ENTER THE KCU:
BUILDING KIA DAMON’S CULINARY UNIVERSE
Written and Interviewed by Nile Brown, Photos by Ashvini Navaratnam, Makeup by Hannah Chu, Styling by Odera Nkem-Mmekam, Assistance by Bella Norton & Kerishma Narayanasamy
Discover more about Kia’s incredible journey navigating the restaurant industry as a Black woman, her work as the visionary founder of Kia Feeds The People, a non-profit battling food insecurity, and her current undertaking of a pop-up food tour titled “Florida Water Tour”.
“I was just in the car, I told my best friend ‘Hey, I’m going to be a chef.’ And she said ‘Okay, that’s very out of left field but okay.’” Let me let you in on a little bit of @kiacooks / Kia Damon lore.
Brooklyn-based, Kia describes herself as a self-taught chef and a proud Floridan woman. At the young age of 24, she literally broke boundaries and convention to scale the heights of an Executive Chef at a highly respected restaurant in Manhattan. She is the trailblazing Culinary Director of Cherry Bombe Magazine, the first one to hold this position. She is also the visionary founder of Kia Feeds The People, a nonprofit organization that fights food apartheid and empowers communities. The New York Times recognized her as one of 16 Black Chefs Changing Food in America in 2019, she won an episode of Food Network’s Chopped in 2020, and Forbes honored her as one of the 30 Under 30 in Food and Beverage in 2021.
“I come from a cooking family - I started cooking for my parent’s anniversary when they were still married, for mother’s day. It felt good, it felt like my personal haven - it was the first time in a long time that I felt truly empowered. I felt like I could be celebrated for my contributions instead of reprimanded for being so bad at school.”
She was 19 when she declared she was going to be a chef. At the time, she was working in food and beverage in an Orlando theme park. Working in hospitality and entertainment were par for the course for the area, something she found constricting (my brain goes to The Florida Project) but she knew it was her duty to make people happy with her food (à la Ratatouille, a movie she loves and is considering getting a tattoo inspired by it – she has like 17!) and made her way into restaurants.
Moreover, she found that “It was the only thing [she] was good at.” So, she gave it her best shot. “I was like I’m going to cook, period. I come from a military family, and at the time I was going to go to the air force, I just wanted my parents to be proud of me, and didn’t want them to be stressed out for what my future was going to be.” And cue Lalito.
Cooking always came easy to Kia, but the all too familiar truth of the untold tale of scandal came for her once again. That in the words of Gil Scott-Heron “two long centuries buried in the musty vault / hosed down daily with a gagging perfume” came to drown out the light and suffocate Kia’s livelihood. The act of preparing food by combining, mixing, and heating ingredients became difficult “because of racism - it had nothing to do with my capabilities, my raw talent, my sponge brain that could do anything you showed me after showing me once. It was heartbreaking.”
Food writer Riaz Phillips wrote, “Most people would be hard-pressed to name more than five high-profile Black chefs and restaurateurs.” As with any system marred by capitalism, the culinary industry is dominated by white men as ingredients and cuisines from others are colonized. The upper echelon of the culinary world has only recognized four Black chefs with a Michelin star and only 6% of Michelin-starred restaurants worldwide are woman-led. Working at Lalito was quite a big deal and also meant many other things for Kia. It was fulfilling, it was traumatizing, it was racist, it was homophobic, it was rewarding.
Others in the kitchen did not like a young Black woman telling them what to do and how to do it, especially since many of them were twice her age. They didn’t believe she deserved to be there and did everything they absolutely could to make her feel that she didn’t.
“But I stepped up to it regardless. I learned how to really have compassion for myself. And compassion for others, even if they were being terrible to me. All they saw was me and I couldn’t make this thing the best, so I was called the worst. That is the curse of being asked to be a POC person in a leadership role – we carry all this responsibility, and shoulder all this weight, and we care so much. We care.”
She learned what she did not want her industry to be like and what her future restaurant will be like. So, she moved on.
