Meet Chef Dame, Your New Fave Chef

Food, art, music, and sports lover, wanting to hone in on nutrition while providing the ultimate dining experience, has been showcasing his culinary skills far and wide. One of Chef Dame Cooks grandmothers was a caterer and the other had a passion for cooking, so he was constantly in the kitchen watching them cook. From there, he obtained a lot of skill set from watching them. He was born in Detroit, moved to Columbus OH in middle school, then moved to Arizona in 2001. During that time, he constantly tapped into all things culinary. 

Chef Dame Cooks always wanted to go to culinary arts school, but he was fortunate enough to be trained under Sean Chatman in Ohio, a world-renowned chef that was a good friend of the family. In 2017, Sean brought him into his restaurant to teach him the basics of working in a restaurant. In two years he learned the operations of preparing ingredients for meals, line cook, grocery budgets, and also the art of being a sous chef. In 2020, Chef Dame Cooks went back to Phoenix and started to focus more on nutrition as he became one of the Top Chef’s in the West Coast. He currently specializes in private chef, high profile catering, food consultations, and curating menus for meal prepping while he works as a private chef and collaborates with other chefs.

He did attempt to attend culinary arts school in 2021 but shortly after, the instructor told him that he was overqualified and asked if she could be of service to Chef Dame Cooks. This spoke volumes and it pushed him to want to further dominate his expertise in the kitchen. His best friend James Conley Jr. opened the door for his career to expand by introducing him to Julian Aiken, former manager of Alonzo Trier that played for the New York Knicks. Chef Dame Cooks had the opportunity to make his favorite meal which landed him a steady position as his personal chef from June 2020 to December 2020. Through word of mouth within the following six months, he was getting numerous calls and Instagram DMS. This opportunity allowed him to branch out and grow in private catering. He started to network by dropping off meals to athletes and facilities for two months, while traveling to Aspen, five months in a row to cook for clients during the pandemic. Once people saw that he was traveling abroad his clientele list grew tremendously. 

Chef Dame Cooks currently has over 1000 clients, 400 in the last year. His two main current clients are an NFL player and a successful boxer. He’s also traveled all over the U.S. including Phoenix, Los Angeles, Dallas, New York, and Florida. His passion has turned into a career specializing in the customer service, maximizing profits, and creating food budgets for his clients amongst other services. 

The best part for him is to be able to create attention through food. His formula is ‘one plate at a time.’ He believes everybody needs food and being able to maximize the dining experience by styling decor and food presentations make it all worthwhile.

Chef Dames Cooks background in fashion for 12 years gave him the idea of his current ventures in designing kitchenware and launching a chef coat line to be released next year. He is also working on curating frozen meals, developing kitchens, boosting his e-commerce on his website, and setting up platforms for the youth to ‘help them find the way.

Instagram: Chefdamecooks
Website: Chefdamoncooks.com