The artistic presentations are too mesmerizing to disturb, but the aromas of these creations tempt the palate. And indulgence brings sumptuous satisfaction. It’s fine dining, elevated to entertainment. Fusing high-quality, local ingredients with shared references from global cultures, innovative chefs are plating meals that not only entice all the senses but also provide a vicarious international experience.
The explosion of culinary magazines, Websites, and television shows has introduced a broader slice of the population to delicacies and food personalities from around the world. In fact, restaurant sales in America are expected to top $511 billion in 2006, according to the National Restaurant Association’s 2006 Industry Forecast.
While the restaurant industry, including fast-food chains, employs more minority managers than any other industry in America, according to a 2003 NRA news release, African Americans constitute a mere 10% of the culinary industry. A 2005 salary survey conducted by StarChefs.com reveals that only 4% of African Americans hold the position of sous-chef or above. Faces of color are few in the world of fine dining, where menu prices are higher, kitchen pay is better (at the executive level the average annual salary is $75,000), and chefs are as revered as rock stars. We talked to several who have successfully handled the heat to set their sights on the nation’s top tables.
These six chefs, whose responsibilities include menu planning, staff management, and budget preparation, as well as maintaining financial and inventory records, have arrived from very different paths: trained by master chefs, grandmothers, cooking schools, and even a prison kitchen. They all share a reverence for legendary black chefs who paved the way such as Leah Chase and Robert Gadsby and the late greats Patrick Clark and Edna Lewis. Many credit early exposure to diverse cuisines and encouragement from family and professional mentors to pursue their culinary dreams.
They, and the small but growing cadre of great black chefs around the country, are inventing new ways to share their passion for food by bringing a heritage of flavors and experience to the American table.
WALTER ROYAL Executive Chef, Angus Barn, Raleigh
Black chefs are not uncommon in the South, but Walter J. Royal turns up in places people least expect. Since the mid- ’80s, Royal has been designing dishes in the kitchens of landmark restaurants in North Carolina. “People would ask to see the chef, and when they saw me you could just see that sort of hesitance-‘it couldn’t be!’-then they met me, felt my passion, tasted the product, and they had no doubt.”
Originally from Eclectic, Alabama, Royal graduated with a degree in psychology from LaGrange College. In the early ’80s, after half a decade in the mental health field, he decided to follow a calling he’d had since he was a teenager. He attended Nathalie Dupree’s Cooking School in Atlanta from 1983 to 1984, and by 1985, he was working as a sous-chef under Edna Lewis at The Fearrington House restaurant. What followed were stints at restaurants such as Magnolia Grill and the Inn at Bonnie Brae, and awards including Chef of the Year from Restaurant Guild International in 1997.
Though he’s been a prominent force in the elevation of southern cuisine, Royal, 46, does not rest in a southern comfort food zone. In addition to turning out classic steakhouse standards and special menus for the Angus Barn’s highly regarded Wine Cellar Dining Room, he seeks shared cultural references in food from around the world. “I look at a lot of the Mexican food, Indian food, Egyptian food coming into this country, and I see things that have filtered around the world from Africa,” he says. Finding and celebrating ingredients like black-eyed peas or collard greens that appear in African American dishes is “what’s going to keep our cuisine alive.”
JEFFERY HENDERSON Executive Chef, Café Bellagio, Las Vegas
“I knew the day I walked out of prison that I wanted to be a high-end chef,” Jeffery Henderson says. Not your common release plan for parolees, but the former drug dealer from South Central Los Angeles had an epiphany behind bars. While cooking in the prison kitchen, he read about a new generation of black chefs and discovered a realm of unimagined possibilities. “I knew it was going to be a long journey to chefdom. But failure has never been an option for me.”
The terms of his parole prevented Henderson from traveling to New York or Europe for training, but he got his first break from super chef Robert Gadsby in Los Angeles. Henderson began as a dishwasher and within two years worked his way up to pastry and line cook. Over the last three years, he secured positions at several high-end restaurants and hotels. In 2000, Henderson moved to Las Vegas. He got his start at Caesar’s Palace and eventually moved on to the Bellagio, where he was hired as executive sous-chef of Café Bellagio, the resort’s
upscale New American eatery in 2004. He was promoted to executive chef in less than 90 days. Henderson’s passion for food is matched only by his zeal for raising culinary awareness for at-risk youth. He plans to publish his memoirs next year.Henderson, 41, sees a ripe market in places like Las Vegas for high-end, urban-themed restaurants. “The palate has really matured in the African American community. I see the hip-hop community coming to Bellagio eating caviar; they’re having foie gras. We are becoming ‘foodies.'” While Henderson bemoans the fact that many African Americans still don’t realize the breadth of opportunities in this field, he remains grateful for his discovery and in his view, “The sky’s the limit.”
WAYNE JOHNSON Executive Chef, Andaluca Restaurant, Seattle
Wayne A. Johnson, a self-described “Army brat,” was born in Fort Knox, Kentucky, but his early exposure to food fueled his passion for cooking. Johnson set a 10-year goal of becoming an executive chef when he accepted his first position as a cook in the Colorado Marriott Hotel in 1981. “I had to understand all the steps to get to executive chef from where I was as a cook,” he says.
