DJ COMMUNITY

Anthony Mackie: Actor Turned Bartender Turned Chef

*Actor Anthony Mackie is trading in the scripts for a whole new career as a bar tender and chef. Yes, that’s right. He’s opening NoBar on Nostrand Avenue in Bed-Stuy.

In an interview with Grub Street, he shared about his new passion for food and business. Right off the plane from Italy, he said the food was better at home in Brooklyn.

“In Italy, I was expecting more from the food. I’m actually kinda disappointed. The film festival people had us go to all these movie-star type places and that wasn’t too impressive. They really like the buffet over there, don’t they? The unpretentious places in the villages are probably better, but they wanted to keep it all fancy. You can’t compare anything to New Orleans, so I’m going to go with Brooklyn for sure. Brooklyn is the best for everything. Once the dollar went down, Manhattan became Europe’s playground, so now all my friends hang in Brooklyn.”

As a result of his “fancy” experience, he wants his friends, family, and common folks to go out and enjoy a good meal without the extra expenses and unnecessary flare.

Mackie commented that he wants to see folks have a good time and be satisfied.

It’s already unusual that he’ll be cooking up the recipes and bartending himself; so there is no question about what sets his place apart from the rest. But he says the food will be cheap.

“I’m going to be bartending every night for the next week and a half, and then ongoing from there. I would make Tom Cruise very jealous. Cocktail, Top Gun, all those early movies from when he was a cool dude, he inspired me! And in the kitchen, it’s 100 percent my recipes. I fucking love my food. Like, for my barbecue meatballs in pita-pockets, I do a blend of meat. I don’t just do ground beef or ground turkey, and it’s my own homemade barbecue sauce with honey, and other things I won’t tell you. Oh, and yeah, it’s five bucks.”

An ambitious move indeed, but Mackie made it clear that his life is not to be programmed by the norms. He has goals and dreams and this is one he plans to see come into fruition.

Read the full story at NewYork.GrubStreet.com.