KTW CULINARY SPOTLIGHT: CHEF NIKKIA RHODES IS STAYING IN SCHOOL
By Michael Phillips
When she started the Culinary Arts Academy at Iroquois High School in August 2018, the classroom-turned-kitchen was a little sparse. With only a single epoxy countertop and a sink lodged in the corner, Nikkia Rhodes knew the space would need a lot of work to better serve the group of over 80 students already enrolled in her program.
In the Summer of 2019, though, she would spearhead an initiative that would result in a dramatic renovation in her classroom. From the lone sink to commercial-grade stoves, ovens, refrigerators and more, Rhodes would be much better equipped to give her students the opportunity to develop their own culinary identities.
Her career today encapsulates the intersection of her two central passions: cooking and teaching. And if you take even a glimpse into her past, it’s clear how the recipe for her success was written early.
Growing Up on Stainless Steel Tables
Nikkia Rhodes was born and raised in the Smoketown neighborhood of Louisville. The area, according to a study compiled by the University of Louisville and Metro United Way, is one of the poorest in the state. Specifically, family income levels in Smoketown are less than half of the average of families in the rest of the state.
In a WFPL interview from 2018, she gave a little more context to growing up in Smoketown, stating “I knew that there were issues in my neighborhood; I was a kid who had to grow up really fast because of the things I was around.” Still, she found support in both the members of her community and her family.
Her mother instilled in her both a strong work ethic and a passion for cooking from her tireless work managing Volunteers of America’s kitchens. Rhodes told Kentucky to the World recently: “She managed the VOA kitchens for 13 to 15 years. I grew up there. I grew up, she'll tell you, and my grandmother would have told you that I grew up with my butt being changed on stainless steel tables.” This exposure to the kitchens with the VOA would effectively inspire her to pursue a professional life as a chef.
She told Louisville Magazine recently that her experience with the VOA, where she typically volunteered on both Thanksgiving and Christmas, helped mold her ethos as a culinary artist and tireless worker. She stated that “We’d open presents on the night of Christmas Eve and be up bright and early to make breakfast for the people.” Rhodes isn’t shy when it comes to talking about her mother’s struggles with addiction or her father’s bouts of incarceration because, much like her neighborhood, things aren’t always so black and white, inherently good or bad. Without these early hardships, Rhodes may have never developed the work ethic necessary to design and run an entire culinary program by the age of 21.
Before she was leading her own classroom, she first cut her teeth in Western High School’s culinary arts program before moving straight into advanced-level cooking classes at Jefferson Community and Technical College (JCTC) under the advice of none other than Chef Damaris Phillips.
The LEE Initiative as a Launch Pad
Rhodes, determined and resolved to perfect her craft, would graduate from the JCTC culinary program by age 17. From there, she took a number of kitchen jobs, packing her schedule to work at different places throughout the week. This constantly on-the-clock schedule resulted in a feeling of stagnation. She told us, “I was just working like three or four jobs and wasn't really getting a sense of growth anymore. It was more just going through the motions.” Looking for a way forward, she decided to take a chance and apply for a spot in the first season of a new female chef accelerator, The LEE Initiative.
The organization, started in 2015 by celebrity chef Edward Lee and the General Manager of his flagship restaurant Lindsey Ofcacek, is an acronym for “Let’s Empower Employment” and, of course, Chef Lee’s last name. LEE strives for “more diversity, more training, and more equality,” in the restaurant industry, according to their mission statement. To orchestrate this mission, they select a number of women chefs for an intensive eight-month “leadership development experience.” The competitive mentorship program prepares mentees to:
Complete a seven-day externship in a woman-led kitchen
Attend the FAB workshop, which is a weekend-long event that prepares women entrepreneurs for the business side of running a restaurant
Develop, blend and prepare recipes for a Maker’s Mark signature bourbon
Participate in a butchery workshop
Train with Wagstaff Marketing for appropriate media etiquette
Create a meal for New York City’s elite culinary audience at the James Beard House with Edward Lee
Continue working with the LEE Initiative after the completion of the program
Considering the competitive nature of the program, Rhodes was surprised to learn that she’d been selected. Rhodes’ externship with Anne Quatrano opened her eyes to a lot of misconceptions and prevailing gender expectations in the restaurant industry.
“So when we think of women, we think of the mom in the kitchen or the grandma in the kitchen and she’s making food for the whole family. It’s very domestic. And whenever we think of a commercial kitchen, we think of Gordon Ramsey. We think of a man and he’s strong and he’s loud and he’s yelling at everyone.”
During her time working with Anne Quatrano in Atlanta, she was able to see first-hand how that gender expectation was being challenged in the real world. Quatrano, who owns six restaurants in the greater Atlanta area, gave her a model and example of how women are beginning to dominate the commercial kitchen. Rhodes further explained that she “was able to see her and her husband running this empire that she built up and he was kind of her sidekick. And being able to see that type of dynamic was really special.”
Preparing Transition-Ready Students
Equipped with this knowledge from her education at JCTC and her mentorship through The LEE Initiative, Rhodes decided it was time to pack up her knives and head back to the classroom. She already had teaching experience under her belt from Turnip the Beet, a Louisville-based cooking school for children, but she knew she would need to enter a more formalized school setting in order to give students a more formal entry into the professional side of the culinary world.
When she began teaching at Iroquois High School, the classroom was “just a normal classroom, it had carpet, desks, and projectors, and we focused a lot on ServSafe and nutrition and those types of things.” Over the Summer of 2019, though, her classroom would receive a much-needed renovation. As a result, students can practice different techniques and prepare intricate dishes previously impossible with the old classroom structure.
It’s all part of a comprehensive plan to prepare students to transfer out of the classroom kitchen and into the commercial kitchen after graduation. As students hone their skills and gain necessary kitchen certifications, they also build a set of credentials that make them appealing applicants on the job market. As a person who has gone through a similarly structured system, Rhodes understands all too well how positively this intervention can affect a student’s life.
At the same time, these resume-building exercises are not the only goal Rhodes has in mind in building her curriculum. She also wants her students to gain the mindfulness to give back to their community as they use their culinary talents. To help address this, she’s started working with local initiatives to help give back. For example, she told us that “Brighter Meal Prep was created in partnership with Ready, Set, Prepped based in New Albany, IN and basically we just offer (meal prep services to) teachers, who are the busiest people in the world.”
The Future of Food is Mentorship
Nikkia has dedicated her life to making sure that kids like her are given the opportunity to see more in themselves, to have positive role models right in front of them like she once found in Damaris Phillips. When Nikkia met Damaris for the first time while she was a student at Western High School, she was so excited that she had Damaris be the first person to sign her yearbook before she had even fully paid for it.
She followed Damaris’ advice and went to JCTC and graduated earlier than anyone expected. She ended up landing a job in the kitchen at Chef Edward Lee’s 610 Magnolia, Damaris’ first kitchen job and the birthplace of The LEE Initiative. That kind of connectivity is exactly why we were excited to reunite all these forces in food on one stage for The Future of Food is Female at the Kentucky Center on March 2 where we witness an in-depth conversation about the nuances of Kentucky cuisine from the artists leading the movement.
