It is not every day that a Kenyan heads the kitchen of an international hotel brand in the country. At Dusit Princess Hotel Residences Nairobi, Kennedy Okall, popularly known as Chef Ken, holds that responsibility.
As executive chef, the 40-year-old oversees everything from food quality and menu design to kitchen operations and financial management. He began dreaming of the role as a child, after an encounter sparked his curiosity about professional cooking.
‘I was walking past an international hotel with my mother once as a child, when I noticed someone putting on a white coat as they went by. I’d never seen a chef’s jacket before, so I asked my mother about it,’ he recalls.
His mother’s answer stayed with him. ‘She said, ‘Those are the people who cook for white people.”
Already fascinated by cooking, Kennedy became curious about preparing international dishes beyond the food he knew from home or the African recipes he encountered in books. After high school, he enrolled at Utalii College for professional culinary training while working as a commis chef at one of the country’s five-star hotels. He graduated in 2009.
At his next job, in a newly established five-star hotel, he joined as a chef de partie and rose through the ranks to junior and then senior sous chef.
He credits much of his development to Italian executive chef Gaetano Sgroi, who taught him the fundamentals of cooking, team leadership and kitchen cost management. Regular visits by guest chefs from abroad also exposed him to different culinary traditions and gave him opportunities to work alongside Michelin-starred chefs.
‘That is where my culinary skills sharpened and where my journey to becoming an executive chef really became clear,’ he says.
The experience prepared him for his next move to another premium hotel brand that was preparing to open. This time, he joined as an executive sous chef, before being promoted to executive chef after a year. He spent about six years there before moving to Dusit Princess Hotel Residences Nairobi, where he has worked since late 2021.
His rise through the ranks may seem seamless on paper, but Chef Ken says the journey was not always smooth.
‘You start getting exposed to leadership from the position of sous chef,’ he says. ‘And managing people is a challenge, particularly if they are older than you.’
His trick to earning respect, he says, is to be what he describes as ‘a modern leader’.
‘The traditional approach to leadership is more authoritarian, but today’s generation doesn’t want that,’ he says. ‘Now, while you still need to be a little autocratic, you must also have some democracy, and that is not always easy.’
Over time, he has also come to learn that leading a kitchen also means understanding the people in it – their personalities, cultures, strengths, and even the different pace at which they learn and grasp new skills.
Beyond the demands of leadership, Chef Ken points to passion for the job as another factor that may explain why relatively few Kenyans rise to executive chef positions.
‘A chef’s job is not easy,’ he says. ‘It requires a lot of commitment. You will be forced to work many hours sometimes and miss out on a lot of leisure time. People will be having fun on Sundays or during the holidays, but you will be expected to be at work. So you really have to set your mind to it properly, be prepared for all of that, and really like the food that you are preparing.’
But passion alone is not enough. Chefs also need curiosity and creativity to distinguish themselves. For Chef Ken, that means understanding how different flavours work together and being willing to not only learn from others, but also experiment beyond what is familiar.
‘There is a reason it is known as culinary art,’ he says. ‘Even creating a menu requires you to think outside the box. It is an art in itself.’
Traditionally, chefs were expected to follow established recipes and serve dishes in a particular way. But today, he notes, chefs have more room to reinterpret those classic recipes, which is how fusion has come in.
‘Some of our chefs remain too attached to following the traditional recipes, which restricts their creativity. It then becomes difficult for them to progress into these big brands, which are often looking for people who can bring fresh ideas and an understanding of international cuisine,’ he says.
For his part, Chef Ken makes a point of eating at other restaurants, sampling what fellow chefs are creating and assessing how their food compares with his own. It is a way of keeping up with the competition, but also of challenging himself to do better.
‘I go eat here, I go eat there. I try to feel whatever those chefs have created, and some of these are foreign chefs,’ he says. ‘Those are the things that always inspire me to do more.’
Away from the creativity involved in developing dishes, however, there is a less visible side to running a kitchen. That is, ensuring that ingredients are properly sourced and stored, recipes are followed, and food safety standards are maintained.
For Chef Ken, every dish follows a process, from sourcing ingredients to the final serving. And one of the most important guiding principles behind this process is sustainability.
‘Waste is money,’ he says.
It starts with choosing the right suppliers, who can consistently deliver the quality of ingredients the kitchen requires. Once the ingredients arrive, they must be received, cleaned and stored correctly to preserve their quality and ensure food safety. The team must also be trained to handle ingredients properly and minimise offcuts during preparation.
‘How the ingredients are supposed to be cooked is also another thing,’ he adds. ‘You have to get the right texture and preparation mode for everything, or it becomes a waste.’
Recipes, too, play a role. Each dish, Chef Ken says, has a recipe that specifies the quantities of ingredients to use and the portions to serve. This helps the kitchen maintain consistency while ensuring that food is not prepared in excess and ends up being thrown away.
So seriously does Chef Ken take waste management that the kitchen has a programme to track how much food is discarded at different stages, from preparation to what guests leave on their plates.
The kitchen separates waste into categories, including scraps from food preparation, leftovers from the buffet and food returned on guests’ plates. Each category has its own bin, which is weighed daily by a member of the team. The figures are then assessed against the number of guests served over the month to establish how much waste the kitchen produces per person.
Chef Ken says the hotel works towards a benchmark of 200 grammes of waste per person, including unavoidable waste such as bones. Last month, he says, it recorded 191 grammes per person, putting it below that threshold.
The effort extends to the staff canteen, where Chef Ken has introduced what he calls a ‘zero dustbin’ policy. Staff are encouraged to take only what they can finish, with bones being among the few things permitted in the bin.
Managing waste among hotel guests can be a little more complicated, particularly at a buffet, where diners can serve themselves more than once. For à la carte meals, however, Chef Ken says, guests who cannot finish their food can have it packed as takeaway, but his team also follows up to find out why a plate has not been cleared.
‘I like to know why food has been left on the plate,’ he says. For him, the feedback allows his team to investigate the dish and assess its quality. If a diner has left food because it did not taste right, for instance, the kitchen can examine what went wrong.
His attention to detail pays off when diners compliment the food and keep coming back, something he says remains one of the most satisfying aspects of his career.
With more than 15 years into his career now, Chef Ken is also extremely proud of the fact that he has trained other chefs, some of whom have since moved on to work elsewhere and are doing well for themselves.
‘I am very proud that therew are people who, one day when I hang up my jacket, will say that I was trained by Chef Ken, the way I say I was trained by Chef Gaetano,’ he says. ‘And I’m still training others even now because I like developing talent.’