By 1990, Johnson went on to new challenges, moving to California and learning about new food frontiers through additional study at the prestigious Culinary Institute of America at Greystone. After finishing a stint managing foodservice operations at San Francisco’s 1,000-room Parc 55 Hotel, Johnson, 48, was ready to return to hands-on fine dining and was tapped to take over culinary operations at Seattle’s historic Mayflower Park Hotel, which includes the Mediterranean-influenced Andaluca Restaurant and Oliver’s Lounge.
“I really believe in using local food as much as possible, things like local grass-fed beef and fish. When we have first-run halibut season out of Alaska, it’s incredible.” Combining local products with Mediterranean spices and preparations allows Johnson to interpret the flavors and the spirit of the Mediterranean in a uniquely American way. “When we do a paella, it’s got saffron in it” and other traditional ingredients, Johnson explains. But by working with seasonally available Pacific Northwest seafood and meats, “it’s an American paella.”
ERIKA DAVIS Executive Pastry Chef, The Peabody, Memphis
Spurred by the success of her cookie baking business in elementary school, Erika Davis, 36, knew as a child what she wanted to do. “My mother saw that I had a talent and she put the spotlight on it and let me run with it,” she says. “I didn’t really set goals. I was just eager to be creative with food.”
Davis, a Chicago native, graduated from the culinary arts program at a community college near Detroit in 1990, and gained experience under several master chefs and bakers. She also worked at celebrated Michigan restaurants such as The Golden Mushroom and Pike Street Restaura
nt and the Lodge of Four Seasons in Lake Ozark, Missouri. In 1998, Davis moved to Memphis and joined the Peabody Hotel as pastry supervisor. She became executive pastry chef in 2004.
Often the only African American and the only woman in the kitchen, Davis now provides opportunities for those interested in learning, including a 42-year-old woman from the hotel’s housekeeping staff who now attends culinary school and is training to become a pastry chef.
Davis says she has seen incredible changes in the food-as-entertainment era. “Everyone’s taste buds have exploded,” she says. Consumer expectations have been raised in light of the variety of new trends in food. Having started out as a baker, Davis says it’s no longer enough to master one area of desserts. “You have to be a baker, a cake decorator, know how to pull sugar, and know how to temper chocolate and create chocolate sculptures. The ‘wow’ factor-that’s the big difference now from 12 or 15 years ago.”
MARCUS SAMUELSSON Executive Chef & Co-Owner, Aquavit, New York
“In our generation, fine dining is not based on whether you are wearing a suit. It is in the soul of the place, the vibe, the food,” says superstar chef Marcus Samuelsson, who is also an author and host of the Discovery Channel’s Inner Chef. He has soulfully restaged Scandinavian food, changing how Americans think about herring, gravlax, and smorgasbord. Samuelsson’s wide culinary skills reflect a number of influences: his roots in Ethiopia, where he was orphaned at age 3 in 1973; his upbringing in Sweden, where he attended the Culinary Institute at Göteborg; apprenticeships in European kitchens; and an eight-month internship in 1991 at the Swedish restaurant Aquavit, which he would bring to worldwide fame. He was named executive chef in 1995 at age 25.
His latest venue for cultural interpretation is Riingo, a Japanese restaurant, which opened in New York City
in 2004. Samuelsson, 35, has also garnered more accolades than most chefs will see in a lifetime, including two James Beard Awards, for Rising Star Chef in 1999 and for Best Chef New York City in 2003. But he continues to challenge himself. “I want to be a better chef than I was last month,” he says. “Those are the goals I always have professionally. I want to work with food forever.”Samuelsson’s The Soul of a New Cuisine: A Discovery of the Foods and Flavors of Africa (Wiley; $40) is due this fall. Inspiring people, especially African Americans, to think about African foods is also on his agenda. “We have to inspire parents to take young kids out to learn to taste and make a habit of that. Experiencing different things through food would break so many other barriers, too.”
TIMOTHY DEAN Executive Chef & Owner, Timothy Dean Bistro, Baltimore
It was 1988 when 18-year-old Timothy Dean, whose career started in a pizza parlor with the goal of buying a pair of Air Jordans, learned that Jean-Louis Palladin was one of the country’s hottest chefs. “I was determined to just meet him and ask him ‘How did you become France’s youngest two-star Michelin chef?'” And so Dean called him, was granted two meetings, and within a year became sous-chef at Palladin’s groundbreaking restaurant, Jean-Louis At The Watergate. He received a bachelor’s degree from Howard University, but at Palladin’s urging, Dean skipped culinary school to learn the old-fashioned way-on the job.
Over the next 12 years Dean worked with Palladin and others, including Washington’s Patrick Clark and France’s Alain Ducasse. But Dean’s goal for culinary and financial success was to own a restaurant. His last gig was chef de cuisine at Palladin’s New York restaurant before opening Timothy Dean Restaurant & Bar in 2000. Located in the St. Regis Hotel in Washington, D.C., the restaurant was a magnet for K Street power types until it closed in 2002. Dean knew he’d be back, but on his own terms. “I think the key is not to go knocking on doors to look for a job, but to start your own business. I would have a hot dog stand before I would go to work for another chef.”
His latest venture, Timothy Dean Bistro, opened in 2005, and is no hot dog stand. Pulsing with the excitement of Baltimore’s redeveloped Fells Point district, the bistro showcases Dean’s classical French training in dishes like seafood bouillabaisse and braised beef short rib with potato mousseline. Upscale, elegant, and inviting, the 36-year-old owner says he caters to a new generation of sophisticated diners.