Humans Of The Kitchen

Emad (Sam) & Yasser Ahmed
.
I came to New York in 1995.

I’m often asked what makes my falafels unique, and I tell them it’s my experience. I have 40 years of experience in falafel making. Now I’m passing that knowledge on to my younger brother, who works with me in the cart.

I began making different falafel, but there is a variety of falafels depending on the country. So I called my friends in Egypt and Syria and asked what they recommended. I took their advice and made my own with some secret spices and a special sauce.

After 9/11, I stored my car for a year and a half. Then in 2003, I started again, but I paid the price because on the first day back I had almost all my customers come back! Some customers from more than 20 years ago are still coming to my car now.

It doesn’t matter if it’s bad weather or good weather, the support from the community has been outstanding.

My brother and I make everything from scratch, the falafel, the hummus, the baba ganoush, and the sauce; I buy nothing ready. We wake up at 5 in the morning to make everything homemade.

We had a restaurant, but we sold it in 2008. We didn’t have time to manage a restaurant, and having the cart was easier. People sometimes think I don’t have to pay much because it’s a cart, but I have to pay for the garage and other expenses.

Sam’s Falafel has sustained my family and my kids. They had the chance to go to university, and now I have two of them studying engineering, and my daughter got her master’s in public health. I have worked hard cooking and managing this business so they all have the chance of a brighter future.

If you are in NYC, we invite you to support NYC’s street food stands by joining the @streetvendorproject Scavenger Hunt!

My name is Juan Morales Caycedo. I was born in Bogota, Colombia.

For as long as I can remember, food has been the only constant interest in my life. One of the things I love most about cooking is transforming things that seem inedible into delicious preparations.

My grandmother was a great cook, so that’s where I found my love for food. My uncle had a daily menu restaurant in Bogota, and he used to take me to the market in the mornings to buy ingredients, and I used to help with simple duties in his kitchen.
When I started working in fine dining, it changed a lot of my attitudes toward life—especially being more conscious and caring about each ingredient and understanding the importance of every step in the preparation of a recipe. Respect and use all the edible parts of every ingredient. If it’s an animal, using everything cause there’s a life behind that. Even with vegetables, there’s time, sun, resources, and people behind to give you that product. If you don’t eat what you’re putting on a dish, please, don’t serve it.

Also, always remember there’s life outside the kitchen. Don’t get obsessed. Have meaningful relations with people. Respect the space to make the best work possible without losing yourself and turning into a robot. Work in a place you feel good. Be careful with alcohol and drug abuse in the industry. Don’t stay in a place you stop learning. Make the owners respect your time to rest.

I’ve been in restaurants for 20 years. My first job was at a Pizza Hut back home in Arkansas, way out in the country. All of my buddies in high school worked together and it was a fun place to work at. Our friend’s mom was the manager, so we would hang out, drink soda, eat pizza and we listened to music from a jukebox!

After doing that for a year, I moved down here and worked in Fort Lauderdale for six years with one restaurant. Then I stopped working in restaurants for one year and a half. I was 24-25 when I decided to go back to school here in Miami at Johnson and Wales to get my bachelor’s degree in culinary in 2008.

I don’t know what else I would do if I wasn’t cooking. When I started doing this a long time ago, I remember feeling like I was a part of something, because I was a little bit of a lone guy, quiet and introverted. Now it’s about these people, they make me a little crazy, but, I love the team and I love cooking. I love challenging myself and figuring out how to make good food.

I love finding because of the ingredients. I love talking to people about food and getting into the fun teaching part of it with some of the younger guys, showing them the experience I have up to this point. For me, it’s home away from home.

Now with my wife, our team here, and our business partner, we’ve been able to really get behind the vision that I have and work together to bring it to life. It’s been a lot of fun.

I started cooking because I’ve always seriously loved eating and needed to know how things were made. It all began when I moved away from home for the first time, and I craved Cambodian food so badly and started cooking to comfort myself from homesickness.

My friends convinced me to go to cooking school in Paris. From there, I had a lot of great work opportunities and learned a lot. I also realized it was the only thing I could wake up for in the morning. I can’t imagine waking up that early every day for anything else.

Not all shifts go as we expected. I feel the worst when I can sense the frustration of my team. I learned that when things go wrong, it’s essential to pause and regain everyone’s focus and attention to keep going.

Interview and shot by Shabnam Ferdowsi official HOTK reporter in Paris.

My name is Imrun Texeira. I was born in Ottawa, Canada, and currently reside in Toronto.

I started working as a dishwasher in a family-style restaurant at 14 years old– partly with an interest in kitchen life and the need for financial support – and quickly worked my way into the line with cooks double my age. I took my culinary apprenticeship program at Algonquin College in Ottawa, Canada, and became a certified Red Seal Chef at the age of 23.

I’ve loved food since I was a child; eager to cook, but mostly to eat good food. As a toddler, I almost burnt down my house trying to cook bagels in a plastic bag on top of an old element stove top. It didn’t turn out so well haha!

One of the things I love most about cooking is getting to nourish people, and creating edible art with my hands feels fantastic. There is nothing else I would rather do. I love to cook, eat, and be around good food. The food we make and the effort we put into it is a true reflection of ourselves.

