GARDEN OF EAT’N: SOUL-FILLING FOOD AND SAFE SPACES

Author/Painter Mark M. Braunstein (Author of  RADICAL VEGETARIANISM: a Dialectic of Diet & Ethic) wrote the following in a review on Happy Cow,  a vegetarian review site about Springfield’s Garden of Eat’n.  

Garden of Eat’n is a welcoming oasis in Springfield’s nutritional desert. You might be dissuaded by its location on a busy intersection across from a gas station and next door to a second-hand shop in a rundown second-hand part of town.

The Garden’s front façade may be mistaken for an empty storefront, but inside is what counts. Zephrin (the chef) and Damahya are both welcoming and outgoing. Zeph will even  ‘Thank you for hanging out with us‘.

It was wonderful to talk with Zeph and listen to him philosophize about food. Best of all was hanging out with his food! This is vegan food that ventures beyond conventional newbie veganism. This is wholly whole-food veganism, food that is both delicious and nutritious. Repeat, and nutritious!

No white flour, no white sugar, no white tofu. No protein isolates or devitalized wheat gluten that is whiter than white flour. So no mock meats that make a mockery of veganism.

The Garden of Eat’n is a neighborhood all-organic, all-vegan cafe specializing in electric foods that heal the mind, body, and soul is owned by the father/daughter team Zephrin and Damahya Mongroo.

Damahya says the business was started by Zephrin, who collaborated with people who saw a need for a fitness facility focused on physical and mental health about five to six years ago. Dahmaya has been involved in several capacities and has taken a full-time role in running the Garden.

“The name Garden of Eat’n is a spin on getting back to nature and the food that our ancestors once used to eat,” says Damahya. “We model our teachings after the late Alfredo Darrington Bowman, better known as Dr. Sebi, a Honduran herbalist healer who practiced in the United States in the late 20th and early 21st centuries.”

Dr. Sebi enhanced the world’s knowledge and fascination with the value of the natural plant-based food resources of the world and their healing value. Damahya continues,  “Dr. Sebi popularized what it means to eat alkaline foods, and so if you think about the pH scale, you have alkaline and you have an acidic, two very different sides of the spectrum. When you eat alkaline food, that means you’re eating food that’s high in oxygen. When the body is well-oxygenated, the disease cannot thrive. The popular consensus is that the black community is plagued by disease. Two factors – obviously stress, You know the everyday stresses of being a black person in America, and then food,  the other biggest cause of disease.”

“So we’re here to change the narrative around healthy eating,” says Dahmaya. “We’re here to change the narrative around what we put in our mouth and how that manifests itself in different ways throughout our body.”  

Garry Porter, a regular at the Garden of Eat’n who co-owns the African Diaspora Mental Health Association along with Minister David Lewis, explains how critical the alkaline-foods restaurant is to the work he does at the ADMA.

“Many times we have children that come in, whose parents are really concerned and they’ve been diagnosed, or they believe they have ADHD because we know the importance of food before we even think about asking our medication prescriber to prescribe them medication – we will send them to the Garden and have them speak to either Zephrin or Damahya to talk about how their children are presenting. Quite often, by the time they have a conversation with Zephrin and Damahya, and they change the diet in the home, what they believe was ADHD, subsides. It really examines the importance of food and what we’re putting in our bodies and how that affects our mental health.”

“Originally, we started with a fitness facility upstairs, which organically evolved into the current restaurant,” says Dahmaya.  “The food piece came out of that, so when we talk about health and Wellness – a lot of times fitness was at the forefront of the conversation; however, the truth is that it’s 80% nutrition and 20% fitness. Thus, to get results on the fitness side, there was a need to encourage everyone coming through the door to change their diet which became a challenge; because many of our customers either didn’t know how to prepare the food or didn’t have the means to do so for a myriad of reasons.”  

The Garden began serving lunches and dinners to a small group of clients upstairs. The owners then realized both a need and a market for the meals created. Damahya adds, “Ironically, five years ago, half of the world didn’t even know what the term vegan or plant-based was – so we realize there is a need for healthy eating in our community. So we moved downstairs into the space where we are now.”   

Damahya continues, “Not only are we encouraging people to change their diets, but to also participate in the conversations.” 

