JAMES BEARD AWARD NOMINEE • A sharply crafted and unflinchingly honest memoir about gangs, drugs, cooking, and living life on the line—both on the streets and in the kitchen—from one of the most exciting stars in the food world today
“Beautiful. Moving. Inspiring. Get it.”—Chris Storer, Emmy Award–winning creator of The Bear
A SALON BEST BOOK OF THE YEARChef Keith Corbin has been cooking his entire life. Born on the home turf of the notorious Grape Street Crips in 1980s Watts, Los Angeles, he got his start cooking crack at age thirteen, becoming so skilled that he was flown across the country to cook for drug operations in other cities. After his criminal enterprises caught up with him, though, Corbin spent years in California’s most notorious maximum security prisons—witnessing the resourcefulness of other inmates who made kimchi out of leftover vegetables and tamales from ground-up Fritos. He developed his own culinary palate and ingenuity, creating “spreads” out of the unbearable commissary ingredients and experimenting during his shifts in the prison kitchen.
After his release, Corbin got a job managing the kitchen at LocoL, an ambitious fast food restaurant spearheaded by celebrity chefs Roy Choi and Daniel Patterson, designed to bring inexpensive, quality food and good jobs into underserved neighborhoods. But when Corbin was suddenly thrust into the spotlight, he struggled to live up to or accept the simplified “gangbanger redemption” portrayal of him in the media. As he battles private demons while achieving public success, Corbin traces the origins of his vision for “California soul food” and takes readers inside the worlds of gang hierarchy, drug dealing, prison politics, gentrification, and culinary achievement to tell the story of how he became head chef of Alta Adams, one of America’s best restaurants.
"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 rags-to-riches success and shows that as a Black man in America, there is no magic door to mainstream respectability. And even if there was, Corbin's not so sure he'd want to walk through it. Told in an unforgettable voice from a rising 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 with what you're given"--