During my time at Noma, I was paired up with another chef to put up staff meals for a week. We were told to make Indian food based on our heritage, so we did. The staff loved all the food and flavors. It was great to see. It gave me a deeper appreciation for the food of my homeland and a desire to represent those flavors in the highest realms of cooking.

Passion is 99% of the reason one would go into this line of work. Beautiful things can happen when you bring that many passionate people together. You never know what you can learn from everyone. The knowledge is endless.We live in the most multicultural country in the world.

I am blessed to be surrounded by such diverse food choices and talented hospitality professionals. Representation matters and will inspire more to come into this industry if they feel they can obtain greatness too.

The moment I genuinely connected with the kitchen was when I worked at a great restaurant by the beach. It was like the chefs hired nothing but MVPs. We were all passionate about cooking and tasting flavor combinations.

The process of becoming a Sous chef is definitely worth it. This is when you hone in on managing people and learning more about the back-office side of the industry.
It’s the last step before you take on the executive chef role. Being consistent and dependable and always excited about food. If you want to succeed in the industry, follow the chefs making waves and help them ride them; you will learn so much in the process, and you will always elevate.

Chefs work hard, and they should be recognized as leaders by their peers and the community. Culinary Awards are the rewards for our excellent quality food and consistency, and I believe they are necessary.

My name is Helen Perez. I was born in San Juan, Puerto Rico.

I originally had plans to start college for a career unrelated to food and beverage. However, a few months before graduating high school, my sister passed away, and I decided to hold off on school and get a job until I no longer felt depressed. I found a job at a marketplace with a deli.

Nine months in, I met a Chef who would tell me stories of what it was like to work in a kitchen. During my downtime at the marketplace, I would go into the deli and ask the chef to show me how to cut correctly and make sauces for the sandwiches, the flatbreads, and the whole chicken. I eventually requested to switch to a full-time prep cook. I didn’t love it at first. The days were long, and my body hurt, but I loved creating. Cooking saved me. I saw beauty in life again following my sister’s passing.

In 2019, I was given a job opportunity by a chef. She was a female chef with two James Beard awards, something I didn’t know about before entering her kitchen. I learned to do everything from scratch. I taught myself knife skills on my days off. I read about the food I was making. I saw how a woman chef held so much power through food. Within that year, they awarded me the back of the house employee of the year award.

What keeps me in the industry is my desire to grow. I tried leaving the industry once, and nothing compared to the feeling I get when I’m there. I hope mental health becomes more significant in the kitchen. I feel we get so caught up in “perfection” that we fail to realize people have emotions and are not working machines.

Humility and grit will get you further than any talent you have. Cook from the heart. Be patient. Some masterpieces take years to make.

I am from France. I have been in the restaurant business for a very long time. While living in Paris, I owned a restaurant for 2 years.

I moved to Miami back in 2003. Once I settled in, I opened a restaurant in Aventura called, A Weber Cafe. After 10 years I wanted to take a break, so I closed the restaurant and went in search of something new to do. I heard a local bakery was hiring so I checked it out and long story short, I’ve now been here for 6 years. I love the restaurant business. I couldn’t imagine myself working behind a desk or doing anything different.

I’m often asked what the difference is between owning your own business and working for somebody. The answer is: when you work for somebody (that has a great work ethic) you sleep better vs at my restaurant I worked from 10 am until 3 am the next day! I wouldn’t change those 10 years that I owned a restaurant, they were amazing, but eventually, I had to choose between spending time at home with my family or at the restaurant. When you own your own business, the problems follow you, whereas when you work for someone else you can leave the problems at your workplace.

I think the food business is the best in the world because that’s how you meet the most people and that’s where you have a lot of interaction with people. It’s like being in show business.

Everybody loves food.

I’m from Cleveland, Ohio. My dad is Filipino, and my mom is a mix of Italian and German.

Growing up in Cleveland, cooking or eating homemade meals isn’t part of the culture. My mom, who was single and working as a nurse trying to put herself through school, would get us McDonald’s or Craft Mac n Cheese. The only time I got exposed to real food was through my grandparents, who would make all kinds of Filipino food when they would watch me.

But that still didn’t spark my love of food or the desire to dive into cooking. It wasn’t until I got suspended in middle school that life took me in that direction. After my suspension, my dad–who had been divorced from my mother since I was a kid–thought the punishment was stupid and said that if I didn’t go to school, I would have to work.

At 12 years old, I started working as a pastry prep cook, and I liked earning money so much that I kept working part-time through middle and high school. Afterward, I got a job at a great Pizza place. There I met many people who were really into food. That pushed me to follow this career.

When I first got out of high school, I went looking for another restaurant, but back then, there were fewer choices, especially as a young cook. I’m 25 now, and since my start, there have been many changes in the industry. They’ve been for the best, in my opinion. Now, a new restaurant opens in Miami almost every year, trying to push quality food and the culture of caring about what you’re doing in the kitchen, and now it’s a lot easier to get a start.

It’s also important who you surround yourself with. All of my friends love food in one way or another, and the people you have around you will either build you up or down.