How this Jamaican American chef shows us the transforming power of hospitality

Sometimes they’re pop-ups, part of a membership or ticketed events — their announcements spreading by social media or word of mouth. They speak to a demand for intimacy, connection, pleasure and meaning beyond the restaurant experience.

“For us as a guest it allows us to be comfortable in a way that even the most comfortable restaurant can’t provide,” said Rose Apodaca, a writer and creative director attending Francis’ L.A. dinner. She was seated between photographer Paul Sepuya and David Charles, a director currently working on the Apple TV+ docuseries “Omnivore” with René Redzepi. Also at the table, among other guests, were DJs Caleb Kruzel and Mez Monty, artists Simon Renggli and Sarah Kinlaw, producer Karis Jagger and curator Sayantan Mukhopadhyay.

“I dine out all the time, I like restaurants,” Apodaca said, “but here there’s less pressure to order, to hurry up and eat. You can get up and move around, get to know people. There’s a free-flowing cultural exchange among a spectrum of gender identities, racial and political identities in a safe space — I know that’s a clichéd phrase, but it is.”

“Hospitality to me means you get to prioritize care for everyone in the system,” said DeVonn Francis, including guests and as well as everyone working in the kitchen.

(Yasara Gunawardena / For The Times)

That cultural exchange starts with Francis.

“He’s sharing his background,” Apodaca said. “He’s articulating it, verbally and through his food and the table setting and his manner in terms of how he cooks. With his tank top on. He’s doing this on his terms.”

Standing in Toback’s kitchen, Francis sliced green onions, shallots and ginger, fried them in olive oil and tossed them with some of his favorite spices: coriander, cumin, paprika, curry powder, cardamom, turmeric. He mixed these with crispy-sautéed jasmine rice seasoned with salt and mirin, adding chopped dried shrimp from the nearby Japanese market, sesame seeds and the zest of limes, a combination exploding with flavor.

At 30, he has launched his own company, published recipes and appeared in videos for Bon Appétit, and guest-starred in cooking shows. He styled and photographed his mother for the chapter titled “Black Queer Food” in Bryant Terry’s cookbook “Black Food: Stories, Art and Recipes From Across the African Diaspora,” which features Francis’ braised goat with preserved citrus and cassava crepes.

While many chefs are celebrated for experimentation, Francis said, “I feel somehow covertly Black and brown chefs sometimes suffer from being locked into tradition. ‘Oh, I want to see that you can make really good West African cuisine’ or ‘I wanna see that you can make really good Malaysian cuisine.’

“My dad would make me cut all the cabbage and carrots for [his] restaurant,” said DeVonn Francis. “There was a huge 32-quart pot … I remember thinking, ‘I’m never gonna fill this pot, there’s not enough cabbage in the world to fill this pot.’”

(Yasara Gunawardena / For The Times)

“I was talking to a chef friend about this recently who’s writing a book on Chinese American cuisine. He said, ‘You would never be like, ‘René Redzepi, that’s not Nordic food.’ You’d never say that. Why aren’t we allowed to expand beyond those boundaries when it comes to cuisine with respect to the fact that had jerk paste not been a thing I wouldn’t be able to talk about it in a new iteration? So respect to the history, but also where do we go from there? How do we keep growing that story so people feel included in the many ways in which you can be Jamaican?”

After bowls of Yardy World snack mix (nuts, plantain chips, coconut flakes, spices and dried mango and pineapple) and a course of tuna crudo with puffed rice crackers were passed around, Francis delivered charred cabbage with coconut vinaigrette, basil oil and herbs to the table.

“I grew up eating a lot of cabbage,” he said. “It was always stewed to s—, unrecognizably stewed. But it was delicious, stewed cabbage and carrots. My dad would make me cut all the cabbage and carrots for the restaurant. There was a huge 32-quart pot that was taller than me. As a kid, I remember thinking, ‘I’m never gonna fill this pot, there’s not enough cabbage in the world to fill this pot.’”

Francis’ cabbage was not unrecognizably stewed, but seared and served in a pool of coconut vinaigrette aromatic with garlic and punchy with rice vinegar and lime juice, garnished with basil oil and fresh parsley and mint.

DeVonn Francis’ cooking is evolving the story of Caribbean American cuisine. He prepared several courses for a dinner party gathering writers, DJs, filmmakers, artists and designers.

(Yasara Gunawardena / For The Times)

DeVonn Francis makes an appetizer for a dinner party at the downtown loft of producer Fabienne Toback, as guest Rose Apodaca looks on. Francis will be popping up at Kismet restaurant in Los Angeles in July.

(Yasara Gunawardena / For The Times)

“This cabbage is incredible,” Toback said. “It’s light and fresh and invigorating. Certain cuisines get pigeonholed, as sometimes happens with African American food. Or, ‘Oh, Mexican food is heavy.’ ‘Oh, Japanese food, I don’t like raw fish.’” Francis is broadening how we understand food in terms of heritage, she said. He’s American, but his flavors reflect his Jamaican background.

“I am just enthralled by the shared community around food that brings so many different threads together,” said guest Mukhopadhyay, assistant curator of modern and contemporary art at the Portland Museum of Art in Maine, who came to Francis’ dinner at the invitation of DJ Kruzel. “The West Indies have historic ties to the East Indies, India, where my family is from, through empire and conquest. There’s a strong Indo-Caribbean community and a flavor profile that mirrors a lot of Indian cuisine for me, especially the spices. It’s interesting to see out of such a turbid and violent history the kinds of ways in which cuisine adapts … so nourishing, so beautiful.”

Francis said his goal is: “How are we continuing Caribbean food and heritage versus being mired in its history? It’s ‘I know jerk chicken’ or ‘I know oxtail,’ but they don’t really understand the complexity of the culture. How can every recipe push that along further?”