It’s spring in the city, and New York is bursting with color. Through the din of a busy evening in Brooklyn, the breeze carries a hint of grill smoke and something you can’t quite put your finger on, beckoning you further down the block. There on her front stoop, is Kia Damon, grilling meatballs on the Traeger and making conversation with the strangers who lean on the railing instead of hurrying on by. With a small chunk of real estate, eight cement steps to be exact, and a chef’s heart for feeding people, Kia is stoking the fires of community when she offers a bite hot off the grill.

After serving as Lalito's executive chef and Cherry Bombe's former culinary director, the Chopped champion who was named “The New Face of New York’s Food World'' by Vogue, has a new dream to feed those in need right down the street.

Katie Marchetti: Tell me a little bit about how you got your start cooking, when did you discover you loved it?

Kia Damon: I definitely come from a cooking family. I feel like I learned how to eat good food before I learned how to cook that food, and I owe that to my grandma. She was always feeding me whatever she was eating. So it started pretty young, I think it was pre-teen ish when I started to like cooking. I was the oldest child and both my parents were working full time, so I had to help. It was a lot of trial and error for sure, and I didn't really get good at it until I was in my mid to late teens.

Did that build a lot of confidence? I feel like finding your thing at a young age kind of shapes who you are a bit.

Kia: Oh, absolutely. I had lost a lot of my confidence when depression and stuff came along, and it was very difficult to deal with that. I felt like a failure, until I realized I was good at cooking. I finally felt good, and there was immediate affirmation when someone ate something you made and said it was great. It built my confidence as a young adult. I'm glad that I found it, honestly.

You're self-taught as a chef — what was that progression like? When did you decide that this is something you could make a living at?

Kia: I think I was like 19 or 20 when I thought I could do this for real.

At the time, I was a really big fan of Bobby Flay. I remember reading that he dropped out of high school and was working at a pizza shop, but someone came in and saw something in him and paid for him to go to culinary school. So, I thought I was going to get my Bobby Flay moment - I'm just going to be self-taught, and then someone's going to see how great I am and send me to school.

So, I just worked my way up through kitchens, and I definitely was not mentally prepared for it. It wasn't difficult working in the kitchens - the difficulty was the treatment. Just realizing, in a way that I hadn't before as a young adult, the biases and the prejudices that existed. And I just thought, ‘dude, we're all working at the same place, working the same job, we’re the same.’

I thought if I put my head down and cooked and just showed them that I do have the skill, then maybe that'll push me forward. And even then, it really did not.

I did most of my cooking in Tallahassee — my first job was at Panda Express. From there I went to work at a diner where I feel like the bulk of the base of my training and cooking came from. Worked for a very wretched woman, but she taught me a lot. The Bada Bean, Sweet Pea Cafe and even a stint at Universal Studios making the famed Butterbeer at The Wizarding World of Harry Potter followed that. That's kind of when I started doing my own thing, cooking for dinner parties and stuff like that. Developing the Kia Cook's identity from there.

What brought you to New York?

Kia: I was hitting a wall in Florida. I had a really devastating  family thing, I got fired, and then I got the rejection letter for the James Beard Culinary program. I felt like my life was falling apart, and that I should go somewhere else. In hindsight I just feel like all those things were kicking me off the diving board. I went up to visit my friend in New York, and her restaurant up there, formerly Lolita, was looking for sous chefs and my friend said, ‘You should apply to this. If you don't apply I will apply on your behalf!” So I worked for it and I got it. And next thing you know, I'm in New York, working as a sous chef, it was actually insane.

So then you were promoted to head chef of Lolita, correct?

Kia: Promoted is a cute word choice. I had no choice, I was forced into it. Looking back, it was so chaotic. I took a wild chance. I felt like it set me up to learn a lot of great things. A lot of really difficult things, very early on in my career. I had to grow up really, really fast.

Was it affirmation that you were on the right track when you got that position?

