I didn’t grow up eating like I was going to be a cook. I didn’t even understand where simple things like pork belly came from. I grew up eating soul food in a middle-class Afro-American family. My grandmother and my mom were both teachers and very good cooks. My grandmother even had a side hustle business as a caterer. I was always curious about what they were doing in the kitchen.
Growing up, I was always in the kitchen, trying to help my mom cook something. Sometimes I would prepare sweet tea, or make rice, or temper eggs for my mom’s famous mac ‘n’ cheese. Other times, I would try to create something with my little taste tester (my sister Symone) by my side. I knew I wanted to be a chef since middle school when I started taking Home Economics. But then I went into the Navy and became a hospital corpsman. Still, I would cook things here and there for my shipmates, and they always thought my food was good. I remember being in the Navy and seeing the first season of Top Chef. That made me even more inquisitive about cooking. Up until then, I only saw Julia Child and Emeril on television. But I had not seen “real people” or “real chefs” cooking - only celebrity chefs. So I bought books from the Culinary Institute and Johnson and Wales, and read them while I was in the Navy.
