AMANDA RICHARDSON PHOTOGRAPHY

Chef Lisa Brooks, owner of Heart & Soul Personal Chef Service, attends to meal preparation.

For Lisa Brooks, the most cherished memories involve delicious food and good company.

Her business, Heart & Soul Personal Chef Service, was designed to reflect those memories by creating an experience for clients they would never forget. Heart & Soul Personal Chef offers upscale private in-home dinner parties, custom in-home meal prep, and even candlelit dinners for two. Brooks describes it as the largest Black-owned personal chef service in the country with 10 Black women chefs.

“There's a responsibility that comes with that title,” she said.  “I’m proud of it, but what it really means to me is that I’m able to create work, meaningful work that pays well, to people who’ve been largely underrepresented anywhere else in the culinary industry.”

A team of personal chefs is not typical in the industry. Traditionally, private chefs work full time for an individual family or household. The idea that a chef could come in just once a week to help prep meals for the rest of the week or help host an event was unheard of, but it was a business more people could afford.

“Someone needed to come in and break the mold and that comes from my corporate leadership experience,” Brooks said. “All those years in corporate I was used to directing a team. Why would I do all this with my own two hands? What could I do if there were 20 hands?

“We are with people, helping them celebrate milestones in their lives. For example, if you have ever celebrated your 50th anniversary, that's one day. That day is never going to come again.  We carry the weight of the fact that we are part of these people’s memories forever. We’re creating an environment in which they can feast, in which they can enjoy the guests, where they have no worry in the world because we're taking care of everything.”

Brooks grew up alongside strong female figures. Her love for cooking came from her mother, grandmother, and great grandmother. They taught her how to prepare food with love and purpose and she carries that with her today.

She fell in love with food surrounded by those she loved most. Every Sunday, her family would gather together to share a feast. Cooking became an expression of love for Brooks. Throughout college she would invite friends over to eat on Sundays and be sure to include the dishes she knew they liked most. She never imagined her passions would transform into her own business one day.

At age 40, Brooks had been working a corporate job at the same company for 16 years. The job was stressful and unrewarding. She was feeling the effects of the stress both physically and mentally, so she felt compelled to make a change and follow her true calling. She quit her job and moved back to her hometown of Charlotte where she attended culinary school and started her business.

Brooks’ journey with cooking and the sudden shift in her career has inspired her to help other young Black women. She teaches chefs all around the country the business of being a personal chef. She offers an online course that she hopes will continue to gain recognition.

She has been a mentor for many young female chefs and an inspiration for them to find their true purpose. She guides them in defining their skills and offers them opportunities she feels they wouldn’t get anywhere else.

Most of the young female chefs she mentors attended CPCC in Charlotte. Some come from tough backgrounds and were not expecting to work as anything but a line cook after finishing school. Brooks took them under her wing and offered them a chance to build skills they couldn’t get inside the kitchen, such as etiquette, financial and business skills, and professionalism.

“I’m teaching other Black female chefs all over the country how to set up a business, how to operate as a personal chef, and how to grow a team, which is unheard of in the personal chef industry. And it's revolutionary. I'm polishing them as well rounded, powerful women in business, and I encourage them to start their own,” Brooks said.

She encourages them to continue the type of business that she created with Heart & Soul. She hopes that these young women know their worth and do not underestimate what they are able to do and the environments they are able to create. “The primary thing that I want to instill in them, because everything else comes from this, is to carry yourself with a level of integrity and honor that keeps you in the room. Your talent will get you in the room, but your character and your integrity will keep you in the room,” said Brooks.

Her skills have not gone unnoticed to the public eye. Brooks has recently been featured on the Food Network’s hit series “Chopped.” She was a contestant in the first ever Black History Month episode where all the contestants and judges were Black. She made it to the final dessert round with only two contestants left. Her opponent, Brian Jupiter, won, but she remains friends with all the chefs she met while filming.

Brooks is grateful for her time on the show and hopes that it will bring her business more success in Charlotte.

“I love to share my knowledge, I love to share my story, and I love to cook so I hope opportunities will come that are on a more national stage, as well as a boon to our business plan in Charlotte, which we are always expanding,” she said.

Brooks has also started her own TikTok page where she posts videos teaching viewers how to prepare dishes. They are meant to be simple, but delicious. She wants to encourage viewers not to be intimidated in the kitchen and that it’s okay not to follow a recipe step by step.

“I love teaching people basic methods of cooking. I think of my son when I'm doing those TikToks, of people who don't cook or nobody showed them how to cook, or they’re just out of college,” Brooks said. “I’m trying to break things down to the very basics, like what spices you need in your cabinet, what a well-stocked pantry looks like, or how you make a basic sauce.”

Brooks recently released her first cookbook last year. The book features 100 recipes that help to tell her story growing up in the south and the women that influenced her. Readers can get to know her journey in the kitchen on a more personal level and even experience it for themselves. She is proud to have preserved the matriarchal legacy that the recipes represent.

In addition to her new cookbook, Brooks has designed her own line of chef coats, a departure from what’s primarily aimed at men and the male body type. She wants to create colorful coats that represent the personality and body wearing it. Just as cooking is a form of expression for a chef, she thinks the uniform should do the same.

JONATHAN COOPER PHOTOGRAPHY

Lowcountry Shrimp & Grits, prepared by Chef Lisa Brooks of Heart & Soul Personal Chef Service.

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