Local chef Kip Poole’s cooking and community focus are inseparable.
He picks herbs from the garden he started at W.T Cooke Elementary, partners with local farms and breweries, and on Saturdays, he rides his bike to the local farmer’s market to gather produce for the week.
“It’s kind of a no-brainer,” Poole said. “Every place should be a ‘farm-to-table’ restaurant…local people should grow your food and make your beer.”
That’s his goal when he opened Yorkie’s in the Virginia Beach ViBe District, which he also pairs with his nonprofit to teach kids about the value of community and food.
“They see a local farmer dropping that stuff off, and then we are selling it,” he said. “We’re not just selling it, but we’re telling a story, and we see a 360. Whatever waste is wasted from that product, it goes right into our raised bed at our restaurant.”
The food comes from farmers that the students know by name, and vegetables are made into meals that churches give freely to the homeless. When the cooking and serving is done, the scraps go into the raised garden beds.
“My students see that,” Poole said. “We’re not just selling [food], we’re telling a story.”
The community rushed to support Yorkie’s, with regular lines out of the front door, Poole said.
“It was an absolutely wonderful thing to see,” he said.
In his decade of sharing his passion with students, Poole said, he has helped cultivate some of the best chefs he’s seen.
A Portsmouth native, Poole gained experience in Philadelphia, working as a chef at Title I schools, where he started his nonprofit.
“I saw a lot of students come into our kitchen and show a lot of initiative, so much initiative they actually wouldn’t leave when the bell rang,” Poole said.
Poole and the students started throwing catered parties in abandoned buildings, empty farms and steam trains. The parties centered entirely around their food.
The students stayed extra hours because they loved cooking and serving their community, but some needed an escape from life at home.
Poole said he had students who dreamt of working in night clubs, but ended up working places like Michelin Star restaurants and the Ritz Carlton.
Poole returned to Hampton Roads as an executive chef at Virginia Beach Public Schools, where he introduced programs like the Cooke Elementary garden club, VB Scratch cooking, and the CROP Foundation.
Despite Poole’s own success, including a featured appearance on HBO’s “The Big Brunch,” he said he “would rather see any of these people succeed than myself…their success makes me feel good and makes me feel like I need to work harder.”
Sometimes this success means producing world-class chefs, and sometimes it means instilling enough confidence in a student that the student’s principal personally calls Poole to thank him for the young man’s incredible transformation.
“I see the good in every single student we have,” Poole said.
