- [DeVonn] Food is a platform to tell and continue a story.
Me, as someone who is a maker, a creator,
a chef or a cook or whatever you wanna call me,
it's sort of acting as this vessel
for my own specific experience.
Being a queer person of color in the restaurant industry
is really challenging.
I think a lot of people make assumptions
about your identity.
Celebrating my identity
was not something that just happened.
It's something that I've had to learn
and I'm still learning
through this process of having a business.
Yardy started as sort of a question
that allowed me to investigate my own heritage
through food
and really think about what it means to exist
in the intersections of my own queerness
and what it means to be a Jamaican-American.
Food came about in two very important ways.
The first way is that food was this sort of love language
between me and my family,
specifically me and my mother
would spend a lot of time watching the Food Network
and being like, "We can do that."
The other part of that would be,
my dad had a restaurant when I was growing up.
He came into that industry
without having any experience prior
but was always really hardworking
and determined to make something happen.
What that meant for me growing up was
that I was able to watch a black entrepreneurial person
really invest their time
in building something that was made and authored by them.
I came out to my sister first when I was 12,
and I think that the Maroon 5 album
"Songs About Jane"
came out around the same time or something.
And I remember listening to... (laughs)
I think the first half of the album being like,
"Oh my gosh, Adam Levine is so hot."
And then I realized that I was like, "That's...maybe not..."
That's something
that I had never really thought about much before.
And so I wrote this really long note to my sister
and she was like,
"It's okay, I already knew."
And she, in a lot of ways,
was my support system in that process.
And unfortunately at the time
my parents weren't as keen to the idea as she was.
My dad has shown a lot of support in what I'm doing,
both professionally and personally.
We don't really ever talk about my relationships
or who I'm dating
but they just really want to support me
and to stay open to new experiences and being creative.
A lot of the food that we're doing today
is really thinking about how to brighten
a very traditionally heavy Jamaican or Caribbean palette.
So specifically if you think
about the turmeric rice that we're doing,
it's this really salty-sweet but also very earthy dish
that is really bright yellow
because color is really important to me.
There is this really beautiful image that I have
of being in Ocho Rios in Jamaica
and thinking about people who are selling peppa shrimp.
That's just shrimp that's cooked and then sold in bags.
Peppa shrimp is also very similar
to how you think about doing
a crab or lobster boil in Louisiana.
Thinking about really, really strong seafood flavors.
This will be salad and bread.
This is going to be the squash dish.
- Okay.
- This is going to, sorry.
Rice, yeah, rice.
Condiments are easy.
They can just be these. - That's cute.
- So you can see the oil--
- Oh, it's gonna be super pretty, yeah.
And then you can dip.
- Yeah.
My background in food is really funny.
I feel like I never really learned
how to cook professionally
and I'm still trying to figure it out in a lot of ways.
But I was always really inspired and curious.
Actually, my background is in art.
And I'm always thinking visually
and thinking about how things are composed
in any sort of field.
I think I was just doing a project maybe in school one day
and decided that I wanted to use food as a component
and host a dinner party to see
what sort of dynamics happen at the dinner table.
And I think that idea just sort of stuck with me.
So a lot of the dinner parties that we do
have a performative aspect to them.
- DeVonn's gonna talk to you.
- Nathan?
I've got some good food, okay?
We've got a buffet going,
we've got some education, a talk.
We've got some wine,
I know you like orange wine, Nathan.
Colors, I mean, I'm an artist.
I hate saying that but I like art, I appreciate art.
I studied art.
I think that people gravitate towards color.
I think it affects your mood.
A lot of the colors that I'm thinking about
remind me of my own queerness,
my own unapologetically-bright self or something.
Using color and thinking about color
in terms of color and queerness,
thinking about color
as this thing that's about activism and resistance
and being sort of really bold and unafraid
is something that I think about in our food that we make.
I think the Caribbean is an intersection or a thruway
for a lot of different cultures.
And thinking about Caribbeanism as this really wide thing,
thinking about the flavors,
those one-pot dishes that are very emblematic
of Jamaican tradition cooking
and sort of expanding that,
or thinking about brightness
or thinking about the fruit profile
or thinking about spice,
how many places can I put a scotch bonnet in my recipes,
is really important to me.
Yardy feels like a really great place to come to
to try out new ideas
and it really helps me to feel comfortable and excited
about my identity and where it can go,
but I think it has a lot of growing to do.
I'm hoping the next queer Caribbean
or queer black American or emigrant person
will come along and feel like they have
some sort of reassuredness to allow them to know
that they can be whoever they wanna be
whenever they choose to be that thing
and that there is a space to celebrate and also thrive
in who you're representing
through your own desire to be who you are.
I'm really proud of myself and my team
and everyone who considers themselves
a part of the Yardy family.
I think if I were to die tomorrow,
my one accomplishment would be
knowing that people are excited to see
a queer Caribbean business thrive
or even tell our story in the first place.