Page 36 - Sharp Winter 2023

FOOD
YES CHEF
CELEBRITY CHEF ERIC ADJEPONG HAS MADE A NAME FOR HIS DIASPORIC CUISINE
By Veronica Fitzpatrick
CHEF ERIC ADJEPONG IS ARGUABLY TOP CHEF’S BIGGEST LOSER.
He was eliminated in season 16’s finale, after presenting the first course of a meal inspired by the transatlantic slave trade to judges who ultimately favoured a menu drawn from “summers in the south.” Adjepong went on to cook a version of his menu to a sold-out crowd at Tom Colicchio’s Craft in New York City, and he hasn’t stopped building since. With projects ranging from Pinch & Plate — the full-service dinner party company he co-operates with his wife, Janell — to hosting Food Network’s Alex vs America, to his historic two-book deal with Penguin Random House, Adjepong has stepped fully into the spotlight. And where he goes, so too is the specificity and resilience of West African diasporic cuisine moved front and centre.
His forthcoming cookbook Sankofa is a necessary composite of memory work, education, and encouragement, refracting Adjepong’s distinct perspective as a Ghanaian-American chef raised in the Bronx, now based in Washington, D.C., into a stream of traditional West African recipes and an invitation to improvise, or “play jazz,” as he puts it: an apt metaphor for the magic that occurs where classical training meets liminal experience.
SHARP recently spoke to Adjepong by Zoom. 36 GUIDE • WINTER 2023
I’m so curious about the various professional hats you wear, from the notoriety of TV hosting on Alex vs. America to in-person dining, where you’re not necessarily always as on display as the food itself. What’s it like moving through the worlds of food and food media in such diverse ways, from centre stage to “back of house”? I’ve never thought about it that way, like front of the house/back of the house. I love hospitality, probably as holistically as possible. When I say that, I mean in all regards: as granular as how a guest feels when they sit down, the ambiance — it’s the lights that are on the table, how low the seating is, and the darkness and the mood and the smell and the colour, all that plays into an experience.
I stick to what I’m good at; I’m not doing any- thing that’s far-fetched or out of the pocket, so for me, in this path that I’m on, it all kind of just makes sense. And I’m not forcing anything.
In-person dining strikes me as an experience where you get to potentially exercise control over all these variables, but then on television, it’s such a collaboration. You’re at the mercy of editing —
Yes!
— and everything!
My ignorance was so high before hopping into the TV space. It’s a true production. There’s an audio team, a visual team, there’s a culinary team, there’s an art department, and when you put them all together, it’s like busybodies, ants, moving all around. It makes sense if you think about the brigade system in the kitchen, the hierarchy: you have your executive chef and your sous chef and line cook, and you kind of have the same thing behind the scenes, with all the people who are moving strings.
It’s not every Top Chef alum who’s able to spin upward into a more extended television career. Very much so. I was just happy to make it past episode three. Now all of this has happened, I really had no idea, nor did I call it, but it’s the power of saying yes more than no, and just being in good spots, and a little bit of luck helps as well. All that.
Tell us about your upcoming cookbook, Sankofa. I’m finding out stuff about myself, and I’m having to call my sister and my mom to explore stories from when I was a kid that I didn’t remember, and oddly enough, it becomes therapeutic. I’m going back and I’m literally telling my life.
Sankofa means “it’s not too taboo to go back and fetch for something.” San means to return,
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