Who are your three culinary inspirations?
In this order: my paternal grandmother, my mother and Gordon Ramsay. I know the first two would immediately make sense to most people but the last one would make them say, huh? Well, it was after watching hours of Gordon Ramsay’s BBC shows the “F Word” and “Kitchen Nightmares” that I decided to become a chef. My family and I relocated to D.C. from Atlanta three years ago and during the first six months or so I was still trying to decide what my second career would be. Of course, friends tried to get me back in the corporate world; but once I decided to let the tech industry go, I had to stick with that decision. I’m glad I did.
How would you describe the atmosphere of your restaurant and its cuisine?
I’m the executive chef at a bar and restaurant in an up-and-coming neighborhood in D.C. called Columbia Heights. In Europe, we would be considered a pub. So, the atmosphere in general is not child friendly during the weekday evenings which is when we’re open for bar and dinner service. However, on the weekends, we’re open during the afternoon and once the weather is nicer we’ll have a lunch service on Saturdays and brunch service on Sundays that will be child friendly. As for the cuisine, we do gourmet comfort food: lots of Southern influence both Low Country and Creole with French technique employed for how the food is prepared. Everything is made from scratch. We do it all absent of baking our own breads and butchering our meats.
What is your signature dish?
Interesting question; because I know a lot of chefs are asked this question. My short answer is I don’t have a signature dish. Not something I strive to have as a chef. I feel having a “signature dish” is too limiting from a culinary perspective. What I do have is a specific cuisine focus and there are a number of wonderful dishes I cook in that cuisine genre. I would say a few of my favorite dishes to prepare are Low Country shrimp and grits, Creole shrimp pasta, Creole crab cakes or a Low Country boil aka Frogmore Stew. These are all dishes in one way or another with heavy West African and European influences, except for the crab cakes of course. That’s very American.
