Berber Street Food

New York, NY

Address

100 Pearl St, New York, NY, 10004

Website

berberstreetfood.com

About Berber Street Food

Berber Street Food is a pan-African restaurant inside The Hungry Pearl food hall at 100 Pearl Street in downtown Manhattan, proudly Black women owned and operated. It was founded in 2018 by Chef Diana Tandia, who grew up in Mauritania drawing on Berber, Fulani, and Senegalese heritage, and who trained in some of New York's most demanding kitchens, including Daniel Boulud, Gramercy Tavern, and Mandarin Oriental, before striking out on her own. The restaurant started as a small West Village operation before Tandia partnered with co-founder Jie Gao, a former customer who left careers in Wall Street and tech to help grow the business, and the two eventually moved the concept into its current Financial District food hall home. The menu is built around chef-led, whole-ingredient cooking with bold, layered flavors drawn from across the African diaspora, and it accommodates halal, gluten-free, and vegan diners without treating those needs as an afterthought. For Tandia, the food is also a vehicle for storytelling: the site describes her cooking as a way of connecting with guests and sharing the history and culture behind West and North African cuisine, turning a quick lunch counter into a chance to learn something about a part of the world many New Yorkers rarely encounter on a menu. That mix of accessible fast-casual format and genuine cultural depth has earned Berber Street Food substantial press attention, with coverage from The New Yorker, The New York Times, and Eater. The combination of Tandia's personal history, her fine-dining pedigree, and the restaurant's explicit identity as Black women owned and operated makes it a distinctive presence in New York's food hall landscape, one that treats pan-African cooking as worthy of the same care and craft as any other cuisine in the city.

Diana Tandia grew up in Mauritania, shaped by a blend of Berber, Fulani, and Senegalese heritage that would later define her cooking. She built her technical foundation in elite New York kitchens, including Daniel Boulud, Gramercy Tavern, and Mandarin Oriental, before deciding to cook on her own terms. She opened a small West Village spot to start telling that story through food, and a regular customer named Jie Gao, who was transitioning out of Wall Street and tech, became so invested in the concept that he joined as co-founder. Together they grew Berber Street Food into its current home inside The Hungry Pearl food hall in the Financial District, launching in 2018. The restaurant is proudly Black women owned and operated, and Tandia has been explicit that the food is meant to do more than fill a plate: it is a way of connecting with guests and sharing the stories, ingredients, and history behind West and North African cuisine. That origin, an immigrant chef's personal heritage translated through fine-dining training into a fast-casual format, has helped the restaurant earn recognition from The New Yorker, The New York Times, and Eater as a standout in New York's food hall scene.

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