Meet
Chef Tye.
cook · neighbor · own boss
Born and raised in Brooklyn. Started Soul Tye in 2021. Cooks every plate herself. Hires from her own block.
For thirteen years, Tyeisha Odom worked retail. And for thirteen years, she felt like she was supposed to be doing something else.
When the pandemic hit in 2020, she got the pause she didn't know she needed. She'd loved cooking since her grandmother taught her — and she'd kept teaching herself, picking up techniques on YouTube and in her own kitchen. By 2021, she had a name, a license, and a corner.
Today you'll find her at Bridge & York Street in Brooklyn — the seam where DUMBO meets Vinegar Hill, a few blocks from where she was raised. She sets up in front of the Farragut Houses she grew up around. Tourists wandering off the Brooklyn Bridge end up at her stand by accident. Neighbors come on purpose.
Tye basically cooks everything herself. Her assistants — David, Jayshawn, and Niguel — are all from the neighborhood. That's on purpose. The food is soul food, but the kitchen is also African, Latino, Caribbean — wherever a flavor she loves comes from.
The menu changes every week. The mission doesn't: hand-cooked food, served with love, served to her people.
”I like to cook. I like the results.
”I want to be able to not just give good food back — I want to help my community, because I love my community and I love my people.
”I want to continue being my own boss. That's my goal. And I want to continue creating a menu that is unique from anybody else's.
Hired from the block.
“Soul Tye, the corner food stand changing taste buds and lives.”
— Karen Juanita Carrillo, New York Amsterdam News, November 14, 2024
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