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Stratis Morfogen of Brooklyn Chop House restaurant delivers to hospitals while planning for the future

His cross-cultural dumplings will have a new home in an automat-style setting

Bret Thorn, Senior Food Editor

May 13, 2020

1 Min Read
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Brooklyn Chop House was doing great business when 2020 started. The restaurant, which contrary to its name is located in lower Manhattan, has a menu that combines a steakhouse and a Chinese restaurant, and its cross-cultural dumplings — stuffed with matzoh ball soup, gyro meat and many other unexpected fillings — had garnered a cult following and sales were surpassing the expectations of owner Stratis Morfogen.

Of course that all changed with the onset of the coronavirus pandemic.

 

Until then, Brooklyn Chop House, a fine dining restaurant, had only done limited off-premise business, in the form of room service-style delivery to three surrounding high-rises. But Morfogen decided to stay open for takeout and delivery to keep some of his staff employed. And while he was at it, he started delivering meals to hospitals.

The hospitals responded with social media posts that turned into media coverage that turned into donations from other restaurants and suppliers.

By the end of April, Brooklyn Chop House had served 8,000 meals to 16 hospitals, as well as to first responders.

In this video, Morfogen discusses those deliveries, his plans to open an automat-style restaurant called Brooklyn Dumpling Shop in late summer, and the importance of environmentally friendly packaging.

He also has some choice words for public companies that took Paycheck Protection Program loans.

Contact Bret Thorn at [email protected] 

Follow him on Twitter: @foodwriterdiary

About the Author

Bret Thorn

Senior Food Editor, Nation's Restaurant News

Senior Food & Beverage Editor

Bret Thorn is senior food & beverage editor for Nation’s Restaurant News and Restaurant Hospitality for Informa’s Restaurants and Food Group, with responsibility for spotting and reporting on food and beverage trends across the country for both publications as well as guiding overall F&B coverage. 

He is the host of a podcast, In the Kitchen with Bret Thorn, which features interviews with chefs, food & beverage authorities and other experts in foodservice operations.

From 2005 to 2008 he also wrote the Kitchen Dish column for The New York Sun, covering restaurant openings and chefs’ career moves in New York City.

He joined Nation’s Restaurant News in 1999 after spending about five years in Thailand, where he wrote articles about business, banking and finance as well as restaurant reviews and food columns for Manager magazine and Asia Times newspaper. He joined Restaurant Hospitality’s staff in 2016 while retaining his position at NRN. 

A magna cum laude graduate of Tufts University in Medford, Mass., with a bachelor’s degree in history, and a member of Phi Beta Kappa, Thorn also studied traditional French cooking at Le Cordon Bleu Ecole de Cuisine in Paris. He spent his junior year of college in China, studying Chinese language, history and culture for a semester each at Nanjing University and Beijing University. While in Beijing, he also worked for ABC News during the protests and ultimate crackdown in and around Tiananmen Square in 1989.

Thorn’s monthly column in Nation’s Restaurant News won the 2006 Jesse H. Neal National Business Journalism Award for best staff-written editorial or opinion column.

He served as president of the International Foodservice Editorial Council, or IFEC, in 2005.

Thorn wrote the entry on comfort food in the Oxford Encyclopedia of Food and Drink in America, 2nd edition, published in 2012. He also wrote a history of plated desserts for the Oxford Companion to Sugar and Sweets, published in 2015.

He was inducted into the Disciples d’Escoffier in 2014.

A Colorado native originally from Denver, Thorn lives in Brooklyn, N.Y.

Bret Thorn’s areas of expertise include food and beverage trends in restaurants, French cuisine, the cuisines of Asia in general and Thailand in particular, restaurant operations and service trends. 

Bret Thorn’s Experience: 

Nation’s Restaurant News, food & beverage editor, 1999-Present
New York Sun, columnist, 2005-2008 
Asia Times, sub editor, 1995-1997
Manager magazine, senior editor and restaurant critic, 1992-1997
ABC News, runner, May-July, 1989

Education:
Tufts University, BA in history, 1990
Peking University, studied Chinese language, spring, 1989
Nanjing University, studied Chinese language and culture, fall, 1988 
Le Cordon Bleu Ecole de Cuisine, Cértificat Elémentaire, 1986

Email: [email protected]

Social Media:
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/bret-thorn-468b663/
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/bret.thorn.52
Twitter: @foodwriterdiary
Instagram: @foodwriterdiary

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