Corbin, Keith

Keith Corbin is the James Beard Award-nominated executive chef and co-owner of Alta Adams in Los Angeles, named one of the best restaurants in the country by Esquire, Thrillist, and the Los Angeles Times, and he has been cooking his entire life. Born on the home turf of the notorious Grape Street Crips in 1980s Watts, Los Angeles, Corbin started cooking crack at age 13. He became so skilled that he was flown across the country to cook for drug operations in other cities. His criminal enterprises eventually caught up with him and he spent years in California’s most notorious maximum security prisons, where he witnessed the resourcefulness of other inmates who made kimchi out of leftover vegetables and tamales from ground-up Fritos. In time, he developed his own culinary palate and ingenuity. After his release from prison, Corbin got a job managing the kitchen at Loco, celebrity chefs Roy Choi and Daniel Patterson’s fast food restaurant concept bringing inexpensive, quality food and good jobs to underserved neighborhoods – and was on his way. In California Soul: An American Epic of Cooking and Survival (Random House), Corbin talks about his cooking vision and takes readers inside the world of gangs, drug dealing, prison politics, and culinary achievement.