This entrepreneur wants to turn a Chinatown food court into a Black-owned ‘mini-Reading Terminal’

Chinatown Square, which opened in 2017 as an Asian food hall in the former Shanghai Bazaar gift emporium, was all but empty for two years, as its vendors dropped out one by one.

The double storefront at 1016 Race St. is being revived as the Square Food Court, overseen by Levell “Garci” Peterkin, the North Philadelphia-born entrepreneur whose Carter’s Steaks by Garci anchors one of the front windows. (Surreal Creamery, one of the holdover tenants, has the other front window space.)

Peterkin, who leased his space initially as a weekend popup last year and took over the whole floor officially in February, said he views Square as a Black-owned “mini-Reading Terminal” as he is building it around food businesses he has found through social media. Peterkin calls it the only Black-owned food business in Chinatown.

Carter’s Steaks by Garci sells halal rib-eye cheesesteaks on soft, seeded rolls with Cooper Sharp cheese, along with more attention-grabbing variations like a surf-and-turf version topped with shrimp or a six-ounce lobster tail.

But, Peterkin said, “it’s more than just cheesesteaks that I’m serving. I’m serving hope. I’m giving people culture. They come in and they get not just a good cheesesteak, but an experience.”

The hall lineup now includes VaultSea Fusion, the Yummy Palace, Halal by Iman, Prettty Eatz, and 11 Eleven Lounge. VaultSea Fusion serves grilled shellfish and fried seafood platters. The Yummy Palace offers desserts, including banana pudding, water ice, and ice cream. Halal by Iman serves soul food, as does Prettty Eatz (it is known particularly for salt-and-pepper wing platters and Alfredo bowls). There are games such as Connect 4 and Uno and a Miss Pac-Man machine as well as a seating area in the back.

It’s still a work in progress. Peterkin said he was seeking operators for two spaces. “I want to be intentional about who goes in there,” Peterkin said.

He said he was framing the hall as a place where smaller entrepreneurs could get a shot at a brick-and-mortar presence. “My whole goal was to try to find someone, give someone a chance, and try to build them up,” he said.

Miranda Jordan of Yummy Palace, who runs a dessert shop in Oaklyn, makes homemade water ice and ice cream in such flavors as banana pudding and red velvet; seasonal offerings include eggnog and pumpkin spice. At the Philadelphia location, she said, Yummy Palace also sells peach cobbler and apple pie egg rolls paired with salted-caramel ice cream.

“We like to say we’re a little dessert shop with a twist,” Jordan said.

Like Peterkin, Jordan pointed to social media as the force that helped build her business and led her to the Race Street opportunity. She said Yummy Palace has grown an audience of about 33,000 followers online. When she saw Peterkin post about the opening, she reached out directly. “So when I say the power of social media is real, I mean it,” Jordan said.

For Peterkin, the project also carries personal weight. He is 38 and grew up in North Philadelphia. “I didn’t grow up with a family background of cooking, and I didn’t grow up in a family that was doing well financially,” he said. “To be honest, I was going through some rough times as a kid, and I found the street life pretty fast. It fascinated me. I looked up to the older guys in my neighborhood, and I was amazed at how fast they were making money. I kind of tried to follow their path. I thought that was the cool thing to do.”

He said that path led to repeated encounters with the justice system as a juvenile and as an adult, including a string of drug cases at 18. He went to prison for two years in his early 20s before his release in 2013.

“When I came home, I was like, I can’t go back down that same road,” he said. “I never want to experience that again.”

Peterkin said the years since have changed his view of the future. As a young man, he wanted to become a rapper and start a label. Over time, he came to see entrepreneurship as another route to the same broader goals: money, stability, family support, and something he describes as generational wealth. “Ten years ago, I would have never thought I’d be doing something like this,” he said.

Carter’s began as a pop-up. When he learned that the food hall was available, he saw it as a fit for the larger plan he had in mind. He kept the Carter’s name, he said, to honor the son of one of the previous operators. “When little Carter grows up and is old enough to understand what is going on, I want him to know he inspired something,” Peterkin said.

Peterkin also kept Garci, the nickname he used in his music days. He wants people who knew him years ago to feel that they still know him now — that success does not require disowning the past or distancing yourself from the people you came up with.

“I would never change on the people I grew up with,” he said. “I’m here to try to inspire them.”

Peterkin said his ambitions now reach beyond Race Street. In addition to Carter’s and the Square Food Court, he said he and a partner have launched Garci Healthcare Education Group, which he described as a Meals on Wheels-style operation delivering food to adult care centers, hospitals, prison systems, camps, senior homes, and other vulnerable populations through contracts.

He sees all of it as part of the same mission: building businesses, creating opportunity, and showing younger people from neighborhoods like his that another route is possible.

“When little kids look at me and see somebody who came from where we come from doing something they didn’t think was possible, that means something,” Peterkin said.

The Square Food Court, 1016 Race St. The food court opens at noon and generally remains open until at least 9 p.m. Some vendors keep different hours; it’s best to check social media. Carter’s stays open until 1 a.m. on weekdays and until 3 a.m. on weekends.