Kia: Good question. I don't think affirmation in that sense of, ‘yeah, girl, you deserve this, you can do this’. I think affirmation in the sense of ‘I am doing things that are larger than before and oftentimes more uncomfortable than before. So that must mean that I'm growing.’ I'm always trying to find the path that is the most uncomfortable, just so I can step out of myself and think about discipline and think about growth, and be truly challenged.

 I was reading a couple of articles about you and one headline said you were “The New face of New York's Food World,” which is an incredible tagline. After getting rejection letters and not being promoted for so long, what did it feel like to suddenly have your face everywhere?

Kia: That was crazy, even now it feels very affirming. As imperfect as I am, as bootstrapped as my life has been, I just tried to remain my most authentic self. Sometimes it’s people looking for the next hot thing to talk about or it's hip now that this black girl is doing this thing; there's always going to be that but I'm glad that I didn't let that discredit the hard work that I was actually doing.

I feel like that authenticity, though, really draws in a special crowd. So have you left the restaurant world behind?

Kia: I'm supporting it in a different way. It was not that I'd never wanted to be in restaurants. It was just that the current system that I was in was harmful to me. So I had to step away but I always say that a restaurant is a building, you know, it's the people who come to it that make it what it is. My dream is to own a diner. I used to have dreams, dreams for real fine dining, Michelin Star, et cetera, and now that I've gotten more experience, I realized this is the food that I want to make and that's okay. There's nothing wrong with that. I want a diner. I love diners. That's where community is built and those regulars, familiar faces, things like that. So I'm just taking the detour to build another part of my life and my career, and then I'll come back to it, open a diner.

I feel like that's just part of growing. Right? You get a lot more clarity about what that dream actually looks like.

Kia: Exactly, exactly. You just get more clarity. And I have to remember that as much as people love the young, new, hot 30 under 30, that I have the rest of my life, you know. I'm thankful for clarity. And I'm thankful for the career that I've built thus far. Now I just want to also focus on enjoying my life.

Do you feel like your process and style and how you cook has really evolved over the last few years?

Kia: I can say that it has changed immensely just in the last year of quarantine. I left the restaurant, it was very difficult for me to figure out how to cook again, because I was only used to cooking in bulk, not just for myself.  Now, I'm just cooking cause I'm hungry, I'm eating because I need to nourish myself, which is my focus. Whether that's acknowledging I haven’t had a lot of vegetables and roast them or nourishing spiritually when I really missed my mom, I have to call her and get a recipe from her —  this kind of cooking and eating intuitively on a personal level is important so that I can have the energy and the creativity to cook for work.

Tell me a little bit about how your relationship with Traeger came about.

Kia: A couple years ago I went to this event on a vineyard and they were using this gigantic smoker. I thought, “oh, this is pretty cool.” But what I thought was even more cool is to put something on the smoker that didn't have anything to do with meat. I made smoked Concord grapes with burrata cheese, and everyone was losing their mind over it. So that kind of opened up my mind about what the possibilities were. I moved during quarantine and I asked Traeger if the grill they offered me was still available and here we are. I just felt really freed up to smoke anything, do anything. Instead of meat, what if I just want to smoke oysters, pizza, pie, fish? The possibilities are truly limitless, you know? I feel it was another moment where I felt really confident about myself and my skills. I want other people to feel this way.

So what's your favorite part about cooking outside now? Coming from cooking in big kitchens to your front step is a big change.

Kia: Just being outside when the weather is good, and you get the energy from people around you walking down the street. I can talk to people and interact with them when someone walks by and wants to know what I'm making. I can show them and then it's a whole conversation. Now we're talking about food. We're talking about recipes or they’re showing me pictures of their uncle who does stuff like this. It feels good. It feels communal.

You touched a little bit on community, which I'd love to talk about. How do you think food can change and enrich a community? Why is the table so fundamental?