Protecting her peace is at the core of her being, something that can be at odds with the hectic environment of Brooklyn, NYC. As a proud Sagittarius, she’s fiercely passionate about her endeavors even as external factors detract from her own agency. Taking time to rest, not putting too much pressure on herself, and focusing on community are central to her Southern identity that fuels the fabric of her being.
“We are told we are supposed to grind it out, and well, we do, they raise rent every day. The southerner in me protects my mental and emotional wellbeing because I have built this silence in my mind. At the end of the day, I am a giver, I look out for others, I apologize before someone tells me that I’ve harmed them,” she said.
Her gentle spirit is lifted by her humor. After quoting Nicki Minaj lyrics, Kia spent a couple minutes figuring out which song they were from (“Did It On’em” was the classic anthem referenced) and she referenced a slew of internet memes (she’s worried about her digital footprint). She told me, “I just don’t take things that seriously.”
Her joy is an expression of resistance, especially in light of what’s happening in her home state. Florida has become a conservative bastion in recent years. Republicans now hold supermajorities in the state legislature, and Governor Ron DeSantis has solidified his grip on the reins of political power in the state, turning Florida into a laboratory for conservative policy experiments. A case in point is
Florida’s enactment of the controversial law known as “Don’t Say Gay,” which bans classroom discussion about sexual orientation and gender identity in public schools through third grade. Additionally, Florida passed a ban on “critical race theory” that impedes lessons and training on race & diversity in schools and the workplace. It has already led to dozens of math textbooks being rejected due to ‘prohibited topics.’
“It’s very sad as a queer Black woman, but also as a proud Floridian woman, it is very difficult. I feel even more called to be a more proud Floridian who is there putting in the work and fighting the good fight. I was radicalized here, there is incredible community here, I refuse to let that be washed away by white supremacists.” Akin to her purple state’s split, Kia inwardly split in half after arriving to New York 8 years ago.
Beyoncé’s Sasha Fierce was born out of necessity so that she could separate her more timid personality from her confident on-stage persona. Kia, who refers to Beyonce as mother, chose @kiacooks as her Instagram username and gained a reputation with it as she delighted audiences with various culinary events such as pop-up dinners, private cooking, and cooking demos. “Kia Cooks is another individual, she is somebody else. It could be a mental illness. She’s a different frame of mind and different frame of energy. She’s giving the whole razzle dazzle, she’s creating the content, she’s doing all that,” Kia jokingly said. “She’s for everybody, Kia Damon is not.” While Kia Cooks is out and about, “Kia Damon is bundled on a couch watching K-Dramas with her phone on DND. When I’m out trying to date, trying to hang out with my friends, sometimes people don’t realize there is a separation between us two.”
It’s all part of the KCU (Kia Cinematic Universe), the community Kia is building around her.
Kia Cooks birthed Kia Feeds The People which combats food apartheid (one form of food insecurity) in her Brooklyn community. Those who face food apartheid are in areas where access to affordable grocery stores or supermarkets are limited and residents do not have access to transportation. 25% of American adults are food insecure and 23.5 million are facing food apartheid (predominantly POC), the numbers have only grown with the end of pandemic benefits and the rise of inflation.
Kia Feeds the People focuses on distribution of organic food, free produce and pantry items to the black and brown community, the unemployed, the unhoused, queer and trans folks, and anyone that doesn't have the food that they need. To get involved in the fight for equitable food access, Kia advised to look within a twenty mile radius and get involved with the smaller DIY operations noting that, “We zoom out so much that we forget what is happening with our neighbor.”
The next phase in the KCU is bringing Kia Feeds The People to Florida. The current installment of the KCU is the Florida Water Tour. Kia said, “There’s something spiritual about Florida water, youth, all that. The inception of the name came from my book. The name of my forthcoming debut cookbook is ‘Cooking with Florida Water.’ I remember when the name came to me. I remember I was walking up the stairs to the J Train – it hit me like lightning. And I was like woah ‘Cooking with Florida Water!’ And my girlfriend was like
‘What?’
And I was like ‘That’s the book! Cooking with Florida Water!’ And she was like
‘You’re a fucking genius!’
And I was like ‘Yeah, I know.’”