Hood Chef Brings Gourmet Hip Hop Cuisine To Borough Park

In what could possibly be the strangest thing to come out of the heavily Hasidic hood of Borough Park, the Funhouse Food Spot is a non-kosher, Hip Hop-inspired destination restaurant that apparently opened sometime last year.

The chatter surrounding the Funhouse was that it had started out as some kind of Hip Hop artist colony run by Hector Vazquez a.k.a. Savito a.k.a. Hood Chef. In 2007, the Kensington native sought Internet fame with regularly uploaded Youtube videos documenting his daily dining experiences, along with collaborators Brooklyn T, O da Butcher, and DJ Laser.

From Slums.Boxden.com:

Ironically, it wasn’t the things happening outside of his humble apartment that would bring notice, but the stroke of genius brought on by necessity and survival. Instead of buying a large pizza pie to feed himself and his fellow “Fun House” squatters, Hood Chef decided to take their collected $15 and buy groceries for him to cook and feed the plenty. From this one spark came a ritual of after-hours dining and Youtube cooking segments that would spawn a 200 kid, gang-like cult called 4Fun raised on rice and beans, kobe (sic) beef burgers, cilantro laced skirt steak sandwiches, and now the ever famous Tiger Sandwich.

In 2011, Hood Chef decided to step up his game with a bona fide eatery that would aim to put the urban back in urbane. According to what we’ve read about it, the project seems to be a success – reportedly serving simple yet surprisingly sophisticated cuisine in a casual and friendly atmosphere.

The Funhouse Food Spot is located at 3712 13th Avenue, near 37th Street in Borough Park.