Kia: I feel like that was very much the earliest form of communication, just getting together and going to get food, harvesting or hunting or whatever. Today that's still where you build community, you build relationships with each other, and it just feels good. It’s not good to be alone so much. When you cook for your community, it shows that you care for people other than yourself.  I think as a world, as a culture, we've deviated from that and moved very much into an individualistic place. There's something refreshing, seeing people who still hold on to that communal piece and thinking about one another. When you’re being fed, you feel cared about by others and that's nice.

So important. I read in a previous interview, you were discussing the importance of bridging the gap to food security in Brooklyn. Tell me a little bit about what that looks like and why it's such a pertinent issue.

Kia: Well, right now a lot of great people have been doing good by putting up community fridges, mutual aid for food donations, grocery bags and such. If this last year has shown us anything, it is that a lot of people get their food from work. Or kids who are no longer at school, where they ate, are now struggling to get what they need. It’s something that we know exists, but as a global issue, not a home issue for sure. I think a lot of folks didn't realize how prominent this issue is, until we got hit with COVID and they found themselves experiencing that for the first time. The lack of available good, fresh produce is an issue.

Tell me what inspired you to start Kia Feeds the People?

 Kia: I was just very much in that same head space of ‘I have to do something.’ I'm a chef, I'm a cook, and my whole career has been about cooking and feeding people, and that doesn't stop just because there's not a restaurant for me to do it in or no accolades for me to collect. So what does that mean for me? I was trying to figure it out during the  protests. I thought, ‘okay, once a protest subsides, the issue still exists and people need to eat.’ People need access to food and I could do that. It's been a long journey almost a year since its conception. By Fall 2021, our aim is to raise enough money to pack 200 boxes of organic produce, and gather 50 turkeys, and 50 chickens to be distributed to underserved communities in Brooklyn, New York. I hope to also provide hot meals for the unhoused and establish a free breakfast and lunch program.

 I don't think I'm doing anything revolutionary. You know, I'm just adding to what already exists and just picking up a piece of it and moving forward with everybody else, just like somebody will do after me. There's always going to be a need for it. I'm very excited about it. Even when the work gets tough,  it's definitely passion work, you know? My mom instilled in us from very early on that spirit of service and giving. She’d be at the store and see a mother struggling to buy formula or Pampers and she would just put her card out and cover it. Now whenever I see an opportunity I try to do it too.

That's such a good reminder to look for where you can help, in the daily lives of those around us.

Kia: Yes! I think it should always be our mentality. My hope is that someone would extend the same grace to me, if I ever found myself in that place. And I have found myself in that place before, so who are we to look down on someone and turn away from someone because we feel like we're good. You could find yourself needing a free produce or pantry bag, I want that to be accessible to you.

 You should be so proud of what you've built. It's really beautiful. Do you have a favorite recipe that you've created?

Kia: I did this really dope fish. Oh, it was so good with pickled jalapenos and onions, lime and a fish sauce. It’s summertime and I feel like grilling fish a lot, so I need to do it again and actually write down the recipe because it was good.

 Last question. What advice would you like to give your younger self?

Kia: Let me go look at the pictures of myself, I was a cute kid. [laugh] I think I would just let her know that, it will be okay. That eventually she will find the words to explain how she feels, and there will be people who love her and support her, and she’ll choose a family who will know her and accept those really bad things that she feels about herself. I'd let her know that she won't be alone, that it's okay that she is a skinny child with big feet, she will grow into it. And that someday you'll be making a homemade hamburger recipe for YouTube and you'll get paid lots of money for it. You’ll be okay,  just keep being weird, keep trying new things. There will be people who accept and celebrate and affirm that.

 That's perfect. I wish every young kid had someone to tell them that.

Kia: Me freaking too, that way we would not have to spend so much on therapy.

***You can support Kia Feeds the People: ***https://www.gofundme.com/f/kiafeedsthepeople