Prison restaurant in California helps prisoners rehabilitate

In the small kitchen of the restaurant inside Solano State Prison in California, Kamiali Abdulsalam takes the chilled dough to prepare a batch of sugar cookies. He cut the dough into shapes of snowflakes, pine trees and gift boxes, then covered them with red and green decorative beads for this year’s Christmas season.

A few steps away, across the narrow kitchen, Michael Wilson is chopping onions for the Mexican dish pico de gallo. He was recently “promoted”, from the position of washing dishes to making sauces and mixing salads to serve the inmates themselves, as well as the prison supervisor and special guests.

Both are members of the Delancey Street Honors Unit program, a special program launched a decade ago at Solano prison to provide opportunities, purpose in life and skills training for prisoners. The initiative to open a restaurant at this prison appeared later, with the participation of about 80 people living together in a detention area.

The prerequisite for an offender to be accepted into the program is to have no violent behavior and no threats of violence. By agreeing to these two commitments, even the most serious offenders being held at Solano have the opportunity to apply to work in the restaurant.

The management board said that during the 10 years the restaurant “employees” lived in the same detention area, there had never been a single fight.

“I was sentenced to life without parole and lived in despair for a very long time,” Abdulsalam said. “But now, people who a few years ago didn’t even want to shake my hand are willing to spend money to eat my cooking. That humanitarian recognition is more valuable than anything I could have expected.”

Each prisoner in Solano camp has the opportunity to spend money on food once a month at Delancey restaurant. Every day, the restaurant serves 20-50 meals. Restaurant staff are paid $1 per hour, among the highest salaries for prisoners in Solano.

The name “Delancey Street” was inspired by a famous restaurant and program in San Francisco, with the same mission of creating reintegration opportunities for people who have been in prison, are homeless or have just completed drug addiction.

Tobias Gomez, who opened the Delancey facility in Solano, understands the value of the program. At age 28, he almost received a 25-year-to-life sentence for the third serious crime of his life, but a judge gave him a chance to turn his life around and assigned him to the Delancey Street program in San Francisco.

After a decade of learning the restaurant trade and helping run the foundation under the leadership of President and CEO Mimi Silbert, Gomez was placed in charge of the facility in Solano prison. Coming here in 2022, Gomez initially taught only 5 people, then encouraged them to guide others.

“Some people are sentenced to life in prison without parole, with no expiration date, so they have almost no motivation to change. But Delancey Street gives them the opportunity to live a decent life, no matter where they are,” Gomez said.

For Phillip White, the program even has the meaning of life and death. He believes he could have ended his life last year if he hadn’t thought about his commitment to Delancey and his daily work in the kitchen. His wife, Tanisha, died of heart failure in the prison parking lot in 2024, after just visiting him.

“She believed in this program, believed in me and the changes it brought. Every effort I dedicate is also in her memory, because I don’t want her to die in vain. This program saved my life,” White said.

At the age of 57, Shaylor Watson has spent more than half of his life behind bars for murder. Over the past three years, Watson has gradually become one of the restaurant’s managers, his first official job in his life.

“This program helped me break out of the shell that surrounded me. It taught me how to communicate, how to believe in myself, because Delancey believed in me,” Watson said.

Delancey Street also creates a special, rare brotherhood in a prison environment. In addition to restaurant training, some people take crochet classes and spend a whole year making scarves, beanies and teddy bears to give to victims of domestic violence. The Delancey Street Choir plans to sing carols around the prisons on Christmas Day.

For Conrad Johnson, a member of Delancey restaurant for nearly 4 years, the program and the people here were by his side during great losses, when his grandmother and sister passed away but he did not have the chance to see them one last time.

“At Delancey, we help each other face life in a healthy and positive way. Because it’s important to understand that life is not just about life in prison or incarceration. I always say, ‘I am a person in prison, not a person who belongs in prison’. That’s how I live every day,” Johnson said.