Owner/Operator, Mark T. can chart his journeyman’s story through the lens of culture building and food history. He grew up in Lowell, MA during a time of massive immigration and shifting ideas about community.  The 1970’s and 80’s brought a huge Cambodian, Laos, and Vietnamese population to Lowell along with his first taste of something special. A fine arts painting degree from RISD translated into a quick entrance into the professional kitchen via the sinks.  And like any good pot wash he paid enough attention to get himself onto the stoves quickly.  A long and storied education in the kitchens of Portland, OR; Amsterdam, NL; London, UK; as well as years long adventures of making art, cooking, and eating in France and Spain brought him back to NYC over a decade later.  As a former chef, he ate his way through Queens and the rest of the city. As a career changer he joined the ranks in the public school system of the NYCDOE.  He entered as a special education teacher and finally left fifteen years later as an accomplished principal of a middle school in the South Bronx.  The stoves called again and this time he was ready to start to make sense of the long culinary and cultural journey that he had been on for all of those years.  Eat Church is the culmination of that journey.  It functions as an arena for creating opportunities to bring eating and drinking experiences to his new community in the Hudson Valley and beyond.  Chef Mark explains that Eat Church is both a noun (place), an eat church; as well as a verb (command), as in eat the church.