The Chef Tanya Holland Chronicles the Journey of ‘California Soul’
In her new cookbook, the acclaimed owner of Brown Sugar Kitchen traces the Great Migration’s influence on West Coast cuisine.
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At 6 a.m. on a recent Tuesday, the chef Tanya Holland sat alert in the green room of “Good Morning America” just off Times Square, asking her small team if they needed anything. With dozens of television appearances under her belt, Ms. Holland did not seem nervous, but instead used this quiet moment to rehearse her brief cooking segment.
“I’ve done this many times,” she said, while getting a touch-up from her makeup artist. Her mood was meditative, despite the hundred moving pieces in the studio.
It was not unlike the morning routine she kept at her restaurant, Brown Sugar Kitchen, nearly 3,000 miles away in Oakland, Calif. As the chef and owner of the nationally recognized soul-food restaurant, which was open 2008 to 2021, Ms. Holland began most days at 5:30 a.m., heating oil in anticipation of orders of fried chicken, boiling water for poached eggs, signing off on orders of fresh produce and baking pecan-topped sticky buns to a golden brown as customers began to queue outside.
In Oakland, Ms. Holland built a reputation for cooking that blended Southern cuisine with California influences and French technique, becoming a pillar of the Bay Area culinary community and winning three Michelin Bib Gourmand awards along the way. She even hosted her own television show, “Tanya’s Kitchen Table,” on the OWN network. Her latest book, “Tanya Holland’s California Soul: Recipes From a Culinary Journey West,” tells the stories of California’s Black food history, a melting pot of influences from all over the country.
But on this day in New York City, Ms. Holland, 57, beamed under the stage lights as she talked on camera about the apple-cider-braised pork chops and chunky cooked apples that she was cooking on the set. The recipe was inspired in part by her paternal grandmother.
“I spent summers with her in Virginia, and apples were like a condiment at the breakfast table,” she said as thick slices of Granny Smiths caramelized in a cast iron pan in front of her. “It’s like an ode to her.”
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