It all started with a Tinder date. Twelve years later, Benny Emeri and Carolina Wang have added another chapter to their story. The couple behind Bushwick cafe Saint Michel and catering company Eat Good NYC tied the knot on August 14, then returned to Miss Lily’s, the SoHo Caribbean restaurant where they had their first date in 2014, for their reception.
Just days later, Saint Michel popped up at Madison Square Garden as part of Olivia Dean’s The Art of Loving Life tour, bringing the couple’s blend of food, fashion, and pop culture to UMusic Shop NY. It’s a fitting snapshot of where Emeri and Wang have landed: from a first date over Caribbean food to a marriage, two businesses, and a creative community.
Celebrity Cakes & Sneaker Cookies
Over that first meal at Miss Lily’s, they discovered their shared obsessions. Wang was working as a fashion designer and making elaborate fondant cupcakes. Emeri was in marketing and experimenting with desserts decorated with fashion references. Soon, Wang began helping Emeri develop a business that merged their mutual loves.
One early experiment shortly after they met was a cupcake bearing DJ and actor Awkwafina’s face for a birthday bash Emeri was throwing, complete with her signature glasses and blue beanie. It was goofy and oddly specific. People loved it. “We were reading the comments, and we were like, ‘Maybe we’re onto something,’” Emeri says.
The concept got a major jolt in 2015, when Wang made a cupcake depicting Cara Delevigne, then-spokesperson of DKNY. The star spotted it on Instagram and connected with the duo over DM. Emeri eventually found himself waiting for hours outside a Sephora, cupcake in hand. When Delevigne emerged, she spotted him through the paparazzi crowd, ran over, and took photos with the edible portrait. The next day, it had landed in Vogue and the Daily Mail.
That attention helped propel Eat Good NYC into the couple’s catering and custom-dessert business, where they recreate the faces, objects, and imagery of fashion, music, and pop culture in edible form. Their work includes now-iconic sneaker cookies, celebrity likenesses, and commissions for big names from Pink Floyd and Beyoncé to Nike, Sperry, and the New York Knicks. “We’re in the culture and industry,” Wang says. “The brands we work with come to us because we understand their genre, and are making an impact in an untraditional way.”
An Edible Medium
For Wang, the idea of turning culture into food grew naturally from a lifetime of creating. She began cosplaying anime and video-game characters at 13, studied fashion, worked in Broadway costume design, and eventually entered the fashion industry. Born in Taiwan and raised in Buenos Aires, she immigrated to the US with her family at nine. “Food was a symbol of love,” from her mother, who worked long hours at a Chinese buffet. Baking became another form of designing by hand and experimenting with materials. When Wang worked at Under Armour, she made Hello Kitty cupcakes for her boss’s daughter’s birthday, in what could be seen as an early precursor to the Eat Good concept. During the pandemic, she brought that same spirit of experimentation, using 3D printing to create custom cookie cutters and candies.
For his part, Emeri grew up in Rosedale, Queens, fascinated by fashion and art in a way his friends weren’t. He took a job at a SoHo store to get closer to the designers and creatives he admired. His brother sparked a love of sneakers, though Wang is the bigger sneakerhead, with an extensive collection. For Emeri, who watched his mother bake as a child, food became a way to fuse his interests. “Food is a canvas to show what we want to put into the world,” he says. “Maybe if I merge fashion and food, that can be my lane.”
Neither went to culinary school, and Wang says she spent Eat Good’s first five years learning to make cakes through trial and error. “There’s this imposter syndrome,” she says. “I kept practicing and failing, but that’s how you learn and grow. The fear of failure, of not finishing, is enough to keep me up at night and driven.”
Making a Scene
In 2022, the couple gave that creative world a physical footprint in Bushwick. After Eat Good supplied pastries to their friend Ryan Glick’s now-closed cafe Coffee ‘n Clothes in 2019, Emeri saw something their pop-ups couldn’t offer: a place where people could return, encounter their work repeatedly, and spend time with the creators behind it.
On a recent Sunday morning at Saint Michel, indie guitar floated over shelves stuffed with records, vintage fashion magazines, books, potted plants, and a small television. Photos of Gigi Hadid, Action Bronson, and Steve Aoki holding their edible likenesses hung on the walls. A young woman read by the window. Two friends at a low table traded stories about the weekend’s shenanigans. Regulars drifted in and out.
The menu spans coffee shop staples to signature drinks, including an Argentinian dulce de leche latte, black sesame hochija, orange blossom latte, and strawberry matcha, alongside baked goods like brown butter chocolate chip cookies, ube mochi cake, and monkey bread, baked at a shared Eat Good NYC kitchen facility.
But Saint Michel is also a stage for the couple’s cultural obsessions. They host themed days such as Tyler the Creator Tuesday and Bad Bunny events, pairing artist-inspired drinks and cookies with music, as well as World Cup specials and fundraisers. Emeri is building a collection of vintage fashion books and magazines with the goal of creating Brooklyn’s largest fashion and art cafe library. “It’s beautiful to see that with all the crazy things happening in the world, we can create meaningful impact within a few blocks of where we live,” Wang says.
Named for Puerto Rican-Haitian artist Jean-Michel Basquiat, Saint Michel is an expression of Emeri’s desire to make art and fashion more accessible without venturing into Manhattan—to create the place he wished he’d had growing up. “Kids come in and ask ‘Who’s Michelle?’ and I can tell them, ‘One of the greatest artists in the world looks like us,’ ” Emeri says. “It feels like home. I’ve seen so many come in strangers and leave as friends, lovers, collaborators.”
For now, the couple is looking toward a larger Saint Michel that could house both the cafe and Eat Good’s production kitchen. “This journey has taken over a decade, but seeing the way Benny and I have grown as people, a relationship, and a business, we are so grateful,” Wang says. “We’re gonna continue growing life together wherever it takes us.”
Saint Michel: Café & Art
462 Irving Ave, Brooklyn
929-356-6428
@saintmichelnyc
