For the first time in his life, a New Yorker in his late 70s was able to take his entire family out to dinner.

On September 19, on a quiet, tree-lined street on Manhattan’s Lower East Side, he and his family joined 60 others at Community Kitchen, a sliding-scale fine dining nonprofit restaurant, launched by former New York Times columnist and food justice advocate Mark Bittman.

The restaurant’s two-month pilot, housed in the Lower Eastside Girls Club, aims to welcome guests from varying economic means to experience artfully prepared meals at a price they can afford, sourced directly from farmers in the region. In doing so, the Community Kitchen team aims to build a model founded on the belief that healthy, delicious food should be accessible to all, and that it doesn’t need to come at the cost of fair labor or environmental compromises—–from the farmer tending the soil, to the hostess welcoming guests, to the diner from the local neighborhood.

The chance for folks of all income levels to gather in one place and eat high-quality food, such as the local man who brought his family to the restaurant, is “a big deal,” says Community Kitchen Culinary Director, Chef Mavis-Jay Sanders, who won a 2022 James Beard Leadership Award as the director of culinary development at the Philadelphia-based nonprofit Drive Change.

“To help give somebody that sense of pride—that they can take care of and feed their family well. To offer a space where people can have celebratory moments where they’re held and taken care of in community,” is a reward unto itself Sanders says.