In Good Taste

Chef Spotlight Nyesha Arrington

For Kyndra McCrary–owner of the Swift Café in Leimert Park– cooking is not just about taste but artistry. For that reason, a lot goes into what she serves and the presentation of it. But ironically, that is not why McCrary opened the café in 2019. Instead, it was because she saw a need she believed she could fill. “I wanted to provide healthy options in the inner city. It’s a food desert and so Swift was created to provide healthy options,” said McCrary, who has been featured on the Food Network. “I’ve had a catering company for over ten years before I opened the restaurant and I always wanted a brick and mortar and I really wanted to have something that was in the inner city – something for the community”. Her motto is cooking with love, but her specialty is diversity. Menu items span everything from Bison

burgers and Sweet potato ravioli to soba noodle salad and Tiramisu

smoothies. “I love being creative and adding new flavors. My grandmother is Panamanian, so I have a lot of Latin and Island influence. I also travel a lot so I want to create dishes that are diverse,” says the San Diego native, who is of African, Irish, Panamanian, Jamaican & Native American heritage. “My grandmother used to say Ooh La La after cooking something that she was excited about and that’s actually the name of my catering company.” That her cafe is still operational after opening five months before the pandemic has strengthened her faith. “I realized that without God, none of this is possible,” she said. Next up for McCrary is a cookbook she hopes to have out next year. For more about the Swift Café, visit www.swift-la.com. 1 (14 oz bag fresh cranberries) 1 cup dark brown sugar 1 cup white sugar 2 cups simply Orange juice 2 TB cinnamon 1 tsp nutmeg Ingredients: 1 pinch salt 1 full orange zested (just the zest)

1) Put all ingredients in a pot and mix till encorporared. 2) Bring to a boil. 3) Once boiling turn flame down low to a simmer. Stir occasionally to prevent burning on the bottom of the pot. 4) Once all or most of the cranberries have burst open remove from heat and let cool. Refrigerate and consume until your heart is content! NOTE: This can be used folded into pancake batter the day after thanksgiving for cranberry pancakes. You can use on scones for a nice quick breakfast and you can also pour over cream cheese as a nice dip for crackers! Enjoy! Directions:

SavingGrace

Last month, the Hollywood Reporter named Kevin Hart as the celebrity entrepreneur of the year for the booming $450 million-plus business empire he built while rocketing to superstardom over the past decade with a string of box office successes–including Jumanji, Central Intelligence, Think Like A Man, Ride Along, The Upside and most recently Me Time–becoming one of the film industry’s hottest commodities and generating a social media following of 158 million followers. Of Hart, the Hollywood Reporter wrote, “Stardom today is a commodity, more monetizable than ever, and few have figured out how to leverage it more effectively than Hart, who in parallel with his comedy career has built a business empire so diversified, it’s nearly impossible to categorize, ranging from film and TV to health and fitness, consumer packaged goods, spirits, sportswear, fintech and biotech.” Aside from endorsement and or partnership deals with the likes of Sam’s Club, JP Morgan Chase,

AT&T, Samsung, and Wrangler, Hart has an ownership stake in Hydrow rowing machines, Blackowned comic publishing house, Black Sands

Entertainment and Fabletics with which he launched the Fabletics Men Line. That doesn’t include his own very successful brands–the LOL (Laugh Out Loud) and Hartbeat

Productions. In May, Hart introduced his premium tequila,

Gran Coramino and in August, he celebrated the opening of the first location of Hart House, his plantbased fast-food chain with two more locations currently under construction and is planning to open as many as ten restaurants over the next twelve months. Quite a feat for a man who had made his bones off comedy. But perhaps the biggest part of Hart’s secret sauce for success is that he is willing to bet on himself, self-financing several of his early stand-up specials. He spent $750,000 to produce and release his 2011 special Laugh at My Pain in theaters, and in turn grossed upwards of $7 million. "Knowing your self worth is extremely important.

