Lil' Deb's Oasis: Inspired Tropical Eats from an Artist-Powered Kitchen in Hudson, NY
Slightly removed from the spiffed-up commercial artery of one of Upstate New York’s buzziest food cities, Lil’ Deb’s Oasis is not your average farm-to-table Friday night. There’s a warmth and freshness to Hudson’s year-old tropical comfort food fix, and it isn’t just the bright, full-flavored cooking of balmier latitudes (sweet plantains, leche de tigre, callaloo). The restaurant is louder and looser than many of its Warren Street neighbors — and definitely more colorful. There’s poetry on the magnetic menu board and art covering almost every surface, including the floor. The word “restaurant” doesn’t quite capture the energy of what co-founders Hannah Black and Carla Pérez-Gallardo have brought to life. Then again, they never set out to be “chefs.”
For Hannah, an Alabama native and RISD-trained painter, and Carla, a Bard-educated installation artist raised in Queens by Ecuadorian immigrants, restaurant work was, initially, a way to pay the bills post-graduation. They were artists who happened to spend a lot of time in the kitchen, especially as the isolation of the studio and the austerity of the formal gallery system left them craving a more participatory form of expression.
It was a gig at a Vietnamese food truck in Catskill, New York, not an art project, that brought the two of them together, but the creative chemistry was electric. “Carla came on and we just started riffing,” says Hannah. “We’d finish each other’s sentences,” says Carla. “Not having formal training was beneficial to our ability to speak to each other in our own language. There was no fear of doing the wrong thing or having the wrong approach or cutting it the wrong way. That was really freeing.” As they launched a catering operation and began co-creating in earnest, that language, whose building blocks were lime juice and coconut and fresh herbs, absorbed the Latin influences of Carla’s upbringing and Hannah’s stint cooking at Tulúm’s Hartwood. In January 2016, after hosting a pop-up dinner series at a Hudson diner called Debbie’s Lil’ Restaurant, they received an unexpected text message from Debbie, herself. She was ready to retire; would they consider taking over?
With a posse of talented contributing artists and collaborators, Hannah and Carla reimagined the worn-in breakfast joint as a space where they could cultivate the community they’d been missing. “We wanted a place that our friends could come every night,” Hannah says, “and our neighbors down the street.” Within a few months, they were serving pupusas, ceviches, aguas frescas, and natural wines to a diverse clientele that included young artists and low-income families. “I think for me it’s the manifestation of a place that really feels like a home to a lot of people,” says Carla. For those people — staff members and regulars — who now belong to the extended Deb’s family, home is a place where weeknight dinner happens to taste like a dream vacation, and everyone down to the dishwasher is having fun.
Photos by Christian Harder, Words by Nina Cabell Belk