IN PURSUIT OF AN EAST BAY POP-UP LEGEND.
Oakland’s most popular pop-up serves eclectic Creole dishes and an origin story about a kid who liked to cook
In a cloud of hip-hop music, raucous conversations and cigarette smoke spiraling into the downtown Oakland breeze, 50-some-odd people waited for Edward Wooley to open his one-nighta-week pop-up, Smelly’s Creole and Soul Food. The crowd formed a haphazard line, segmented by small clusters of two, three and four people, stretching from the middle of the block at 420 14th St. to the intersection of 14th and Broadway.
A few floors above the fray in Complex, downtown Oakland’s music venue that has hosted everything from latenight performances by Houston rapper Devin the Dude to crowded raves and punk rock shows, Wooley — or Chef Smelly as he’s known in the East Bay — made final checks on a dinner service that was going to last five hours, or until the food ran out.
As Wooley’s legend has grown in the Oakland food scene, the latter happens more often than not.
“This is nothing. You should have seen it last week,” one woman said as she led a group of three toward the back of the line.
The Chef Smelly pop-up landed in downtown Oakland in 2015. Over the last two years, Wooley and his skeleton crew have crafted arguably the city’s most unique blend of Creole fare bisected by Southern sensibilities.
Playful options like the french fry appetizer — which could easily feed two — topped with heaping mounds of lobster, Angus beef, Dungeness crab and prawns ($37) are juxtaposed next to teriyaki chicken over noodles ($15). Entrees average about $30, although there are larger platters, such as the $130 one that includes two Dungeness crabs, 10 blackened prawns and his trademark garlic noodles, which appear in a number of dishes.
Conceptually, his menu is a culinary kaleidoscope.
On my first visit to Smelly’s Creole and Soul Food, I showed up 15 minutes early. That wasn’t nearly early enough. More than an hour passed before I reached the restaurant’s door, and as customers walked out with either a Styrofoam container in hand or a toothpick between their lips, one thing became clear: Friday nights on 14th Street belong to Chef Smelly.
Atmosphere plays as much a role in Wooley’s business as his food. Outside of his kitchen, there’s a family-reunion vibe that coerces strangers to become friends during the hours-long wait to order.
That’s where I met Webster, or Web as he preferred to be called, a youthful West Coast native who’s been coming to the pop-up for the past year. He didn’t know Chef Smelly directly but had a cousin associated with the kitchen staff. Most times, he was ushered past the crowd.
This time, he found himself relegated to the line for the first time, so whether Web wanted the role or not, he was my sherpa for the night.
“Nobody is doing what (Wooley) is doing in the Bay Area right now,” he told me as we waited in the dimly lit hallway leading up to the second floor where dinner service was in full swing.
As Web guided me through the ins and outs of the menu — “The Extravaganza has everything: crab, lobster, shrimp”; “You have to try the cheese sauce they put on the fries” — the people around us shared stories about the chef, some being firsthand accounts, most taking shape as word-of-mouth tales. “Someone told me he cooks for the Warriors sometimes,” a young man said to his friends only a few step above us.
In Smelly’s comically mythical world, nothing can be written off as exaggeration. Former 49ers player Anquan Boldin was once asked where he preferred to eat in the Bay Area. The answer: wherever Wooley happened to be cooking.
The chef, by the way, would repeat this claim to fame himself once we finally were able to connect a few days later.
Edward Wooley is an Oakland native through and through. In his voice, in the way he concocts dishes with a selftaught flair and executes them with a culinary school graduate’s eye for detail, the chef ’s kitchen style is authentically East Oakland — brash, confident and unapologetic.
He comes from a family of cooks. He owes a Creole twist to his grandparents, who hailed from Louisiana (Ruston and Monroe, to be specific). His grandmother passed down recipes to his mother, who then showed him tricks of the trade. The women were family matriarchs who specialized in comfort food but focused on technical execution. Friday-night fish fries were the norm during his childhood.
Wooley said his life in the neighborhood surrounding 106th Avenue and Sunnyside Street came to a crossroads several years ago when he was faced with a decision: Keep running the streets of East Oakland “selling dope and just messing up for a while” or try something else.
