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Roblé

All images taken by Joshua Kissi

All images taken by Joshua Kissi

Roblé, 34, Chef

I remember being a little boy and watching my grandpa, Jesse Harris, who is a very dapper fellow; cool dude; dressed fly and drove a Cadillac. I remember watching him in the kitchen just whipping up all kinds of deliciousness. In my mind, I just received it to be cool for a man to be in the kitchen getting busy. You don’t see that very much, you see more of it now, but a brotha in the kitchen getting busy, the ladies is chillin’, just waiting?

I cook. Y’all do the dishes. It’s a good deal, it’s still a good deal. I just always thought cooking was cool. As soon as I was tall enough to see over the , I got at it myself too. Just for fun I never thought that I was going to be a chef. I just started to cook for fun because I like to eat well and I figured if I want to eat well all the time, I’ll have to figure out how to cook. So I started teaching myself and I just stuck with it.

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I couldn’t figure out what I wanted to do and my mom was like, “hey, you’re good at cooking. You love cooking. The greatest culinary school in the face of the earth is right there in HydePark, New York you should go over there, it’s called the CIA [Culinary Institute of America]. You should go over there, apply.” I’m like, “That’s why you’re my mom.” So, I went I applied. I got a conditional acceptance. I had to get a little bit more experience which I did. I went to go and school there, came down to New York city where we are right now, and it started working and got blessed to work with some really great people and the rest is history. And I’m still at it. I still got a lot to learn.

I just found out about [Hercules] within the last five years and I’ve been cooking my whole life.

He was the chef of one of the founding fathers, President George Washington. At the time, the 1700s, he was enslaved and he was the chef for the President. To this day, that’s a highly prestigious position. He was regarded as the greatest chef in America at the time. He was also known to be a very dapper, well-dressed guy, and in those days he had the freedom to walk about town. He would walk all over Mt. Vernon and Philadelphia not as a free man, but when Hercules came through people knew he was the president’s chef, so they let him roll.

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He eventually ran away. Upon President Washington’s death, in his will, he emancipated Hercules. From that point on, Hercules was a free man.


It’s just interesting. Hercules was in Philadelphia when the White House was there and that’s where my grandfather started out. He was a caterer, he had a restaurant called ‘Jessie’s Place’ in North Philly. From there my family moved to New York, and he became the chef of Vassar Brothers Hospital which is a very highly respected hospital in up-state New York.


Hercules was the chef for George Washington. My grandfather cooked for President John F. Kennedy Jr. Fast forward, I got the opportunity on a few occasions to cook for President Barack Obama and the first lady Michelle Obama. To me, that’s awesome. It’s a blessing and it’s a lineage. It lets me know that I am doing what I am supposed to be doing with my life.


I don’t see myself as this big deal of a chef until I get an email or I get a DM from a mom that says my kid is in culinary school right now or my kid is exploring cooking because they follow you on Instagram or Facebook or they seen you on TV. That’s when it hits me, “Yo, you’re really doing something out there.”


In the world of “celebrity chefs,” I don’t really like that term but I’m the young Black guy that’s doing it. And there’s some pressure there but I enjoy it. It’s a blessing to be able to be that guy. That’s super rare and I value it. I never forget who I am and where I am. I know a lot of young people look up to me, a lot of my peers  have switched their professions to start cooking because they saw me doing it. Every time I put a plate together I’m telling a story. I’m telling your story. It’s about you.

Sofiya Ballin