A sharply crafted and unflinchingly honest memoir about drugs, cooking, and living life on the line-both in the kitchen and on the streets-from one of America's most inspiring chefs.
Before becoming executive chef and part owner of the California soul food restaurant Alta Adams in West LA, Keith Corbin had spent a quarter of his life in prison. Renowned as the best cook of crack cocaine in Los Angeles, Corbin more or less raised himself on the streets of Watts, learning to cook crack when he was only thirteen. He knew he was doing it right if it had the consistency of the roux his granny made for her gumbo.
It was a violent business-one that eventually landed Corbin in prison, where his skills at the stove gained him a reputation for making good food out of the normally unbearable prison diet. When after his release he takes a job as a line cook in a famous chef's new restaurant, Corbin is ready to lay low and leave gang life behind. Little did he know, his skill at the stove coupled with his determination to escape a life in the streets would eventually catapult him into the kitchens of some of the most acclaimed restaurants around the country, cooking food by day, crack by night just to get by. But success would change that, and in California Soul, Corbin shares the remarkable story of his culinary initiation.
From swapping oxtail recipes with Jay-Z to packing heat at brunch and becoming a press-friendly human interest piece for well-meaning gentrifiers, Corbin's story challenges the stereotype of the rags-to-riches success story and shows that as a Black man in America, there is no magic door to mainstream respectability. And even if there was, he's not so sure he'd want to walk through it. Told in an unforgettable voice from a culinary star unlike any before, California Soul is the astonishing true story of Corbin's journey from the streets and back again, and a testament to the lifechanging power of making the most of what you're given. Keith Corbin is the executive chef of Alta Adams in West Los Angeles, where he serves modern Californian soul food. He has worked alongside Chefs Daniel Patterson and Roy Choi as a part of the flagship team of LocoL in Oakland as well as Coi in San Francisco, and Chef Reem Assil's Dyafa, in Oakland.