I worked very hard to get where I am today. I look at myself as a brand and because of that I will never allow myself to be taking advantage of. I own my brand…I make smart decisions for my brand…I protect my brand…which is why I'm able to brush ignorance off of my shoulder and continue to move forward. I refuse to be broken people…with that being said, it's now time for me to get back to building this empire that I've always dreamed of!" Hart admits that starting out, he knew nothing about the business side. “I was a sponge, and I soaked up a bunch of information from being around people that were doing the things that I wanted to do,” Hart said. Early on, Hart had at least two things going for him apart from his talent and drive: his mother, Nancy Hart support and his faith.

Nancy Hart–who passed of ovarian cancer in 2007–struggled mostly on her own to raise Hart and his older brother. A strict disciplinarian, she made sure to keep him busy and out of trouble. Devoutly religious, she instilled in her son a love for God. Hart has famously recalled that in his early years as a struggling comedian, it was his mother who provided financial support, but it was contingent upon one thing: that he read his Bible.

On one occasion, when the rent due date had passed, he called to remind her about the rent and her only response was to ask him if he had been reading his Bible. He hadn’t and the next week when he once again pressed his mother for the rent assistance, she told him, ‘When you read your Bible, then we'll talk about your rent.’

Finally, the comedian received an eviction notice. Frustrated, he called his Mom, who this time asked if he’d looked in his Bible. When he did, to his amazement, six months of rent fell out. It was the faith she instilled in him that Hart says helped him through his early days as a breakout comic in his native Philadelphia, getting booed off stages and at one point being told that he didn’t have what it took to be a successful comedian.

After a slow start, however, he found his own rhythm and unique style, and enjoyed his first breakthrough success in 2001 when Judd Apatow cast him in a recurring role on the TV series, “Undeclared”. Ironically, it was subsequent film roles in “Soul Plane”, “Scary Movie 3 and 4”, “The 40-Year-Old Virgin,” “Little Fockers” and “Think Like A Man” that laid the groundwork for his successful comedy tours, beginning with “I’m A Grown Little Man” in 2009.

Hart had decided that he didn’t want to sit around and wait for Hollywood to give him roles, instead focusing in on his comedy.

“Over the course of like three and a half, four years, I built my fan base up,” Hart recounted in a 2019 interview with LinkedIn. “My fan base was now selling out all shows, so now I don’t have to do comedy clubs. Now I can do little theaters. Now I’ve built all this up by just being persistent and saying “Idle time is idle mind.”

In 2015, Chris Rock called him America’s “biggest stand-up comedian” and by 2016, he was named by Forbes Magazine as the successor to Jerry Seinfeld as “the king of comedy” with one recent report approximating his career touring gross earnings at nearly $190 million.

Hart credits his success to God and believes that everything happens for a reason, once posting “don’t laugh at my pain, because God has a plan for me.”

When in September of 2019, he nearly lost his life in an automobile accident, he believed the accident occurred as a result of God trying to get his attention. "When God talks, you gotta listen," he wrote in a social media post. "I swear, life is funny, because some of the craziest things that happen to you end up being the things you needed most."In this case, I honestly feel like God basically told me to sit down," the 40-year-old continued. "When you're moving too fast and you're doing too much, sometimes you can't see the things that you're meant to see. But after my accident, I see things differently. I see life from a whole new perspective.”

For Hart–who was advised by his mother, “You only get one life, and you’re only gonna get out of it what you put into it”–everything boils down to hard work and in most cases, overworking and over delivering. And rather than being jealous of others’ success, he uses their examples as fuel to work harder, believing, “I’m not doing as much as I could, because these people are proof that the things I want to do can be done.”

What he is not fond of is people who don’t put action behind their words.

“So many people love to voice it just so they can hear themselves say it,” observes the happily married father of four. “It's so hard for some people to follow through and actually put action behind the words. So,my advice is to not be a talker because you can. Be the person that actually puts action behind it. And when you know that you're that person, then start picking people apart for advice and direction and what to do, what not to do because you know that you're gonna take it and you're gonna apply it. But when you don't know if you're even capable of taking information and going and using it, don't ask for it.” In a recent shout out to all of what he’s dubbed as his life warriors, he said, “This thing called life ain’t easy. It’s hard as hell, but best believe there is a light at the end of every tunnel. It gets better people…keep grinding and keep believing…be a warrior.” L.A. Focus /December 2022 22

Kevin Hart