Smalls House Foundation
A Harlem-based cultural institution dedicated to the preservation, celebration, and global understanding of African and African American Diaspora foodways.
The foodways of the African Diaspora are among the most consequential forces in the history of global agriculture, cuisine, and culture.
The techniques, ingredients, knowledge systems, and labor of African and African American people have shaped the way the world eats, across every continent and within every culinary tradition.
And yet these contributions remain systematically underrepresented in formal archives, public institutions, and the canons of culinary and cultural life. Museums overlook them, academic curricula push them to the margins, and the communities who carry this knowledge are rarely the ones who benefit from its value.
Alexander Smalls has spent three decades setting and sitting at tables across five continents, in Harlem apartments and West African open-air markets, in Carolina farmhouses and Lagos kitchens, breaking bread with people who understand food as currency.
This knowledge lives in people, it is passed hand to hand, cook to cook, generation to generation, and every time that transmission is interrupted, something irreplaceable is lost.
What accumulates is an ongoing act of erasure, one that accelerates with every elder who passes without documentation, every recipe lost in an underfunded community kitchen, and every young chef trained to master European technique without ever learning the African agricultural systems that made those ingredients possible.
Smalls House Foundation is here to change this.
"Our food is a currency. When we didn't own ourselves, we owned that dish."
— Alexander Smalls
OUR MISSION
Smalls House Foundation preserves, celebrates, and activates the foodways of the African American and broader African Diaspora as living expressions of history, culture, identity, and creativity. Rooted in Harlem, we bring together chefs, home cooks, scholars, artists, cultural practitioners, and communities to share knowledge, honor traditions, and explore the stories carried through food. Through public programs, storytelling, education, and cultural experiences, we create space for the past to inform the present and inspire the future.
Smalls House Foundation is a Delaware nonprofit corporation recognized as exempt from federal income tax under Section 501(c)(3) of the Internal Revenue Code. During this formative period, the Foundation is fiscally sponsored by the Fund for the City of New York (“FCNY”), which provides agreed-upon administrative and financial support as we build the Foundation’s internal capacity.
Upcoming Programming
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Co-hosted with community partners, featuring live cooking, ingredient storytelling, and interpretation of African American and broader African Diaspora food traditions within their historical and cultural contexts.
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Free or low-cost classes led by guest chefs and cultural practitioners, focused on techniques, recipes, and the cultural meaning behind dishes — with participants actively preparing and tasting food.
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Bringing together chefs, scholars, and cultural leaders to explore topics such as migration, memory, authorship, and the global influence of African Diaspora foodways.
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For chefs, culinary workers, and enthusiasts — including home cooks and emerging, established, and credentialed professionals — focused on translating culinary practice into cultural advocacy, storytelling, and leadership.
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Pairing participants with chefs and practitioners for hands-on learning, skill development, and exposure to professional pathways.
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Curated demonstrations, guest-led dinners, judging of community cooking events, and coaching sessions providing direct interaction with leading practitioners.
Meet the Founder
Smalls House Foundation is led by Alexander Smalls, Founder and Artistic Director — a James Beard Award–winning chef, restaurateur, author, and cultural activist whose work has long operated at the intersection of culinary arts, music, and the heritage of the African Diaspora. His founding board spans philanthropy, corporate, civic, and arts sectors.
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