I went into Shola's kitchen expecting something completely different than what we saw. I expected a large kitchen, almost like a restaurant kitchen, with all surfaces in metal with a few machines scattered around. However, when we walked into his building, an abandoned schoolhouse, and into his kitchen (which was an apartment). The kitchen was very narrow, with a glass table in the middle, which allowed him to put both hot and cold things directly onto it. There was a whole wall of cookbooks, and a large, labeled spice area. From looking at his website, I thought we would be getting tiny but fancy portions of odd food combinations. However, I ate the best pasta I have ever had. We also ate cornbread, soufleé, and a wonderfully doughy pizza. He used cast iron skillets to make the cornbread, which I did not like very much. Shola even forgot one of the ingredients, but it still tasted fine. The soufleé tasted amazing, but had a weird, jiggly, and eggy texture. The pizza amazed me, since he used a raw tomato sauce, dough that rose for 2 days, and a wood burning oven. The pasta was probably something I would never order on my own, but it tasted great! It was made using a pasta machine that took the dry mixture with a little water and turned it into actual fresh pasta. The sauce was bolognese, and it was served with mustard greens and artichoke cream.
I believe that Shola is a chef. Throughout the whole experience, I thought he was a cook, until he said that he was classically trained at Le Cordon Bleu in Paris, France. LCB is the most prestigious cooking academy in the world, and every person that graduates from there definitely deserves the title of chef. I think a cook is someone who loves to make food and is very good at it, but a chef is someone who has handle on the ingredients and can form dishes without a recipe because he knows his craft so well (especially since I believe someone has to have gone to culinary school to become a "chef").
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