Meet Kendra Anderson

Chef Derrick: Can you tell us about a Black or AA figure in your life who inspired your culinary journey?

Kendra Anderson: My culinary journey was definitely inspired by my family my maternal grandmother, as well as my paternal grandfather were wonderful chefs, and I always loved learning more about the food that they had grown up eating my Uncle Charles Augustine was a professional chef and we spent a lot of time with him as I was a kid growing up, so I love to learn at his side, and I can remember so many things that he taught me at a very young age. In terms of a professional chef or a public figure, the person that comes to mind for me is B Smith, who had a catering business and became a television and media personality that I looked up to quite a bit after I had graduated from culinary school. I’m starting my own catering business. She was everything I felt was amazing. She was glamorous. She was professional and polished, and she was always well put together and that to me seemed like the perfect type of chef and caterer that I wanted to be.

Chef Derrick: What is a dish or recipe (or word of advice) that was passed down in your family or community that you hold dear?

Kendra Anderson: Both of my parents were raised in New York City, and as a result, they seem to enjoy foods from all different types of cultures in addition to the home cooking and soul food that they would have grown up eating as well and as a result, my parents both enjoyed cooking foods from all different types of culinary backgrounds one dish that we always enjoyed on Christmas Eve. For example, my surprise most people it was actually chicken cacciatore and my mother would make that every Christmas Eve and that was our holiday meal. We had it other than that as well, but that was just a dish that was beloved by all of us and that was our holiday meal. Another would be my family’s fried chicken. My parents both loved it, and my mother would make it at least once a week and that was something that we grew up eating that I loved and I still make to this day

Chef Derrick: Who are some of the Black or AA chefs or food activists who have shaped your career or your perspective on food?

Kendra Anderson: The black chef who comes to mind when I answer this question is Marcus Marcus Samuelsson. I had worked and had my catering business for a number of years when I started to know who he was and when I read his book many years later, I realized his journey was very different than what I think I had assumed it was, and I liked that he was unafraid to match his heritage growing up in Sweden with modern flavors and techniques that were more familiar in the United States and because he was black, I appreciated the fact that he didn’t limit his culinary pursuit to food that is maybe only what we typically would associate with someone who is African-American, so I always found his style of blending various different types of his background and his passion for flavor in a very unique way

Chef Derrick: How do you incorporate elements of your heritage into your brand?

Kendra Anderson: When I started Caviar Dream I knew from the moment that I had the idea that I wanted to make sure we were very represented in terms of our brand and so the icon on every single one of our tins of caviar is the very obvious image a silhouette of a black woman — we call her Dominique — who has a natural hairstyle that is bold and beautiful, I wanted to make sure that everyone who saw our package knew that we were representing a different group of caviar consumers, then perhaps had ever really been represented in a Broadway so my culture and that is something that we are so thrilled about