Garry Porter adds, “You know, when we talk about self-esteem, a lot of the people that we see are somewhat obese, and they’ve been genuinely trying for many, many years to lose weight. We found that the Garden of Eat’n has been a good partner to the African Diaspora Mental Health Association because they educate. We’ve seen how our clients’ self-esteem arises as their body weight drops. I contribute that to a lot of the education that they received from the Garden in terms of the conversations. I regard this place as a place where Afro-people/people of color can come and have what we call emotional emancipation, where we can actually have a conversation in private amongst ourselves and be extremely honest about what’s going on in our community. So for all those reasons, I come here to n of Eat’n, and I would ask anybody that is an African to come here and take in this experience.”

Damahya offers: “We encourage dialogue here to help change the mindset of the black community and the community at large. We’re here to promote togetherness and unity, and so food is an awesome way to do that.”

Anthony Porter, a regular at the Garden, lives around the corner, “So it’s totally convenient,” he says. “I have a 100% alkaline diet. I’ve been a vegan now for 20 years. It’s perfect to have this place in my backyard. I eat here on a regular. I know the food is organic, and I know it’s good for me.” 

Anthony continues,  “You can get other so-called vegan restaurants, but they really don’t know much about what they’re doing. Often, it’s not alkaline; it’s food that your body really doesn’t want in it. I prefer coming somewhere where I know they know what they’re talking about and getting the food that my body needs. I prefer coming here because I know when I am full, my body will be full.”

Damahya says: “One of the things that I tell new customers when they come in here is that you’re always going to leave learning something. So we have conscious regulars that are also invested in elevating the community. So if one of us from the kitchen or the front is not leading a conversation, that’s, you know, teaching someone something, we can count on someone sitting at the table to lead a discussion. Sometimes we fight about who’s going to go out and talk to people because you meet so many people and learn something from people who come through the door.”

Kayo Mason, an employee at the Garden, says she has been employed there for a few years. Mason says she started in the cafe and eventually worked her way up to running the detox department.  

Then there is Moe, a young man who says he’s been working at the Garden for a while. Moe says he started by simply helping Zephrin when the Garden was short-staffed. Moe says he does most of the day-to-day stuff, such as prepping breakfast in the morning and getting lunch ready.

Brianna Henry, the front girl for the Garden, says she’s been working here on and off for almost a year. She says, “I’ve moved around to a lot of different departments, and so I got to learn a little bit about the overall goal for the cafe. My role is to provide people with information on the meals we serve. So for example, when we give people their meals, we want them to know that afternoon you want to wait at least an hour before having any fluids, even though we give them spring water with each meal it’s recommended that they don’t eat them together. So when customers come in here, that’s a little bit of a fun fact we like to give them. Also, we sell sea moss here along with other herbs and products. And so when I sell that to customers, I also let them know the recommended way to prepare it. So, for example, with customers who buy sea moss, we let them know that they will need to soak it in spring water and rinse off the excess salt that they need to blend it with a pretty strong blender. We always recommend the Vitamix, a good blender for sea moss, because it could overpower their blender. We do our best to give them information on all of the uses for sea moss.”

Henry says, I’m also interested in the vegan lifestyle, so I like to learn about people, journeys, and how they get here and hopefully give them a little bit more encouragement as to how they can transition into the vegan lifestyle without feeling burdened by the barrier of what to eat. Or what herbs to take. So I would say that the Garden is that one-stop- and the employees here work together to give everyone a whole experience.  

Damahya says one of the things we pride ourselves on is hiring young people, and so everyone that works here is high school age or in their 20s because, you know, it’s easy to change and to influence young people, and that’s one of the things that we pride ourselves on.  

“I’m young myself. There are so many things that I’ve been able to learn about people about running a small business, being professional, customer service, and understanding what it means to give people an experience and having your hand in that. That is something that we pride ourselves on.”

“Our hope is when these young people complete their work here, they will go out and make the world a better place and be able to say these are some of the things that I’ve learned at the Garden that are universal and can be applied anywhere.”

The Garden of Eat’n is located at 439 White Street in Springfield, MA, and is open Monday through Friday from 8:00 AM to 7:00 PM and on Saturdays from 11:00 AM to 3:00 PM.  

Podcast:

Employees of the Garden host a podcast called “She Thinks She Knows”. The podcast is hosted on all streaming podcast platforms such as Apple, Spotify, Google Podcasts, and YouTube. Follow Garden of Eat’n on Facebook: gardenofeatnspringfield and on Instagram: gardenofeatn1.