly on the same wavelength as Guzmán, telling me, “[This is] my reason for cooking. I enjoy being able to cook with other fellow chefs and [highlight] what it means to give back in our community.”