(gentle music) It started in a garden.

My life, my career, it all started in the garden on Plum Street.

(upbeat music) The garden itself with my grandmother was very much that place where we had the time to talk about all the things that you don't normally have conversations with your parents or your grandparents with.

It was a small, what, four by four space.

It wasn't a huge space, but it was enough for us to feel the way we needed to and be able to grow, be able to cook together.

So that's also how I became a chef, was that one day, I was telling this green bean story, which is always crazy to people, but they're like, "What, that's how you became a chef?"

I was like, "Yeah."

We were out there, green bean fell on the ground and it was dirty, but I picked it up and ate it, and it felt like my world just opened up.

It was the freshest, most amazing thing that I'd ever had in my life.

And so I don't know if it was because I was just with her, if it was because it was that good, if it was because we grew it together, but it made me just think about the world in a bigger way.

And so every single time that I build something, that I make something, that I put something on a plate, I always want people to feel the same feeling that I had when I did that.

My name is Melanie Wilkerson, and my home is Durham, North Carolina.

(upbeat music) I'm an earth person, you know, I need to be grounded.

And so getting my hands in the soil, even as a kid, meant a lot.

My grandmother was the same way, where it was a time for us to connect.

That was our time in the garden.

For her, it was, how do I grow this young person?

How do I feed this young person?

And not just for myself, but for all of Plum Street.

For us, it was very much the garden itself was, let me show you how to become the best person you can be.

Plum Street was just an awesome place to live.

We had the run of the street, and so it was one of those places where it was like, you know, you can be out there when the street lights are off.

And it was a place where everyone was like celebrated.

It was the first time that African-Americans actually got to own their own homes.

I grew up with my grandmother and grandfather there.

Plum Street meant everything.

It was growing, it was teaching, it was care, it was love, it was all those things.

My cooking philosophy has always been, let the food speak for itself.

I'm not trying to make something what it's not.

I know for a long time, or for maybe like the last eight years, chefs got into, oh, I'm gonna sphere something, I'm gonna foam something.

You know, everything just became what it was not.

We have such beautiful produce, especially here in North Carolina, the fisheries and everything else, that you don't have to change what is already nature's gift.

And just make sure that I celebrate all the people that made things happen to get to the plate.

And so that's really what my food philosophy is, is celebration of what nature's gifts are.

I look at one of the dishes that I have on right now as very much my Sunday dinner with my grandmother.

So it is, you know, roasted chicken with turnips.

Something is always gonna be pickled on a plate because, you know, we're in the South, so you're gonna eat some pickles.

And, you know, a chire wanjou that's made with mustard seed.

She wasn't a soda drinker, but every Sunday we got a soda.

So it was gonna be chire wine.

So I turned that into, the sauce was for the dish.

And, but again, making it recognizable and nostalgic.

And so people can come in and they understand, no, this is what a Sunday dinner looked like.

(upbeat music) My grandmother is huge.

She's huge in all of our lives and she was grand.

And so that's what I always called her, was grand, not grandmother, but grand.

And just watching her, that evolution of how you go about creating a craft for yourself, what it meant to be dedicated to something.

And so she literally dedicated herself to her education, to her being a better person, starting at the age of five.

She was the oldest of 14 in her family, born in 1923.

So we know what that meant as far as women, as far as blacks and just during that time.

But she also knew early on in her life that education was gonna be the way for her to get out.

And so I don't know where she found this book, but of course at that time, you weren't allowed to read, especially as a black person, as a woman.

And so she would hide under her bed with a lantern and actually taught herself how to read.

And so from there, she got herself in a university.

So she went to Fayetteville State, she went to North Carolina Central.

She has degrees from Duke University.

And she knew that this was the only way that I could make myself whole, like be the person as big as she wanted to be.

And she was grand.

(upbeat music) , When she passed away, that's when I decided to go to culinary school is because I was like, I need to have the life that I wanna have.

And she pushed me into that by thinking, you only have one life, you gotta make it as big and grand as you possibly can.

And so, here I am.

(upbeat music) I'm now at 21C, executive chef there.

My grandmother actually, that hotel was a bank.

At that time, she had an account at 21C.

And as a child, I would go in there with her and she was doing her banking business, full circle moment for me is that going from the garden to watching her make things happen when you don't have very much.

And being the EC there means the world to me.

I couldn't think of a better story for myself, a better story for my community and for my grandmother's legacy because that's where it all started.

(upbeat music) I'm co-founder of Kind Kitchen with my wife, Cecilia Sierra.

Kind Kitchen really is a hub for children, middle school, high school, to figure out what it looks like to manage, to learn, to teach.

It's culinary education, but more than that, it's about teaching kids life skills and knowing that they can sustain themselves.

Even if your parent is not necessarily there for you or you don't have the support that you need, that you are building a community of people that can support yourselves.

So we take cooking and life skills.

So like we'll do how to make the perfect scrambled egg or a pancake, but it's really a lesson in failure.

If we remove the finality of failure and you almost treat it like a science experiment, then who are you?

How do you glean for the things that you got wrong to say this is the direction that I wanna go?

Even at such a young age, I think that's really important these days with all that's going on.

And so that's where Kind Kitchen has come in and stepped in to make sure that those kids get those life skills.

It's not just about, I'm gonna teach you how to chop something.

It really is how do I organize myself?

How do I work with someone else?

What am I feeling right now and how do I manage it?

(upbeat music) I just had this conversation a couple of days ago with another area chef.

And we were going through thinking about who are the black female executive chefs here.

And he said, you literally are the one of one.

It's heavy.

It really, it's heavy, but I'm proud at the same time because I know I'm not one of one because I've had so many people that came before me that laid the groundwork.

And really all I have to do is study, make sure that I stay true to what that is and be out in the community and hopefully build, you know, other area chefs.

And in particular black female chefs that really are saying, hey, I didn't know that this was an avenue for me.

And so I really wanna make sure that black females really understand, no, there is a way, there is a lane, there is an avenue and it doesn't have to be so heavy because I really wanna carry that and carry that legacy on.

(upbeat music)