California Soul (Keith Corbin)

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

“As compelling or more so than Boyz N the Hood and Menace II Society . . . When Corbin writes about his life, it burns with the intensity of the best pulp fiction, but it isn’t fiction—it’s the life he lived.”—Los Angeles Times

ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR: Salon

“Corbin traces his remarkable rise from a life behind bars to a successful career as a chef. . . . [An] exhilarating saga of drugs, crime, and culinary passion, .”—Publishers Weekly (starred review) "A remarkable memoir." —Dr. Ibram X. Kendi, author of How to Be an Antiracist

One way or another, Chef Keith Corbin has been cooking almost his entire life. Born in Watts in 1980, he grew up in the Jordan Downs Projects, home turf of the notorious Grape Street Watts Crips. At age thirteen, Corbin learned to cook crack, and had gotten so skilled that he’d be flown across the country to cook for drug operations in other cities. Once his criminal enterprises caught up with him, Corbin spent ten years in some of California’s most notorious maximum security prisons. Witnessing the resourcefulness of other inmates making kimchi out of leftover vegetables, and tamales from ground up Fritos, he developed his own culinary palate and ingenuity, creating “spreads” out of the normally unbearable commissary diet, and experimenting during his shifts in the prison kitchen.

After release, Corbin began to cook professionally, and eventually, went on to open Alta West Adams with Daniel Patterson, who, along with Roy Choi, gave him an early career break. Battling drug addiction and a seemingly unstoppable barrage of violent tragedies, Corbin found that post-carceral life had a way of forcing innovation, not unlike his time on the streets and behind bars. At Alta, he trailblaized his own path, honoring the spirit of his Granny's favorite dishes through "California Soul Food” (a healthier, creative spin on soul food using local California produce and West African cooking techniques). His vision quickly became reality when Alta gained national media recognition as one of the nation’s best new restaurants.

With nuance and startling clarity, California Soul takes us through the worlds of gang hierarchies, drug dealings, prison politics, gentrification, and restaurant kitchens. Corbin tells the story of what it’s like to grow up Black in America under difficult circumstances; to see unspeakable tragedy and commit acts of violence, to get locked up, and re-locked up, to attempt to go straight and find the system unforgiving, to find a culinary passion and go for it, to succeed and fail, and be forced to fight for your place at the table.