Valentine Howell worked at No. 9 Park as a teen, and he’s had some lucky breaks since then
Dorchester’s Valentine howell, 38, grew up all over boston and attended Madison park technical Vocational high School’s culinary program, even staging at No. 9 park as a teenager. he planned to play college football until an injury sidelined his athletic career, which was happy news for boston kitchens. from there, he worked at locke-ober under lydia Shire, legal harborside, and Mastro’s. he plateaued a bit and considered leaving the industry entirely until a chance encounter with an old colleague led to an executive chef job at Greek restaurant Krasi in the back bay.
he’s since appeared on “top chef ” and earned a James beard best chef: Northeast finalist nod. today, he and his fiancée, renea Adger, are about to open the black cat pop-up at Jamaica plain’s Vee Vee, where they’ll serve latin, African, and caribbean dishes.
How did you get into food?
i come from a pretty large family, and food was always at the center of a lot of things that we did. it could be celebrating anything: a first communion, a first birthday, a 35th birthday, retirement, it didn’t matter. it always involved food. i think the catalyst was that my dad was a banquet chef when i was younger. he doesn’t cook anymore; he’s a union guy now. but you look up to your parents and stuff like that.
What did you grow up eating? What did your family make?
My household was very eclectic in their food, because i grew up in a mixed-race household. My mother is italian-American. My father is from Jamaica. My mother’s current husband is haitian. they’ve been married for 25 years at this point. there was a mix of foods going on in my household. we did a lot of eating at home; my mom was a single mother. we didn’t have the means to go out that often.
we had traditional haitian food, traditional Jamaican food, then we had italian-American staples and things like that, mixed in with some Southern foods from friends of the family and everything. So i grew up eating a lot of different things.
When did you decide to make food into a career?
At the blue hill boys and Girls club, they had a program, the chef ’s club.
i kind of wanted to be a chef; i was down with that. i distinctly remember being there every friday. there was a little kitchenette in the back of the clubhouse, and we had an instructor who was going to Madison park technical Vocational high School at the time. they had culinary arts there. And i was like, ‘wow! i didn’t know that there was a high school that you could go to, to do this!’ it was that moment right there. i wanted to go to Madison park, and i wanted to be in the culinary arts program because i wanted to be a chef.
i ended up going to Madison park, being in the culinary program. but of course, being a young impressionable high school student, seeing that there were other options out there, i was heavily into the Jrotc program. So i almost went into the military. i also played football, all four years, to possibly play collegiate football.
the cooking kind of took a back burner while i was there, up until maybe my junior year. i got injured. i had an opportunity for an NcAA scholarship that got dropped because of my injury. then my mom got really sick and almost passed. i didn’t want to go into the military because i would have left my brother behind. i didn’t want to do that. i was glad to have a culinary focus to fall back on. i really just immersed myself in that. we had a work-study program, and i got to stage at No. 9 park.
Oh, wow, what was that like?
that was an incredible experience. i’m so glad i got to do that instead of going to a more corporate location. it was wild. i peeled carrots, i made stock, and i was absolutely enamored by everything that went on — the hustle and the bustle of the kitchen, the sounds, the smells. it just really spoke to me: ‘this is what goes into making beautiful food.’ i wanted to be a part of that.
i went on to Newbury college in brookline, which sadly does not exist anymore. i went there for culinary management. i worked for Andy husbands at 647 tremont and Sister Sorel. that was a throwback. he was actually one of my instructors in college, and that’s how it got started. i needed a job.
after graduation, did you want to explore farther afield?
My plan was to leave boston. life had other plans. i ended up having a daughter. that kind of put a hold on things. it put things in a different perspective for me at that moment. i didn’t end up leaving boston, i had to stay. but i still ended up doing some really great things. i ended up working for lydia Shire at locke-ober. it was my first legit job out of college.
it was such a joy to be able to learn from her and see the way she looks at food and works in that kitchen. She was the first woman to take over that space, because it was a boys’ club for as long as it was open. it was unprecedented that a female chef did what she did with it. i worked with her at towne Stove and Spirits, too. i went from cooking oldschool, old world American foods to a super-eclectic menu with two different floors and two different kinds of concepts under one roof. that was probably one of the most beautiful kitchens i’ve worked in.
you’ve also on been on “top Chef.” you’ve also been a James Beard finalist. What was the inflection point when you began to find your footing?
i had a child, and i had to think about making money and raising a family. My focus kind of shifted. i was on the opening team of legal harborside. i worked on the second floor, which was their fine dining concept, in a threeconcept building. it was great. i could make really great food, really beautiful food, and get paid at the same time and not work for peanuts.
i worked my way up from being a line cook, and i left as, essentially, the banquet chef. i took care of all the private events and things like that. i left legal to work for Mastro’s in the Seaport, and that only lasted about a year. it wasn’t my vibe.
How did you get to Krasi?
i wasn’t one to believe in fate, you know, until this moment, but i was in the dining room one day at Mastro’s taking inventory. A good friend of mine who i worked with at towne, a hostess, was now part of what i didn’t know at the time was Krasi and committee.
She hit me up: ‘hey, it was great to see you. i’d like to talk to you about something that we have going on.’ because i was literally one foot out the door at Mastro’s and was going to go join my dad, join the union and be a heavy machinery operator. i just didn’t want to cook anymore. i didn’t have the passion in me at that time anymore.