He had already been to jail twice, and run-ins with the law were getting old. He had a young daughter, and that meant focusing on the future. And the only thing he knew better than coaching youth sports was cooking, be it for family, friends or acquaintances.
So Wooley made the only logical choice: He applied to culinary school.
“When I had my daughter, I couldn’t have that lifestyle anymore. I couldn’t keep hustling on the streets. So I started selling plates,” he said.
Wooley graduated from Le Cordon Bleu in San Francisco in 2013. He held posts at a few familiar East Bay kitchens, including a stint under Oakland chef Tanya Holland at her now-closed B-Side BBQ, before joining his mom’s catering business full time.
The money coming in from selling Creole and Southern plates out of their house was better than any of the kitchen jobs he held after culinary school. And word spread quickly about his family’s setup.
“I used to make this alfredo — Creole alfredo — and toss it in penne pasta. I’d put the blackened prawns on it and people were loving it. So many cars were pulling up to the house, the cops thought I was selling drugs,” Wooley said with a laugh.
The opportunity to take refuge in a larger space, Complex Oakland, presented itself in 2015.
The Complex space, while a step up from his family home, isn’t without its shortcomings. Refrigeration, for example, is a challenge. Each Friday, the kitchen is stocked with 80 pounds of prawns, 100 pounds of crab, 60 more pounds of crab meat, 50 pounds of lobster and 120 pounds of garlic butter, among other things. Luckily, the team usually exhausts its inventory these days, meaning the storage is adequate by the end of the night.
Health issues have kept Wooley’s mother from working at Smelly’s Creole and Soul Food since its move to downtown Oakland. But the chef still considers himself to be only one-half of the business. He tells people he’s the co-owner, out of respect for his mother.
Wooley is now two years into his pop-up life. More than 44,000 people follow him on Instagram (@chefsmelly); for context, that is thousands more than notable Oakland chefs Tanya Holland, James Syhabout and Preeti Mistry, combined. On Facebook, the Chef Smelly legion exceeds 29,000. Still, in the Bay Area’s land of exorbitantly priced tasting menus, Wooley remains relatively unknown in the mainstream food landscape.
His type of stardom is reminiscent of Keith Garrett, the man behind upstart All Flavor No Grease in the Watts neighborhood of Los Angeles, known for its tacos, burritos and quesadillas.
Wooley keeps an eye on people like Garrett because in his circle, crews like All Flavor No Grease represent his only competition. Wooley doesn’t see the Bay Area’s numerous Michelin-starred and celebrity chefs as counterparts in the business, mainly because their existence spirals in a completely different realm.
While both Wooley and Garrett have taken to social media to promote their brand to immense success, Wooley said he wants to move beyond the pop-up genre and toward a permanent restaurant.
“I’m not satisfied with where I am right now. I would want something bigger: my own solo restaurant in the downtown Oakland area, since I’m from Oakland and it’s booming with its culinary scene right now,” he said.
And the rumors about cooking for Warriors players? Wooley said those are true. He even has a meeting on the books with one of the team’s players. On the night I visited, Oakland rapper Mistah F.A.B. and Kansas City Chiefs cornerback Marcus Peters both made visits.
The atmosphere outside of Complex Oakland seeps into Wooley’s pop-up as the night goes on. Hip-hop music, much of it featuring local artists, reverberates through the dining room thanks to a DJ booth opposite the fully stocked bar. The conversations at tables are equally raucous, but the anxiety from the earlier lengthy wait dissipates as plates make their way to crowded tables.
“This isn’t even the most crowded I’ve ever seen it,” Web told me as we finally made it to the front of the line.
Smelly’s come-up story in the East Bay food scene, one that ties back to his decision to create a better life for himself and his family, was years in the making. Now, it’s the stuff of legend.
At one point during the dinner service, Wooley strolled out to survey the crowd and greet a few guests, the blue sleeves of his chef ’s jacket rolled up at the elbows, a hair net covering his tapered mohawk. After a few minutes, he disappeared back into the kitchen.