Nourish Brings the World to Mott Haven's Doorstep

Tomas Ramos embodies what it means to give back to your community.

The Washington Heights native founded and built Oyate Group, a nonprofit organization dedicated to giving back to the Bronx community. Though youth-focused programming and pandemic-relief tactics have been past highlights of the organization’s work, they’ve now set their sights on combatting food insecurity in the South Bronx. Enter Nourish.

Nourish opened for dinner service on August 8. The restaurant is located at the old Chocobar Cortés location on Alexander Avenue, not too far from the Bruckner Expressway. This area is packed with community-driven businesses like Beatstro and The Lit Bar; it’s not too far from the place I grew up, and thus, Nourish is a spot that hits home. And not just for me.

When Chocobar Cortés closed due to a lack of foot traffic and slow business, immediately, Tomas Ramos felt an energy shift.

“Small businesses are the backbone of the community,” Ramos told me. “If you have a storefront that’s closed, you’re going to see crime go up. You’re going to see the energy and the vibrance of the community nonexistent.”

Since founding Oyate Group in 2020, Ramos has been dedicated to uplifting his community however he could—in this case, that meant opening up Nourish.

Nourish is a mission-driven for-profit restaurant owned by Oyate Group, meaning that the goal of the people running the restaurant is the same as the goal of the nonprofit: to alleviate poverty and bring funding back into the Bronx. But the restaurant also has to be sustainable enough so that the money made can funnel back into the nonprofit to support their programs.

During the pandemic, those programs focused on vaccinating Bronxites, increasing ICU capacity for hospitals in the borough, and providing grants for small business relief after many small businesses experienced looting near Fordham Road.

Now, the group hopes to continue to fund their youth programs, which include after-school leadership initiatives, scholarship opportunities provided to Bronx high school students, and an internship program for undocumented youth.

What I like about Nourish is that it puts its money where its mouth is. Ramos doesn’t just claim to be for the community—the restaurant reflects that, starting at the most important place: its menu.

The menu brings culture to the table in a way only a South Bronx restaurant could. The executive chef professionally trained in the Dominican Republic, a background made obvious in the menu’s curation. From Barcelona pulpo (grilled octopus) to hummus with candied pistachios, from ceviche and aguacate y camarones to a pesto gemelli pasta with truffle ricotta, there is something on this menu for everyone, and there is something everyone can afford, too.

Nourish’s happy hour deals start as low as $3 for food and $4 for drinks, and a 90-minute bottomless brunch goes for just $18 per person, a price unheard of in neighboring boroughs. (I almost went to a brunch this past Sunday that would’ve been $55 per person. Almost.)

And the low prices don’t come at the expense of good food. I tried the hummus and the PPG pasta (the pesto gemelli mentioned above) while I was there, and both were quite good. The hummus had a sweet, nutty flavor from the pistachio and a creaminess I loved; the pasta was rich in texture, piping hot, and beautifully colorful. The plate was well-balanced, the richness cut slightly by the ricotta and even more by the cilantro garnish that added a snap of freshness to the dish.

Eating at Nourish felt like eating at the dining table of my childhood home. It’s not that rustic kind of homey food; it’s elevated and elegant, but it’s still imbued with family ties and comfort. It tasted like food made in the Bronx.

“I always say this: Our community deserves good quality food,” Ramos said. “I’m tired of going downtown and spending an arm and a leg for a steak frites. A steak frites could cost $56 in Soho. I want to have affordable, quality food that I don’t have to leave my community for.”

I believe Nourish achieves this. Ramos is a visionary, and as he walked me through the restaurant, showing me the café side—because the place is an all-day café as well, serving coffee and pastries prior to dinner service—and the intricate detail of the bathrooms (which are awesome, by the way. Possibly the coolest restaurant bathrooms I’ve ever seen), I could feel his passion for the community and his desire to keep it afloat. (It being the restaurant and the community. For Ramos, the two are interchangeable.)

Ramos comes from a hospitality background, having worked as a server, a bartender, and eventually a manager at a restaurant in midtown in his twenties. In college, he traveled the world, and (totally in his words!) he came back a hippie. He wanted to bring the same bohemian, free-spirited vibes he felt in places like Costa Rica and Tulum to Alexander Avenue.

“I wanted to make people transform to wherever they wanted to believe they were when they walked into this space,” he said.

According to Ramos, the restaurant turned out exactly as he envisioned it. It has a tropical feel to it. With a green and gold interior, moody lighting, lots of greenery, and an arrangement of wicker and wooden touches, the restaurant is relaxed in an intentional way. As the night went on, the lights dimmed and the music turned up; a cacophony of voices carried through the restaurant. The sound of community coming together.

Within just a month of opening, Nourish has certainly made an impact on the community, but this is only the beginning, and there is a long road ahead. Still, Ramos is hopeful. Having struggled to find his home and community as a young adult, he understands the experience of many Bronx natives who may be hesitant to support a local business.

“It’s difficult for a lot of people in our community who don’t understand that they deserve good things,” Ramos told me.

“It’s really tough to penetrate a population that has been underserved and let down generation after generation. That’s [a cycle] we’re trying to break.”

After the restaurant officially becomes profitable—I have no doubt that it will—Ramos and Oyate Group have plans to curate a workforce development program that will reach out to youth in the South Bronx who are interested in the hospitality industry and give them a chance to train, whether as cooks, front of house employees, or any other part they wish to play in the industry. The program will include a training-to-job pipeline in partnership with New York Hospitality Group.

“I want to create long-term sustainability and continue investing in the community,” Ramos said.

During the two and a half hours I spent at Nourish, I watched people come and go, many saying hi to each other, kissing each other’s cheeks, offering hugs. After our interview, I watched Ramos sit down at the bar and chat with other patrons. The day after my meal, my server found me on Instagram, where we discovered that she’d graduated from the place I got my graduate degree (shout-out The New School).

Nourish is already bringing people together. That’s what food does, but even more, that’s what the Bronx does. This borough has always been all about community. Nourish is feeding off of that (pun intended) and serving it back tenfold.