Leon West

There are many things that inspired me to become the chef I am today, especially growing up in the Washington Elms Housing projects and starting work at a very young age. My first job was at a supermarket called Mahlowitz. They hired me in 1953, and I worked there between the ages of eight and sixteen, making only 50 cents an hour.

From there, I started helping my mother cook for about 500 children at the Head Start program in Cambridge. My mother was the one who truly encouraged me to go to cooking school. I enrolled in the Massachusetts Vocational and Technical School’s Culinary Arts program and received on-the-job training at the Sheraton in Boston.