She asked me if i would like to come to committee and do a tasting. they were just looking for a sous chef at that moment. So i said, ‘You know what;
nd why not? let’s give it a shot.’
i did the tasting. And they were really impressed with me and my food and what i brought to the table. they were like: ‘we’d actually like you to run the joint. we want you to be the executive chef, not the sous chef.’ i was like, ‘please pinch me, because my dream is real.’ i jumped at the opportunity.
i started at committee before Krasi broke ground, and the rest is history. we were only open a month before we closed due to the pandemic. we reopened, and it was like the initial opening all over again. After the pandemic, of course, everybody just wanted to get back outside and do things. You know, i feel like that really kind of helped us out. it just shot us into the limelight.
i feel like there are three things that make a good restaurant great: it’s the atmosphere or the ambiance, the service, and the food. Not only did we have a beautiful setting and a beautiful restaurant, the service was top-notch. we definitely curated a really good team of servers who were all super professional and all about their job. it was some of the best service i’ve worked with, bar none. And then the food — the fact that we were bringing this Greek food to the city, and bringing it to the masses, in our way. we were able to make traditional regional Greek food, but paying homage to the roots of the food and where we were from. we’re Greek, but we’re also in the Northeast. we have an abundance of really great produce and seafood at our disposal.
the fact that it culminated in me getting nominated for the James beard? i mean, that was like the icing on the cake, the cherry on top.
What does that feel like? How much do chefs really care about that award?
when i got to be a finalist, i kind of broke down. i never thought that it would happen for me. And the fact that i made it to the semifinals, just being announced as that? i could have been totally oK with that. it was validation of all my hard work throughout my career, all the sacrifice that i had given, missing moments with my child and missing moments with friends and family all to pursue my dream. As a finalist, being in chicago, on the red carpet, being surrounded by these icons, the chefs and people i looked up to and i follow? it didn’t feel real, honestly. pinch, me please. because i feel like i’m dreaming.
How did the Black Cat pop-up come about — and why is it called the Black Cat?
it’s black cat Eatery. we’re in the midst of a brand change right now. but all this started during quarantine. it’s something me and my fiancée had always talked about. we’re both in the industry. it’s been kind of a dream of ours to have our own place and to do our own thing, because we feel, you know, the food scene in boston is kind of lacking in what we bring to the table as far as diversity in food and flavors.
Yesterday was actually the anniversary of black cat. A cousin asked us to make some extra tacos for cinco De Mayo during quarantine. And we were like, let’s see if we can make something out of this. let’s see if our little concept could actually work, drawing some folks and get them to buy food from us and see what we have to offer. And, of course, at that time, we didn’t think that it would be much because of quarantine. but it took off. it sustained us through the entirety of quarantine until we went back to work.
What’s the plan going forward?
we have a semi-permanent residency in partnership with Vee Vee. we’re looking at the second week of May as our grand opening and rebranding of Vee Vee in conjunction with black cat. i’d driven by Vee Vee a bunch of times, but i’d never actually been in there. And they had put up a post about their current chef leaving. A few people who know me kind of threw my name in the hat. i had no idea.
it seemed like a really great opportunity to bring black cat from just a popup coming out of breweries to do a semi-permanent location where people could actually make a reservation. Now you can have our food tuesday through Saturday.
What’s on the menu? What are the highlights?
obviously we’re going to keep the tacos, legit, but we’re dropping the tacos from our name because we don’t want to pigeonhole ourselves because we know we can do more. we’re using fresh local produce and highlighting local farms and things like that. we’re using caribbean flavors, Afro latin flavors: djon-djon fried rice, pan-seared scallops with creamy grits, scotch bonnet and ginger butter. Some pickled corn. that’s one i’m really excited about. we have Jamaican empanadas, a super mashup of cultures right there.
Do you think you’ll ever spin it into its own restaurant?
well, i mean, that’s the hope and the dream, to take this and run with it. You know, this definitely brings something new to Jp. i’m hoping that this will really translate with other folks in the community. i just want this to be a melting pot of culture, of people, because you can share a lot through food. i feel food is a vehicle for a lot of different things: for conversations, for ideas, just for love. i just want this to be that kind of place. Vee Vee has an excellent reputation. they’ve been there for 16 years. they have a really great local following. but i like that we can bring in different clientele. we can bring different people and share our story through food.
‘I just want this to be a melting pot of culture, of people, because you can share a lot through food.’
VALENTINE HOWELL on his approach at Black Cat Eatery
What do you think the Boston food scene needs more of?
the lack of diversity of flavors. i love what comfort Kitchen is doing. the fact that this place exists where it does, and they’re doing the type of food and they bring those type of flavors? i absolutely love that. i’d like to be a part of that movement here in the city. i feel like we need more of that. we need more places within the inner city and not just little holes in the wall — even though i do love me a good hole in the wall. [we need] places that are little bit more refined, like comfort Kitchen, that you can go to within your area and not feel like you have to go way outside of Dorchester, roxbury, Mattapan, or whatever to go get these kinds of foods.
What do you think Boston does really well, in the culinary scene?
oh, i don’t know. i can keep going with what i feel like they need like more of, like late night. i’m tired of being able to only go to one or two places, or like a pizza shop or something, late night. it’s just ridiculous. i feel like boston needs to really up the ante on giving out more spaces, more liquor licenses, more places for people to open up and give out licenses for late-night food. look at chicago; look at lA. in lA, you can go out at 3 o’clock in the morning and spend 20 bucks and eat like a king at any one of their taco trucks.
Where do you like to eat when you’re not working?
chinatown. i love Shojo. i go there quite often. five Spice house. we love District Kitchen in Malden. i’ve never, ever had a bad meal there. i love all types of Asian foods: indian, chinese, Japanese. You can find me stuffing my face with dumplings at any time.
Favorite snack at home?
oh, that’s a good one. Zapp’s voodoo chips.
i’ve never seen Zapp’s up here.
oh, i go to Market basket. they always hold me down. the potato chips and the pretzel sticks, but specifically, the Voodoo flavor.