photo by steed media service

Chef Jeff Henderson made history in the kitchen. He was the first African American chef at Caesars Palace in Las Vegas, and then the first African American executive chef at the Bellagio Resort. Henderson developed a passion for cooking in an extremely unorthodox place.

“While I was in prison, I got fired from a job. When you get fired from a job, they move you to the kitchen. What the other brothers saw as punishment, I saw as an opportunity. Eventually, I had a dream that I was going to be a chef. And not an ordinary chef, but one of the top chefs in America,” Henderson says.

His autobiography, Cooked: From the Streets to the Stove, from Cocaine to Foie Gras, reveals Henderson’s past and how it brought him to the success he enjoys today.

“My book is about redemption. Back in the day in L.A. and San Diego, I got caught up in the drug business and eventually got indicted in 1988. I ended up serving 10 years in prison. A couple of years after I was in [jail], I started reading. The books started to give me self-esteem and made me feel proud to be African American,” he recalls. “At that point, the process of change began. And eventually I began working in the kitchen, washing dishes. [I] became a chef once I was released from prison. It was a collective of circumstances that brought change in my life.” - adrienne gadling

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