15 June 15 - 21, 2023 dallasobserver.com DALLAS OBSERVER Classified | MusiC | dish | Culture | unfair Park | Contents Gaining Momentum Chef Chad Houser and his crew at Café Momentum concoct a recipe for helping teens in the justice system succeed. BY LAUREN DREWES DANIELS A couple of years ago, things weren’t looking great for Carlos. The Dal- las teen was “involved” with the justice system and had a hard time controlling his temper. Carlos, now 18, joined Café Momen- tum’s yearlong paid internship program about a month ago. The program offers training, education and services to young men and women who have been arrested or detained in the juvenile justice system. It offers access to a full educational curricu- lum providing paths to high-school gradua- tion, along with workforce development, 24/7 case management and mental-health services. Each year the organization works with 60 to 80 young men and women. Early on, Carlos worked as a server at the upscale downtown restaurant, but now he mostly prefers back-of-the-house assignments, where he works with Ken- neth, one of the staff members at Café Momentum. “I’m back there with somebody that’s older, and he shows me what to do, and we just chill and talk. We might just listen to music, but yeah, I’d rather be back there,” Carlos says with a little laugh. The internship has taught Carlos pa- tience. He says he’s learned that as long as you have patience with people, they’ll calm down. And while he might not see himself in the restaurant industry over the long run (he’d like to learn to be a barber and eventu- ally own his own shop), being here now is important to him. “Everyone here is respectful,” Carlos says, talking about both staff and customers. “It kind of teaches me how to be more re- spectful. They’re respecting me already. It makes me want to be respectful.” Carlos says the leadership team at Cafe Momentum values him. It’s palpable. “They’re not so worried about money. I feel like they want to see us. They’re nice, and they care about you,” he says. Last week, Carlos graduated from high school, something until recently he thought he wouldn’t be able to do. The Cafe Momen- tum staff hired a photographer to go take photos of Carlos in his cap and gown — just like anyone would for any other kid. S uch wins in the juvenile justice system are hard-fought and rare, but Café Momen- tum’s model is resoundingly working. Re- cently, founder Chad Houser was recognized with an award by the National Council of Ju- venile and Family Court Judges (NCJFCJ) for his success in breaking the cycle of incarcera- tion and violence for young people in the juve- nile justice system. Two more locations of Café Momentum have opened this year, with a goal of 10 markets over the next five years and 50 markets in 25 years. Not being taken into custody again isn’t a win for the program’s interns — it’s the ex- pectation. But how did Houser, a kid who grew up splitting time between Allen and Pleasant Grove and went on to become a chef, create a successful juvenile justice pro- gram? His journey down that road started years be- fore he was born. Houser’s mom, Cindy Nelson, graduated from W.W. Samuell High School in Pleasant Grove in 1973. She was a freshman when the high school began to integrate. “As they began to bus Black stu- dents into Samuell, that area of Pleasant Grove began to experi- ence white flight,” Houser recalls. “But my grandparents didn’t leave. They stayed in Pleasant Grove.” Houser, who was born in 1975, grew up spending weekends at his grandparents’ house. While his mom and grandmother sewed, he ran around in his grandfather’s garden. “It also meant I was running around and playing with kids in the neighborhood who were predominantly Black. It also meant that I would see the effects of institutional racism or systemic racism, inequitable wages and so forth,” he says. It wasn’t uncommon for his grandfather to hook up a hose to the kitchen sink and run warm water through a window, over the fence and into the neighbor’s backyard to fill up a kiddie pool because the neighbor couldn’t pay the water bill that month. That’s also how the two kids next door were able to bathe at times. Houser and his mom lived in Allen, north of Plano, which was then a small but growing suburb. “It was very white, very middle class, so I lived in these two different worlds,” Houser says. “They weren’t the same.” Fast-forward to 2007. Houser took out a loan and sold his house to buy the upscale restaurant Parigi’s in Uptown. One day in 2008, he was invited to help teach eight young men in ju- venile detention how to make ice cream. “And the moment I met those eight young men, I was ashamed because I real- ized I had stereotyped them and labeled them before I’d ever met them. And I was wrong. And I think the cause of that shame was that I knew better,” Houser says. “I was raised better. I saw. I knew. But I still defaulted. I was ashamed enough to be hum- bled. And I was humbled enough to listen.” And listen he did. Those eight young men told him exactly “who they were, how they were and why they were,” Houser recalls. Two days after that initial meeting, the group competed against culinary college students in an ice cream-making contest and one of them won the whole competition. “He’s so excited, and at first he said to me, ‘I just love to make food and give it to people and put a smile on their face.’ I don’t think I’ve ever heard a human being de- scribe their heart more beautifully. He said when he got out he was going to get a job in a restaurant and asked me if he should work at Wendy’s or Chili’s.” Driving home that evening, Houser went from being proud, inspired and motivated to sad, angry and frustrated. He realized that the young men were going back to all of the same things that led them to where they were. “Nothing changes. He doesn’t go back to resources all of a sudden, right?” Houser says. “He doesn’t go back to a therapist and food in the fridge and transportation access and all of these things.” He started to think about his own life at 16 years old versus the young man who won the competition. It was the first time that Houser saw what privilege was and how it manifests. He realized quickly that while the main dif- ference between him and them at 16 was skin color, it was also their socioeconomic class, the part of town they were born in, resources, education and healthcare. “It was the idea that at 16 years old, I was given every opportunity over and over and over again to succeed, and then every opportu- nity to fail and get up and try again. And that wasn’t the world that he lived in,” he says. Houser had a choice. Just keep moving forward and going about his life in | CITY OF ATE | t Dish Kathy Tran Chef du cuisine Aaron Collins offers a new dish for the interns (Trevion, Emanuel, Erin and Bryan) to taste and discuss. >> p16 Kathy Tran A lobster pasta dish at Café Momentum
