Chantal Smith knows her way around an empanada.

“I can do them one-handed now. I’ve been doing it for so long.” 

What You Need To Know

Chantal Smith has been volunteering with Washington Square Park Mutual Aid for four years

The Queens Village resident cooks a cart full of food to give away each Friday night

She has been volunteering around the city and in New Orleans for decades

The Queens Village resident makes them every week to distribute at Washington Square Park Mutual Aid’s food distribution. 

“It’s just like a wonderful space where we all, like, share and commune and, you know, just really just look out, like, for one another,” she said. 

Community care, as Smith calls it, has always been a part of her life. Growing up, she regularly visited senior homes and hospital patients alongside her parents and classmates.

“Having community care based [on] effort really is what helps you to not just survive, but also to thrive,” Smith said.

She continued to help here and there and then found Washington Square Park Mutual Aid about four years ago.

Smith spends a couple of days cooking for more than 100 people each week in her Queens kitchen. She prepares barbecue stew chicken, potatoes au gratin, macaroni and cheese.

But Smith is best known as “The Empanada Lady.”

“That was such a surprise,” she said. “I was just like, ‘Wait a minute.’ And at first, I thought it was just because they didn’t know my name. And that’s OK. But I do like being known, you know, like, for that, like, in the park.”

And when she’s all done cooking, she hauls her cart of food to Washington Square Park.

“It’s funny how, Friday doesn’t come fast enough, like, for me, until, like, the day comes and then it’s actually going by way too fast,” Smith said as she took the Long Island Rail Road into Manhattan.

“Her food literally helps people get through to the next day and also inspires other people,” Robert Cuffy, who is part of Washington Square Park Mutual Aid, said.

Smith’s efforts aren’t limited to New York. She cooks for women living in a domestic violence shelter in New Orleans when her work as a tattoo artist brings her down south.

“However long my trip is, I spend at least one day making sure that my time is spent giving back to someone else,” she said.

It all goes back to Smith’s idea of caring for the community.

“I just want people to come back again and get, like, another plate. You know, let them know that, like, this food was made with love.”

For bringing community care to the city, Chantal Smith is our New Yorker of the Week.