April 1, 2022
Raised in L.A. projects where the Grape Street Watts Crips held sway, Corbin was cooking crack by age 13, then learned cooking for real during ten years in prison (he was inspired by inmates making tamales out of ground-up Fritos). Upon his release, he was hired as a kitchen manager at Locol, a string of restaurants meant to bring chef-quality meals and jobs to underserved neighborhoods. Battling ongoing personal tragedy and the burdens of sudden celebrity, Corbin rose to become chef of the highly regarded Alta West Adams. His vision: California soul food using local produce and West African cooking techniques. Told with the James Beard Award-winning food journalist Alexander.
Copyright 2022 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.
Starred review from June 13, 2022
In this exhilarating saga of drugs, crime, and culinary passion, Corbin traces his remarkable rise from a life behind bars to a successful career as a chef. Born, quite literally, into the “drug game” (“my uncle used to carry me around and sell drugs out of my diaper”), Corbin’s cooking began with making crack in his teens, a skill that eventually grew into an enterprise with Corbin and his partner shipping drugs around the country. It wasn’t until Corbin landed in prison at age 23 that his culinary path began. Working in the prison kitchen, Corbin found an escape while also honing his craft: “I tried to tweak... until I got the best fucking spread you’d ever tried.” After six years in prison, Corbin was released in 2010, and got a job as a line cook at a high-end fast-food joint in his L.A. neighborhood. Though he went on to become the chef and face of Alta Adams, a fine-dining restaurant in the city, Corbin reveals his path to success as an ex-felon was far from easy, and it’s his brutally candid depiction of “what it’s like to grow up Black in America under some of the worst circumstances” that makes this story of perseverance hit hard. Readers shouldn’t miss this.
August 1, 2022
How a Watts gang member escaped doom and ascended to the helm of a nationally acclaimed restaurant. "The book you're about to read," writes Corbin in the prologue, "isn't a gangland morality tale or a prisoner-makes-good drama or a chef memoir that paints my life as a 'uniquely American' success story." However, it offers all of those elements and more. The author also presents a loving history of the Watts neighborhood; a tribute to a beloved grandmother who fed a whole community; a mouthwatering account of the evolution of Corbin's style of soul-food cooking, now featured at Alta in West Adams, Los Angeles; and a candid story about long-term drug dependency. Among the many interesting points made by this modern version of a Horatio Alger story is that for Black youth in America's poor communities, the story is not necessarily rags to riches. If you're in the drug game in your early teens (Corbin started cooking crack at 13), access to piles of cash is never a problem. Ultimately, it's not about money; it's about social mobility. Too often, many doors lead to prison, which is where Corbin spent most of his 20s. Some of the most intriguing parts of the book are the details on the operation, genealogy, and grammar of gangs. For example, Crips will spell the word back as bacc: "No Crip sets use the letters c and k together," writes Corbin, because that formulation, in that context, means "Crip killer." There are two primary heroes of this story, capably preserved and shaped by James Beard Award-winning journalist Alexander: Corbin himself and his mentor, the restaurateur Daniel Patterson, whose commitment to actually doing something for Corbin--and many others coming out of incarceration and looking for direction--is rare indeed. A personable account of hard-won success, heartening in some ways, sobering in others, and served with tasty sides.
COPYRIGHT(2022) Kirkus Reviews, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.