Harlem is where the heart is for California native Melvin “Boots” Johnson. The self-taught chef discovered and fell in love with the historic neighborhood — where Langston Hughes and Duke Ellington lived and made their mark — when he came to New York City in the 90s, ironically, to helm a California Pizza Kitchen.
“I’m from Southern California, but my family is from Louisiana and Mississippi. So when I got here to Harlem, it felt comfortable because I saw Black folks and they spoke in the morning. You still say ‘yes ma’am,’” says Johnson.
“In California, you’re always in your car and you’re not in touch with folks. You don’t really interact. Here in New York, you’re bumping into people all the time [on] the train. We walk on the streets. I like the fast pace of things, but I still have my relaxed California vibes, too.”
The gregarious 57-year-old has been a cook for over 35 years and throughout his culinary journey, he’s moved around a lot. He ran a food truck in Las Vegas and opened his own restaurant in San Diego. But he planted roots in Harlem permanently in 2017, where he lives, works, and runs a business in a ten-block radius.
“I was like, ‘I’m staying here. I’m going to make a name for myself here in the city,’” he says.
He’s a soul man
A reverence for Black culture and Southern cuisine is what fuels Johnson’s taste. He honed his chops as a teenager at his father’s barbecue joint in Compton, where he became a pit master. Johnson’s affection for down home Creole, Cajun and Southern cooking is reflected in the cuisine — like fried chicken, gumbo, blackened salmon, collard green dip, buttermilk biscuits, and shrimp and grits — he showcases at the Victoria Theater Restaurant as executive chef.
“I don’t want my food to be intimidating or pretentious or anything. I cook like a 70-year-old Black woman. But seriously, I cook food that older Black women can do at home. So I have to do it right,” the Food Network’s Chopped: Grill Masters champion says with a laugh.
“My grandmother would go to church and she’d put a pot of beans in a little slow cooker. You come home, the house smells like pot roast and beans, and you’re hungry. So I’m used to that type of cooking.”
The Victoria restaurant is located on the fifth floor lobby of the Renaissance New York Harlem Hotel, housed in the revitalized Victoria Theater building in the heart of Harlem on 125th Street. It features chic open layout and lavishly uptown design touches including a grand blue piano, eye-catching light fixtures and art work, large scale photos of entertainers like Josephine Baker and Cab Calloway in the elevators, a centerpiece marble bar, and an Instagram-snapworthy staircase inscribed with the first names of more performers who had great days in Harlem, including Billie, Duke, Ella, and Louis.
When it opened in 2023, Johnson visited the handsome lounge on a date.
“They [were] open for maybe like two, three months. I ordered some food, and the server was like, ‘Hey, don’t get that.’ I was like, ‘What do you mean? What’s going on?’ He goes, ‘Yeah, we haven’t had a chef in like a month. And I’m like, ‘I do consulting, so who do I talk to?,” he recalls.
“I had a feeling I knew what this place needed because it’s on 125th, right next door to Apollo.”
The hotel management, however, needed a chef instead of a consultant. Although Johnson already had his thriving Harlem Biscuit Company, he embraced the Victoria as an opportunity to fortify his brand as a Harlem chef.
Since becoming executive chef in 2024, Johnson says, “I’ve changed the menu five times. But now, I’m pretty happy with where it’s at. So it’s our soul food, but a little elevated.”
He adds, “That’s why predominantly my kitchen’s like 90% Black, because you have to understand the essence of where things come from. You gotta know the culture.”
Time to make the biscuits
During the pandemic, Johnson lost his job and started making fried chicken and biscuits out of his girlfriend’s garage in New Rochelle. Customers especially loved the biscuits, and that inspired him to launch Harlem Biscuit Company, which moved to its brick and mortar location on Adam Clayton Powell and 135th Street in 2022.
“I’ve been making these biscuits forever. I actually over-mix [the dough], which is weird, because they’re not supposed to come out when you over-mix them. [But] mine have a soft, pillowy-ness to them. So it’s a twist on my grandmother’s recipe,” he explains.
Johnson even beat Food Network star Bobby Flay, his former boss at the shuttered Mesa Grill where he was a line cook, with his biscuits and gravy.
“I was like, ‘He’s doing my dish. I do this every day.’ I think I had my biscuits in the oven for like nine minutes,” he says confidently of his win on the Food Network competition show, “Beat Bobby Flay.”
He keeps his boots on the ground
Despite his food competition wins, the father of four stays humble. “I can go from running a restaurant to being on TV, to being a kitchen manager at a franchise restaurant, to being a line cook. It just keeps you grounded,” he says.
The latest extension of his brand is a new restaurant in St. Croix in the U.S. Virgin Islands called Boots and Bones. “I was visiting for about four years, and I would do pop-ups and make enough money to pay for my whole vacation. So I bought a restaurant to retire down there,” he says.
As for his nickname, “Boots,” that came from his Mom.
“My dad’s a Kappa, and when I was one or two years old, he bought me these red cowboy boots. So I would wear them all the time. My mother would take them off and in the middle of the night I would wake up and put them back on. And she started calling me ‘Boots,’” says Johnson, who followed in his father’s footsteps and joined the Kappa Alpha Psi brotherhood.
“Everyone has a nickname in the South. You know, so it stuck. I lost my mother about 20 years ago. And when I started doing TV, I honored [her] by calling myself ‘Boots.’”
For more info, visit chefboots.com.