LOS ANGELES — Keith Corbin wasn't looking for a career as a chef when he went to work for Roy Choi and Daniel Patterson at their Watts neighborhood restaurant, Locol.
"I was just coming home from prison. I had been fired from my other job. It was about paying bills," he says as he prepares to make a dish inside the Times Test Kitchen from Alta Adams, the acclaimed L.A. restaurant he opened in 2018 with Patterson.
It was at Locol, however, that he went from cook to kitchen manager, then chef in the Bay Area, and started to see new possibilities.
"I had ideas of what the food I grew up eating would be like if I had access to these resources that I was seeing in other areas. Like, what would my brand of food be like if we had Whole Foods or farmers markets? I started imagining the food that I grew up with made with fresh and better ingredients. I pitched that to Daniel, and Alta is the birth of that."
With Patterson as an adviser, sounding board and business partner, plus a dedicated team of chefs and servers — including former sous chef and Locol alum Gwendolyn Etta, who is now a chef de cuisine in Texas — Corbin has built Alta Adams into a community hub and nationally known destination restaurant.
But don't get the idea that Corbin's is a simple prison-to-star-chef redemption tale. As he details in his new memoir, "California Soul," his drug habit plagued him even as he started to carve out a career as a chef and restaurateur.
Yet for all of his slip-ups, Corbin — with a new baby and a beautiful wife he met in classic rom-com style when she came to eat at Alta — has emerged as a leader and mentor. Each week, young people from the neighborhood are invited to Alta to learn about the possibilities of a culinary career by witnessing how a high-level kitchen works. And at the adjacent Adams Wine Shop, they can see a Black woman, Jaela Salala, in charge of an operation co-founded by the late Ruben Morancy, a certified sommelier and former wine director at Patterson's now-closed San Francisco restaurant Coi, with the intention of featuring BIPOC and LGBTQ winemakers.
"Coming from Watts, the West Adams community that Alta is in is so similar," Corbin says. "It's definitely a underserved community. We wanted to make sure that we connected to the people who were already there [with] the choice of food and also the price point."
Not to mention the people staffing the restaurant. "We're really intentional on how we hire and who we hire," Corbin says. "It's all about giving chances and opportunity. Because without that, I wouldn't be here. Not only was I given opportunity, I was supported within that opportunity. Because I wasn't ready. I didn't know how to use a knife. I didn't know what these ingredients were. I probably would have messed up boiling water. I wanted to quit many a time, and, you know, Daniel and the team wouldn't allow me to quit. They just kept encouraging, encouraging. I was coming from a background where I wasn't disciplined for this. But here I am."
For all of the support Corbin received — at one point he says, "I've just been a passenger on this ride" — it's clear as he re-creates Alta's vegan gombo in the Times Test Kitchen that he has a sure sense of how to layer flavors and textures and incorporate the West African traditions of his enslaved ancestors with the seasonal, local vegetable-driven sensibility that's come to define what he calls "California soul" cooking.
"We're in California, right? You gotta have vegan. The vegetables are part of the beautiful bounty that California has. That's the whole purpose of what we do at Alta — California soul food, right? We took a cuisine that has been around for a long time and reframed it. That means a lot because when I think back about my enslaved ancestors, before they were brought here they cooked what they grew, they cooked what was around them, they cooked what they caught, they cooked what was in season. So we focus on what California produces while following the diaspora from West Africa through the Caribbean, through the South."
This is why Corbin sees no contradiction in serving his lauded fried chicken or oxtails and rice alongside vegan gombo or a smoked tofu sandwich with spicy tartar sauce and coleslaw.
That gombo — spelled closer to the original West African word for "okra" — uses red miso paste instead of a traditional roux and adds a layer of sautéed or charred or grilled vegetables on top of the vegetable stew, plus a garnish of radish sprouts or pea shoots, depending on what's in season, for a new kind of dish that tastes of this place while being rooted in tradition.
"All I did was trailblaze a new path to something familiar," Corbin says. "I remember what things taste like. I remember what my granny used to cook. So I just took my own path to get there using different ingredients and techniques, but trying to stay as authentic as possible."
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KEITH CORBIN'S VEGAN GOMBO (GUMBO)
Time: 75 minutes, plus 2 hours if making stock
Yields: Serves 12 to 15
Alta Adams chef and co-owner Keith Corbin’s “California soul” take on gumbo — or as he calls it, “gombo,” spelled closer to the West African word for “okra” — is vegan. It’s a multilayered dish with a complex vegetable stock as its base (it’s fine to use prepared vegetable stock if time is limited). A chile-enhanced gombo sauce of cooked okra and shallots is amped with red miso paste, in place of a traditional roux, and lime juice. For serving, Corbin starts with a layer of cooked California brown rice, then adds the gombo stew and tops it all with sautéed, charred or grilled vegetables that change with the seasons and add texture to the stew. On the day he made the dish in The Times’ Test Kitchen he sautéed broccoli, kale, sweet red peppers and baby corn that he found at the farmers market. He added a garnish of fresh pea shoots and radish sprouts, but this is also flexible. You can try a simple sprinkling of mint, parsley or other herbs.
For Vegetable Stock:
1 pound (500 grams) onion, about 3 medium, charred whole and peeled
1 pound (500 grams) onions, about 3 medium, sliced
6 to 7 (375 grams) medium carrots, sliced
2 to 3 medium bulbs (375 grams) fennel, sliced
1 knob (200 grams) celery root, sliced
1 medium (200 grams) leek, sliced
Few sprigs (5 grams) fresh thyme
8 to 8 1/2 quarts (8 liters) water
For Gombo Sauce:
1 3/4 tablespoons (25 grams) palm oil or olive oil
3 to 4 medium (50 grams) garlic cloves, minced
1 small knob (25 grams) ginger, minced
1 large (50 grams) red Fresno chile, quartered lengthwise and sliced thin
12 to 14 medium shallots (600 grams), quartered lengthwise and sliced thin
1 pound (450 grams) okra, quartered lengthwise and sliced thin
1 3/4 tablespoons (10 grams) dark chile powder
10 1/2 cups (2.5 liters) Vegetable Stock, homemade or packaged
3/4 tablespoon (15 grams) red miso paste
4 1/4 tablespoons (60 grams) fresh lime juice
Salt
For Gombo Assembly:
Fresh vegetables of choice, cooked as desired (sautéed, charred, steamed, blackened)
Cooked brown or white rice
Olive oil
Fresh pea shoots, radish sprouts or herbs of choice (mint or parsley) for garnish
1. For Vegetable Stock: Place charred onions, sliced onions, carrots, fennel, celery root, leeks, thyme and water in large stock pot. Cook, uncovered, over medium heat until flavorful and sweet, about 2 to 3 hours. Strain and discard solids. Makes about 5 liters.
2. For Gombo Sauce: Heat palm or olive oil in large pot and add garlic, ginger, Fresno chile, shallots and okra. Sweat vegetables over gentle heat until softened but not browned, about 5 minutes. Stir in chile powder, then add vegetable stock and salt to taste. Simmer over medium-low heat until thickened, about 45 minutes. If desired for smoother texture, remove 1 liter of sauce, puree in blender and return to pot. Simmer additional 15 minutes if needed, until flavors have melded. Whisk in miso and lime juice and season to taste with salt.
3. For Gombo assembly: Cook vegetables of choice, such as broccoli, kale, sweet peppers and baby corn, using method of choice: sautéed in a neutral oil, grilled or charred. Spoon cooked brown rice into individual serving bowls, add a layer of the gombo sauce and top each serving with cooked vegetables. Garnish with pea shoots, sprouts or herbs as desired.
