VeggieBoards banner

This Rising Star Chef Is Black, Vegan — And Only 11 Years Old

595 views 1 reply 2 participants last post by  David3 
#1 ·


An 11-year-old boy recently hit up 53-year-old Roger Wade on LinkedIn, wishing to open a restaurant one day. Wade wrote back: Why not now?

When Wade, CEO of Boxpark, a chain of hip food halls in London, was 11 years old himself, he sold candy to his schoolmates. He cited that memory as a heartstring plucked by Omari McQueen, the 11-year-old LinkedIn user. "Age doesn't define a person any more than gender or race does," Wade said. "We were happy to support a dream. Omari is a role model for dreaming big."

Wade waived the £1,000 rent for a weeklong pop-up at Boxpark's Croydon location, freeing McQueen to bill himself as the "world's youngest restaurateur" - even younger than Flynn McGarry, who, in 2011, became a foodie wunderkind at 11 1/2 by running a restaurant out of his California home (and charging $160 a head when he debuted in New York).

McQueen debuted Dipalicious, his vegan Caribbean spot, in the same food hall as Goat, a Jamaican restaurant run by James Cochran, the 2018 Great British Menu champion of champions.

McQueen's pop-up week spanned a week in August, which was a very busy month for him. A few days before Dipalicious, opened, he appeared on Step Up to the Plate, a BBC food competition in which children jostle to showcase their restaurant skills. (He had already taught the BBC's Newsround how to make vegan shepherd's pie.) McQueen did not advance in the competition, even though celebrity chef Liam Charles scored his beetroot risotto a 9.5 out of 10.

"I'm not bothered," McQueen said recently as he peeled potatoes in Dipalicious' kitchen. "I skipped ahead to having my own proper restaurant anyway."
Read the rest here: https://www.npr.org/sections/thesal...tar-chef-is-black-vegan-and-only-11-years-old

This kid rocks! :D
 
See less See more
1
#2 ·
This is an older thread, you may not receive a response, and could be reviving an old thread. Please consider creating a new thread.
Top