It was a balmy night in Oakland, and just off Grand Avenue, in a residential neighborhood of precipitous streets and lively gardens, evening meal was receiving underway on a sunlight-bathed deck with a look at of the East Bay hills.
The air was fresh with a trace of eucalyptus, a hummingbird chirred in a close by shrub, and I took my initial sips of a cucumber-mezcal cocktail—cold and smoky, at any time so marginally sweet from a touch of agave nectar, and subtly spiced with serrano peppers.
As the other guests arrived for the lone, prix-fixe service, the host built her way from desk to desk, welcoming them in convert with a heat, “I’m Imana, and I am the chef and proprietor of Hi Felicia.”
It can be a greeting the restaurateur—who prefers a to start with-identify-only basis—repeats like a mantra. And though it may possibly seem to be an unremarkable introduction, it is not, due to the fact Imana is Black and simply because, at dining places of this caliber—like the good eating dining establishments where by she’s worked for the previous numerous several years, some of them with Michelin stars—there are incredibly several Black owners and cooks.
Hello Felicia is an all-outside cafe on a deck overlooking the Oakland Hills.(Nick Czap)
“I’ve experienced a great deal of arguments with men and women due to the fact I’m confrontational,” she mentioned around beverages at Snail Bar a number of days afterwards. “You will find a good deal of ‘we really like diversity.’ But exactly where do you appreciate it? In which is it? Somebody was like, ‘We had a Black girl operating here when,’ or ‘We have a Mexican overnight crew.’ But who sees the right away crew?”
Describing herself as somebody who is particularly delicate to her surroundings, Imana said, “There is an instant comfort and variation when you see everyone not white in a administration situation. There requires to be an individual brown in every single solitary room, in each and every manager conference, in every single line cook assembly. But they are just hardly ever there and it can be systemic. If I go to the Tenderloin or Fruitvale, everyone seems to be like me. But the place are the folks that search like me in nicer, upscale eating places? That is what I want to know. I go out to take in regularly. I do kitchen tours. I am constantly on the lookout. I want to be confirmed wrong, but I under no circumstances am. I want an response from absolutely everyone who posted to #BlackLivesMatter previous summer time. Are they busing tables or are they building the wine software? I want to know wherever they are. In which are they?”
Imana grew up in West L.A., where she formulated a style for Mexican cooking. “I ate at Mexican areas when I was really young,” she said. “Places you just wander in in the vicinity of the beach front. Mar Vista. In L.A. you will find a whole lot of Mexican food. It truly is my preferred detail to take in and cook dinner.” Mexico is also her most loved put to travel, and she travels there often, paying out substantially of her time at dining establishments in a chef’s version of R&D.
Imana did not attend culinary school, but she did undertake a culinary education and learning of a sort at an impressionable age. “When I was like eight,” she said, “I went to cooking camp for a week. I came dwelling cooking all this things. It is really so amusing. When my mom observed out I was getting a cafe, she claimed, ‘Oh, you often wished to open up a cafe.’ Yeah. As a child.”
10 a long time later, Imana dove into entrance-of-the-household do the job at a Chick-fil-A in Los Angeles. At 19, she moved to New York, where she labored in the eating rooms of Cookshop in Chelsea, Peaches Hothouse in Brooklyn, and Jacob’s Pickles on the Upper West Facet. In 2018, she moved to San Francisco—”with $300 and no area to are living”—and landed on her ft at Leo’s Oyster Bar, then skipped to Cow Marlowe in advance of heading on to get the job done as a captain at Coi and at Val Cantu’s Californios, whose upscale Mexican delicacies she cites as an impact.
On Xmas Working day, 2020, with the pandemic in entire swing, she struck out on her have with Casa by Imana, a seven-study course to-go menu with a beverage pairing. This February, she released her outdoor evening meal collection, re-branding as Hi Felicia, the identify a twist on a line from the 1995 stoner movie Friday that starred Ice Dice and Chris Tucker.
I never get substantial significantly, but I was sensation a significant excitement from the sluggish burn up that is Imana’s signature. “I appreciate spicy meals,” she claimed. “You will find so significantly scorching sauce in my fridge. If it truly is not spicy, I really don’t like it. It hurts so excellent and you might be fucking crying.” And even although I would usually imagined I experienced a small spice tolerance, there was anything magnetic in the depth of the poblanos in a walnut-pecan-cashew queso seasoned with onion and garlic powder and the Thai chile in Imana’s “pico de gallo chunk,” a colourful assemblage of gold heirloom and crimson cherry tomatoes garnished with a peanut and a scatter of inexperienced onions and the fermented incredibly hot sauce on the little slab of bluefin tuna atop a dollop of guacamole atop a deliciously crunchy-juicy panko-crusted fried tomato.
Steadily, the heat enhanced by way of a diminutive burrito with eggs, fried potatoes, and pork sausage draped with a dark crimson salsa macha, a fiery concoction of fried chiles and nuts that originated in Veracruz and Oaxaca then a quite minimal padrón pepper with olive oil, salt, chile oil, and a spice mixture with Sichuan peppercorns that imparted a peculiar tingling sensation and a lamb enchilada with corn, cherries, cherry tomatoes, a powerful mix of Mexican and ricotta cheeses, some crispy-great iceberg lettuce, and an intensely warm pickled habanero crema.
The Oakland hills shimmered in a palette of greens — a canopy of palm, redwood, citrus and cypress. A small airplane flew overhead, humming a low drone. Imana poured a spontaneously fermented sauvignon blanc — hazy, weird and sapid.
As the night drew to a close, Imana collected her guests’ attention and, in the hush, acknowledged us all by searching our way and stating our names, which she experienced committed to memory, a person by a person by one. And then she did the same for the cooks and servers she phone calls the beating coronary heart of Hi Felicia.
It was a strong minute of gratitude and togetherness, and in it a feeling of consolation and belonging that a chef experienced long sought, and possibly now found, in a area of her very own producing.
// Hi Felicia Supper Club (Oakland) is presently accepting reservations for choose dates in Oct. The 7-system food is served with 5 beverage pairings and is $225 for every particular person. Find additional specifics at instagram.com/hifeliciasupperclub