Lynch - Son of a Southern chef: cook with soul

Spoiler alert: Im not from the South! I was born and bred in Southside Jamaica, Queens, the part of New York City where rappers like Nas, 50 Cent, and LL Cool J got their start. I come from the hustle and the bustle, the big city lights in Times Square, where you share subway rides to high school with regular folks and celebrities, who are just regular folks. I come from art classes on weekends; church dinners with church friends; and generations of strong men and women who helped raise me, instilled self-respect, and made sure I kept my manners. Yes, sir, yes, maam, thats a fact.

My love affair with food started long before being a foodie on Instagram was a thing; it started with Dad: the Southern chef.

As a kid, I remember watching my dad roll out his butter or lard-filled pastry dough in our kitchen for his famous peach cobbler. The smell of hot peaches soaking in cinnamon and sugar, combined with that flaky, buttery crust, filled the house with an everlasting aroma. Dad loved to cook; he loved feeding usMom, my three siblings, and me.

We could not wait for the days when Dad would bring home big white buckets filled with live crab from the fish market on Jamaica Avenue. Like the champ he was, he would toss the crabs into our kitchen sink with his bare hands, give them a good ol washing, then transfer them into a large pot of seasoned hot water and cook them to perfection. Then he would unwrap a pound of butter, literally the size of a brick, melt it in a hot cast-iron skillet, season it with Old Bay and garlic powder, then serve the crab legs on large plates with lemon wedges, and a loving pour of the melted butter, family-style. This kind of cooking wasnt unusual in our household. This is how we got down. Cooking with Dad was my definition of home.

My childhood food world consisted of big, shared Sunday lunches after church, bacon-egg-and-cheese sandwiches from the bodega, and 12 a.m. impromptu cook-ups with Dad. My neighborhood was a melting pot of cultures and cuisines that came together to form one community. I was always fascinated by the pockets of Jackson Heights that had some of the most amazing samosas and curries, and Hillside Avenue for its authentic Guyanese and Trinidadian pastries. I people-watched as the elders of my community congregated, telling the stories of yesterday and playing cards while grooving to Marvin Gaye. I was surrounded by the glories of good people and good food, food that had meaning and soul.

My father, Johnny Ray Lynch, grew up in the small town of Bessemer, Alabamathe Marvel City. He started cooking when he was thirteen, at the hip of his late mother, Margarette Louise Lynch, and late grandmother Louise Sledge. They were housekeepers, beauticians, and phenomenal cooks who showed him the way to real country cooking. Everything my father knew about cooking, he learned from them, and not once did he rely on a cookbook. My folks approached cooking from a gut level. Cooking was all about pure instinct, being resourceful, and being thankful.

People ask me all the time why I became a chef, and I wish I had a deep answer. The short answer is that I really love food, every aspect of it. I went to Food and Finance High School in Manhattans Hells Kitchen to refine my cooking sensibilities, but the truth is that cooking is in my blood.

I was ten years old when my parents opened a restaurant, Baby Sisters Soul Food, in Queens. It was their first attempt at running a restaurant in a predominantly black community, and a chance for my father to revive the slowly dying soul food cuisine in our hood. My father had no real idea what to expect, how long the restaurant would survive, or who would eat there. It was all-or-nothing, and those were the principles he lived by. The first location stood adjacent to a convenience store on Farmers Boulevard in St. Albans, Queens. Eventually, the rent got too damn high and my parents relocated the restaurant to Laurelton, Queens, where Dads was one of at least a dozen restaurants in less than a one-mile radius.

My mother, Debbie-Ann, was a full-time secretary by day and sous chef by night. Let me back up. Mom grew up in Georgetown, Guyana, then moved to London, England, when she was thirteen. By her mid-twenties, she was moonlighting at clubs and restaurants, serving the British posh. She moved to New York City back in the eighties, hopped around from Long Island to Brooklyn, then back to Long Island, then finally to Queens, where she and my dad were neighbors. They fell in love, and the rest was, as they say, history.