Chef Maxcel Hardy, a Detroit restaurateur known for his community advocacy and anti-hunger efforts, has died, publicist David Rudolph announced Tuesday morning.
Hardy, 40, owned COOP Caribbean Fusion within the Detroit Shipping Company, Jed's Detroit, a pizza and wings franchise on Seven Mile Road in Detroit, and the now-closed River Bistro, northwest of Detroit.
Last month, Hardy was one of two dozen Black chefs gathered for the 2024 Black Excellence Culinary Symphony at Table No. 2 in Greektown, a charity event supporting young culinary artists.
In 2021, The New York Times named Hardy one of 16 Black Chefs Changing Food in America.Hardy also co-wrote the Marley Coffee Cookbook with Rohan Marley, the son of reggae artist Bob Marley.
An advocate for Detroit, its culinary scene and efforts to uplift the community, Hardy also founded the One Chef Can 86 Hunger Foundation, a nonprofit organization that fights hunger and raises awareness of food insecurity.
“We have lost one of Detroit's most famous and promising Black chefs, nationally recognized as one of the top Black chefs changing food in America.” said Rodolphe.
More:Food Fighter: Detroit-born Chef Max Hardy has never wavered in his commitment to feeding the hungry
Hardy was appointed Food Fighter in 2021 by the Detroit Free Press as the newspaper recognized chefs who have used food to make a positive impact amid the COVID-19 pandemic.
“When I can walk into a kitchen and prepare meals for 500 or 1,000 people, it nourishes me and takes me out of the daily grind of the restaurant,” Hardy said at the time. “It’s truly a peace for me to cook for a few hundred people and give back to the community.” And that nourishes the soul. It feels really good to do it.
More:River Bistro Chef Maxcel Hardy Celebrates Black History Month With Dinner Series
Horatio Williams, who runs the nonprofit Horatio Williams Foundation community center just east of downtown Detroit, described an intense period in which he witnessed culinary skills and love de Hardy for Detroit at the start of the COVID-19 pandemic.
“For approximately three months beginning in March 2020, we provided over 150,000 meals to community members,” said Williams, who was introduced to Hardy by former UAW Vice President Jimmy Settles. “I've never seen anyone work in a kitchen like Chef Max. He prepared meals in our kitchen and we took the food to different shelters and community organizations like NSO (Neighborhood Service Organization) and COTS (Coalition on Temporary Shelter).
“The more food we got from places like MGM and people in the community who heard about what we were doing, the more we made. And we fed all the firefighters in the Eastern Market. For Max, it was a real honor to feed the firefighters.
In Hardy, Williams said he found more than a person who shared a commitment to his hometown: Williams also found a friend.
“Max was like a little brother to me,” he said. “He saw me running a building and he asked me for business advice. And then he passed on advice on the business side of his job to the students he taught in our cooking classes. We had students going to college to study culinary arts who would have known nothing about it without Max. He did a lot of great things in our community and I don't think anyone will ever be able to do it like him.
Mark Kurlyandchik, a former Free Press food critic, said the local culinary community suffered the loss of one of its “most brilliant chefs.”
“Hardy was always working on a dizzying number of projects, whether it was opening two new restaurant concepts – and he always had at least two in the works – or teaching children to cook or feeding the less wealthy people from Detroit and Africa. He never stopped,” Kurlyandchik said.
The cause of death was not released Tuesday.
“When the time comes, the family will make further statements,” Rudolph said.