JON GRAY IS stuck in Miami traffic. Art Basel is raging. The architect of Ghetto Gastro — a culinary collective that uses epicurean live-art happenings as a jumping-off point for social inquiry — is hustling between client meetings, art viewings, and the venue where Ghetto Gastro’s event with luxury watchmaker Audemars Piguet will be held that night. I catch him in the in-between. His voice is gravelly, quite possibly the result of being several days deep into the art-fair bacchanal. But it’s also the natural rhythm of his speech, grounded in his life story, rooted within the pavement of the Bronx.

The foundational ideas underlying the work of Ghetto Gastro are consciousness and the monumentality of Black creation. Each interaction with the collective’s work is an opportunity to spark deeper thought, and conversation around race, inclusion, and economic empowerment. But don’t get it twisted: What they do is pure celebration, designed to bring joy and nourishment to their audiences with transcontinental flavors, knowledge, and style. “Black culture is such a visual culture. The rhythm, it’s the finesse of the overall feeling, of the aura of the world that we want to create,” he tells me.

"We consider ourselves the mouth of the Global South,” Gray says when I ask about Ghetto Gastro’s vision. “We’re rejecting the idea that [cuisine] is all Eurocentric. How do you bring in these other continents, like Asia, the Americas, Africa, and tell these culinary stories?” Their answer is a fusion of art, design, music, and gastronomy of the highest caliber, a melding of the Bronx with the world of luxury, in what he calls “social-sculpture,” referring to the ideas of German artist and theorist Joseph Beuys. Ghetto Gastro’s stated mission is to bring the Bronx to the world and the world to the Bronx. Jon Gray, a self-proclaimed facilitator, breaks through established barriers in order to build new bridges: “I know how to communicate, put teams together, and connect dots to create things that don’t exist,” he says. “That’s my gift.” Almost a decade in, it’s inarguable that the group has thrown the gilded gates of luxury wide open.

In terms of demand, visibility, and cultural influence, it’s been a stratospheric ascent for Ghetto Gastro since its inception in 2012. In addition to the Michelin-tier kitchen credentials of Gray’s partners, master chefs Lester Walker and Pierre Serrao, the group follows a creed of no code-switching and unabashed realness. Do-rags, chains, and Rick Owens draping are a part of their regular uniform — style in the service of “do-rag diplomacy.” The men of Ghetto Gastro confront their audience with confident and innovative American Blackness. Riffing on the primacy of authenticity, Gray says, “I speak with a certain vernacular, I have a certain aura, I move in a certain way, and when you’re thinking about respectability politics, I don’t subscribe to that. I think I’ve been able to be genuine and make some headway.” Their talent and their truth resonate: clients like Cartier, Microsoft, Netflix, and the Metropolitan Museum of Art continue to commission new iterations of their work.

I note the packaging of the Wavy mixes, each a bold and graphic variation of a royal-blue-and-white check pattern. Gray tells me that it’s “inspired by the art of indigo dyeing in the Ogun State of Yorubaland,” thus “tapping into our muse to bring a contemporary take to the market and create a different aesthetic.” The visual choice connects to traditions of diasporic origins.

The making of art and its means of transcending the status quo are a constant theme in the Ghetto Gastro universe. I ask Gray about the art that fuels his imagination. “For me, it’s less about the object that’s the spawn of the creation, and more about the artist, and the practice, and the why,” he says. He mentions artist and social innovator Theaster Gates, who leverages his work to reimagine and revitalize his neighborhood and ignite opportunity on the South Side of Chicago. Another example is artist Lauren Halsey, who deploys her resources for community activation in the Watts neighborhood of Los Angeles. Gray views his work as a multidisciplinary and collaborative approach to building a new model of consumption and civic engagement. Success for him is “not to have to convince white men or people in power that what I care about, places and people, are worth caring about. I want to be able to build the resources within, from my work product, to be able to deploy assets as needed.”