For Los Angeles native Kenneth Anderson, food has been a part of his life and his family since he was eight years old. Now, he’s on track to be the first pop up chef to earn a Michelin star. “I was watching my mom cook something for dinner and I was like, ‘oh, I can do that.’ And she was like, ‘well then do it.’ That’s the kind of person my mom is,” Kenneth said, reminiscing on his first moments in the kitchen.
Soon after Anderson started cooking at a profoundly young age, his grandmother got sick. Due to her condition, her eating habits were limited–no sugar and less salt. Although an unfortunate circumstance, this forced Anderson to play with flavors as the “family cook”. Playing with flavors has become Anderson’s passion.
Clad in his signature newsboy hat and round glasses, Anderson is a lively force. Going into highschool, Anderson continued to pursue his passion for flavors. He would cook often for clubs on campus–such as Black Student Union, which he was also the president of. Even catering for two hundred people at the age of eighteen, Anderson decided to finally gain formal culinary training after graduation.
Following culinary school, Anderson took a path distinct from most chefs. “I did take a very different path. I did not intern with restaurants. I did not intern with big name chefs or anything like that, I actually just started my own business and started catering shortly after that,” Anderson said as he reminisced on his lucrative career. “It’s been a whirlwind since.”
Although an alternative one, Anderson’s path has allowed him to explore all facets of the culinary industry–something very few chefs can say. “I’ve done the catering scene. I’ve done the in-home private chef thing. I’ve been a personal chef to some clients. I’ve done private event parties,” Anderson stated. “I’ve been all over this spectrum and this world.”
In particular, Anderson is most passionate about travel and pop-ups. In 2007 Anderson and his friend Chef Guiseppe started Kreation Event Services, a creative pop-up company with dishes inspired from their travels around the world. Their “Dine In Series” creates an atmosphere where guests feel like they are dining in a friend’s home, and they have the opportunity to interact with the chefs as the dishes are served. Each dish is uniquely inspired by Anderson and Guiseppe’s distinct travel and life experiences.
“I really love getting to experience people and their culture, and [it’s] interesting how other people live and how food impacts that,” Anderson said. “And so I bring those experiences for my travel back to doing pop ups, and so I do like a five course dinner based on places that I travel to.”
Anderson recently traveled to Peru with his partner. Upon return, Kreation hosted a pop-up with a unique Peruvian menu, including a black tamale filled with queso fresco and topped with soy braised short rib and tequila pickled cherries. Anderson is also especially interested in caviar, implementing caviar into Baja Mexican dishes and experimenting with combining different flavors.
“I do want to become the first chef to win a Michelin star from a pop-up restaurant, so that’s where I’m most passionate about,” Anderson said. “I’ve come to find out in the last two years that there’s just a lot more money to be made, for me right now, at least, the private stuff world.”
The mean annual wage of private cooks in California is $65,570, while …
Prior to starting pop-up restaurants, Anderson worked as an executive chef at House of Music and Entertainment, a restaurant in Beverly Hills with many celebrity frequenters. The Executive Chef for three years, Anderson spent his efforts building his brand and his name in the entertainment industry, focusing more seriously on his social media. At the same time, Anderson slowly began to build up his pop-up events, featuring many of these on his popular social media accounts. Producers began to reach out to him, landing him roles on “Top Chef” and “Roku Best Bites.”
“I never really wanted to be on TV, I never thought that I was a TV person, and so other people, including some producers, started to tell me, ‘you actually do have the personality for TV,’” Anderson said. “I didn’t see it.”
For years, private chefs have not been considered “real chefs” within the public culinary world. Hendley states that “Underlying the culinary food chain are long standing divisions between public and private, amateur and professional, and feminine and masculine cooking.” The culinary hierarchy is a lingering notion in all facets of the industry, but especially for chefs in the private sector.
Anderson always says his work “speaks for itself”. The quality and creativity of his dishes allows for this culinary hierarchy to never reach him, never negatively impact him. Anderson appears to feel exempt from the notion of private chefs as not “real chefs”, as his prolific experience in the restaurant industry and culinary education has him well equipped for the culinary world. Connections are a large part of this, too. Before Anderson was a private chef, he focused on making connections in the industry, with Michelin star chefs in New York and Los Angeles.
“It depends on the personal and private chef to say if they are quote unquote real chefs because there are a lot of chefs that popped up during COVID that I would also say truthfully are not ‘real chefs,’” Anderson explained. “I still had training, I still had culinary experience and I’ve put in work for over twenty years now in catering and so forth and so on to be able to say that I have fundamental skills to call myself a chef.”
If Anderson believes skill is what is needed to be a “real chef”, what does “skill” actually entail? The ability to make and create quality dishes? Or rather something more technical, such as understanding French techniques and the proper inner workings of a kitchen? Regardless, Anderson’s confidence and success as a private chef and as a pop-up chef only strengthens his status as a chef–whatever that title may mean.
“I tell chefs often something that was told to me in culinary school, which is that it’s not necessarily that you make everything perfect. Of course, that’s the goal, but it’s when you make a mistake, can you fix it? It’s having the fundamental culinary knowledge and skills to be able to fix things, change things and make things taste good even when you’ve messed up.”
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