Head Chef Kai — Head chef at Chop Shop Primehouse

Head Chef Kai is the first of many amazing chefs I am honored to have had the privilege of sitting down and talking with. The second I met Kai, it felt like I was having a reunion with my sister. Our conversation was short, as the night was ending, but it could have gone on for hours.
Chef Kai has always been interested in cooking. Ever since she was young, her mother was pushing the stool up against the counter so she could help cook. Chef Kai fell in love with cooking at an early age thanks to all the family get-togethers she had with cherished memories of everyone cooking together in the kitchen. At the age of 10, Chef Kai got her first introduction to professional cooking and plating thanks to the restaurant next to her father's auto mechanic shop. It really seems as if this is where Chef Kai belongs. Her smile was followed by words carried by passion and self-belief.
Chef Kai is all self-taught. This is something she prides herself on. At the first chance she gets, she will study, read a book, and truly try to understand what can be better or just needs to be understood. Not being formally trained at a culinary school is amazing to me because the quality of food she puts out is not something that can be faked. The careful techniques used in the kitchen cannot be automated, and the buzz of joy I received after eating her cooking is not something I find often. There is no shortcut to being great in the kitchen, and Chef Kai understands that wholeheartedly.
Being a woman in the industry is unfortunately not as glorious as it could be, Chef Kai says. She pauses before telling me, "Oftentimes we are overlooked." Guests will sometimes ask who the chef is, and when they hear her name, there's a visible surprise that the head chef is a woman.
After everything you just read, the stool at the counter, no formal training, a decade of proving it in kitchens on her own terms, it says something that people are still surprised the head chef is a woman. That surprise says a lot more about them than it does about her.
Kai, thank you for trusting me with your story tonight. A decade of teaching yourself, in kitchens that did not always see what you were building toward, and you are still the one who gets to decide what greatness looks like. That is not something I take lightly, and it is not something I plan to stop noticing, in your kitchen or anyone else's. If this is what the first of many conversations like this looks like, I cannot wait to see who else is waiting to be heard.