From the streets to the suites

Long before Patricia Gray was catering meals for entertainers or serving steady crowds from Chef Pat’s Kitchen on Goodfellow Boulevard, she was selling plates to barbershops, beauty salons and businesses along the same North St. Louis corridor.

The side hustle started partly out of necessity.

Gray, known as Chef Pat, was attending L’Ecole Culinaire while raising her daughter and working full time. Culinary school required her to complete 365 hours of unpaid training, she said, and she needed another source of income.

“I started making lil plates, selling them to different barber shops, beauty salons and businesses up and down Goodfellow and West Florissant,” Gray said.

Her pitch was simple: “I’m trying to start my own business. If you like it, support me.”

People did. Before long, customers were calling her “the food lady.”

Years later, Gray has turned those early plate sales into Chef Pat’s Kitchen, a carryout restaurant at 4719 Goodfellow Blvd., along with a catering business that has served entertainers including the O’Jays, Frankie Beverly and Maze, Ronald Isley, The Whispers, Lil Wayne, Ice Cube, Boosie, Chris Brown and Usher.

She describes the journey as going from the “streets to the suites.”

Videos on Gray’s Instagram page show some of her celebrity customers praising her food. Neo-soul singer Musiq Soulchild calls Gray “one of the greatest in the game.”

“The food is hand made and she puts a lot of love and care in it,” he says in a video.

Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan also appears in a video praising her cooking after eating her food during a St. Louis visit.

“Any woman that cooks like this is a prize to any man,” Farrakhan says.

Gray grew up in St. Louis learning to cook from her mother and grandmother — whether she wanted to or not. She remembers getting up “before the roosters crowed” to learn new dishes.

“I was forced to cook, I didn’t want to do it,” she said. “My mom and my granny made sure every last one of us in my family knew how to cook, the girls and the boys.”

By her teens, the reaction from family and friends had changed her attitude about cooking.

Years later, Gray enrolled at L’Ecole Culinaire and began building a professional career. She said she graduated early, made the dean’s list and became the first African American to serve on the school’s board of directors. Her career later included executive chef positions at Clayton on the Park and Ruth’s Chris Steak House and work at St. Louis University Hospital.

She kept building her own business on the side.

In 2010, Gray became a partner in Your’s Market, an independent grocery store in Baden owned by community activist Anthony Shahid. It was there, she said, that Farrakhan ate her food during a St. Louis visit.

Another break came in 2014, when O’Jays singer Walter Williams tried her oxtails and asked her to cook for the group while it was on tour. Gray said Williams later bought her a Lincoln MKX after learning transportation problems were making it difficult for her to handle catering jobs.

More celebrity catering jobs followed, but Gray continued serving the customers who knew her before them.

About three years ago, she said, she purchased the Goodfellow building that became Chef Pat’s Kitchen. Her menu includes food prepared from scratch, with no pork and vegetarian and vegan options. On soul food Sundays, Gray said, the kitchen can go through six to 10 pans of dressing.

Gray also teaches culinary skills at the St. Louis Job Corps Center, minutes from Chef Pat’s Kitchen. One of her former students, Nakeisha Leflore, now works as lead cook at the restaurant.