AphroChic Magazine: Issue No. 4

Food
Lazarus Lynch is a rock star, a bona fide food star, an author and an all-around renaissance
man. And this summer, the chef-singer-songwriter is on a roll. His bold and energetic
cookbook, Son of a Southern Chef: Cook With Soul, continues to inspire those who are looking for
new ways to bring soul food to life. And on Spotify his recent release, I’m Gay, is a self-professed
Black Pride anthem, written and produced by Lynch himself. But before he was a multi-hyphenate
artist with irons in just about every fire, Lazarus Lynch was a young boy from Jamaica,
Queens, who grew up watching one of his favorite chefs make magic in the kitchen — his father,
the renowned restaurateur Johnny Ray Lynch.
To say that food was in Lazarus’s blood would be an understatement.
His father was an inspiration to him from the start, but
the family’s culinary roots ran even deeper. “[Dad] moved to New
York when he was pretty young. All the recipes that he cooked for us
growing up were inspirations from my grandmother Margaret Lynch,”
he recalls. “He inherited that gene watching her as a kid and I started
watching him. When my dad finally opened up Baby Sister’s Soul Food,
I was like, ‘I really love this.’ I loved that my dad was cooking. I loved
going to the restaurant and watching him, helping him.”
The cooking lessons didn’t end when father and son left the
restaurant. Food was part of the family dynamic, and played a role
in just about everything they did. “Food was always central. It was a
cultural thing. It was how we gathered. I grew up in the church. Every
Sunday after service, there was dinner. Those dinners were shared
and oftentimes we would make things and bring it to the church.”
The next major turn in his food career came during high school,
where Lazarus began to mix the art of cooking with the art of media.
“I had four years in high school just really developing my skills as a
chef,” he remembers. Lynch is a graduate of New York City’s Food
and Finance High School, the city’s only culinary-focused public
high school. The rich environment provided incredible opportunities
to a young culinary mind, giving him access to coveted positions,
including interning and working in the test kitchens of The Food
Network, a brand he would later work for professionally.
Lazarus’ own brand, Son of A Southern Chef, which he began
in 2014, is an homage to his father, his way of continuing the legacy
that his grandmother passed down. It’s also a culmination of all of the
experiences that made food mean so much: the moments watching
his father in the kitchen, Sunday dinners after church service, and
gatherings with family were all translated into stunning dishes
that mix beloved tradition with bold innovation. Dishes like his,
Oh-My-Gah Green Beans with Crushed Peanuts, and Mother Soand-So’s
Lemon Pound Cake are featured throughout his cookbook.
A colorful, energetic tour of the chef’s philosophy of food and life,
the book is a collection of dishes culled from family recipes, many
which had only been passed down through stories or by watching and
learning, as Lazarus often did. “In our community a lot of the things
that are passed down are oratory, so nothing is documented. I started
watching my dad cook and then I started taking notes. Literally
notebooks of this is the potato salad, this is the macaroni and cheese.”
Just a year after founding the brand, Lazarus’x father passed away
from cancer. “I was able to sit down with my dad. He and I talked for
several hours. I think he realized that I had a gift and that I was really
passionate about food. He also saw that there were a lot of opportunities
coming my way. It all was very exciting for him,” he reflects. “One
of the things he said to me, which I’ll never forget, was I want [you] to
take this to the next level. I’ve never forgotten it and it has been such
a grounding place for me. Almost a mantra for me to continue doing
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