Chef Phil Jones

Back in the kitchen.

Surgery and retirement have reshaped how I work — not whether I work. The craft doesn't retire. Neither does the responsibility I feel to keep feeding this city well.

What's different this time is how deliberately I'm building it. Carron — a nutritionist who spent nearly fifteen years with WIC serving Detroit families — isn't in the background of jonesHOMEMADE. She's at the center of it, bringing real nutrition expertise into recipes that still have to taste like home. That partnership is the foundation of everything coming out of this kitchen now.

This week marks the return: a focused, four-cookie preorder menu, built for pickup.

• Red Clay Cookie
• The Pickett Cowboy Cookie
• Ginger Peanut Butter Cookie
• Snickerdoodle Cookie

$5 each / $15 four-pack. Preorder only, ordering closes Friday at noon, pickup only this weekend.

Order: https://jones-urban-foods.square.site

Feeding people has always meant more to me than any title I've held. Glad to be back at it.

The work is shifting, but it has not stopped.

As I move through retirement, recovery from my CABG/open-heart procedure, and the rebuilding of my creative and food work, I’m also helping bring the next chapter of The Black Food Project to life.

The TBFP website is being built now, and jonesHOMEMADE is one of the first product lines under that larger vision.

jonesHOMEMADE is rooted in food, flavor, memory, culture, family, Detroit foodways, and the kind of kitchen work that carries a story forward. It reflects my work as a chef, but it also reflects the partnership Carron and I have been building together. Carron, my wife and co-founder, brings her nutrition background, her care work with mothers and families, and her deep belief that food can be practical, healing, and full of love.

While the website is being built, we launched a limited 10-day Bonfire campaign with jonesHOMEMADE shirts, hoodies, and other swag.

This is a way to support the work while the larger platform comes together.

If you are local, come see us Saturdays from 11 AM to 3 PM at Oakland Avenue Urban Farm and the Oakland Avenue Farmers Market, except Labor Day weekend.

If you are not in Detroit, this Bonfire campaign gives you a way to support from wherever you are.

Buy something.
Share the link.
Help us move the work forward.

Wear the work.

https://www.bonfire.com/joneshomemade-classic-tee-gold-on-black/?utm_source=copy_link&utm_medium=campaign_details_share&utm_campaign=joneshomemade-classic-tee-gold-on-black&utm_content=default

jonesHOMEMADE CLASSIC TEE - GOLD ON BLACK | Bonfire The kitchen is open - wear the movement. . jonesHOMEMADE is a Detroit kitchen rooted in ancestral foodways, neighborhood stories, and the belief that what you eat is ...

The Black Food Project website is being built, but the work is already moving.

While the site comes together, I’m launching a limited 10-day Bonfire campaign for jonesHOMEMADE shirts, hoodies, and swag.

jonesHOMEMADE is one of the first product lines under The Black Food Project — rooted in flavor, memory, culture, Detroit foodways, and the kind of kitchen work that carries a story forward.

We are in a real financial bind, and this campaign helps us bridge the gap while the larger platform is being built.

Buy if you can.
Share if you can’t.
Help keep the fire lit.

jonesHOMEMADE CLASSIC TEE - GOLD ON BLACK | Bonfire The kitchen is open - wear the movement. . jonesHOMEMADE is a Detroit kitchen rooted in ancestral foodways, neighborhood stories, and the belief that what you eat is ...

The crew at Oakland Avenue Urban Farm gave me a timeline this week: three weeks until green tomatoes.

I want to talk about why that matters — and why it matters in a particular way for this community.

Fried green tomatoes are one of those dishes that got credited to one tradition and quietly borrowed from several others. They appear in American cookbooks as far back as the 1800s — in Northern kitchens as much as Southern ones — rooted in the same farm logic that has always governed Black and working-class cooking: nothing goes to waste, and the season tells you what to cook. When the frost comes and the tomatoes aren't ripe, you fry what you have. That's not a regional quirk. That's food sovereignty in practice.

Oakland Avenue Urban Farm is one of the places in this city where that tradition stays alive — where urban agriculture connects Detroit to a longer story about land, community, and who gets to eat well. When those green tomatoes come in three weeks, I want to put them in your hands with the full context of what you're holding.

The jonesHOMEMADE Farm Fry Kit does that. The Ember & Earth Fry Mix inside draws on sorghum flour — a grain with West African and Gullah Geechee roots that traveled to this country the hard way and stayed because it was worth keeping. The kit includes flaxseed so plant-based cooks have a full path in. Poppable sorghum as a garnish that carries its own history. Printed instructions. A surprise from our kitchen.

And for those who think frying is the only thing a green tomato knows how to do — our Early Harvest Focaccia is coming alongside it, and it will show you something different. Because food literacy means knowing every door a ingredient can open, not just the most obvious one.

$15. Oakland Avenue Farmers Market or DM. The Substack has the deeper story — link in bio.
— Chef Phil Jones

The Black Food Project · jonesHOMEMADE · Detroit, MI
https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=61573566833321

Behold the birth of a legend. Join Chef X and myself Sunday June 28, 2026 at the Eastern Market Partnership - Shed 5

Our team is proudly entering the battle! We're joining forces with Xaviar Jaramillo and his group to present The Island Boy!

Expect delicious beyond comparison and excellence unparalleled. This union of island sense and Caribbean flavors will be a force!

See you there, June 28 at the Eastern Market Shed 5!

What the Nervous System Needs Part Two of “The Fire Alarm Keeps Ringing” Series

https://chefphiljones56.substack.com/p/the-food-slushie-manifesto

The Food Slushie Manifesto How seductive food systems sell sickness as sweetness—and what we must do to reclaim the truth.

Turnout is brisk! Do your part. Vote!