Say ‘yes chef’ to Kayla Tabb

MIT grad is Chef-in-Residence at Roxbury BPL Nutrition Lab

Celina Colby

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There’s a new chef dicing onions and sorting spices at the Boston Public Library Nutrition Lab in Nubian Square. Kayla Tabb is the newly appointed chef-in-residence at the lab and she comes prepared to teach everything from meal planning to cake decorating. 

The Nutrition Lab is a community teaching kitchen in the Roxbury branch of the Boston Public Library, the first and only of its kind in the BPL system. As chef-in-residence, Tabb’s job is to develop community cooking programs, explore cultural culinary history and promote nutrition literacy.

Tabb has experience aplenty for the role, coming to it with a degree in anthropology from MIT and a certificate from Boston University’s inaugural pastry arts program. She launched a catering business at age 13, delivering baked goods to local parties, and she hasn’t stopped baking since. A recent role developing menus for Purple Carrot, a plant-based meal service, further prepared her for the residency.

“Having a kitchen classroom teaching about nutritional health, making sure that people can still make smart decisions for themselves, their bodies, their families, especially when you’re considering things like access, sustainability and inequity, is really helpful and exciting,” said Tabb. “Especially in a place with very strong cultural ties like the community in Roxbury has.”

The Nutrition Lab at the Roxbury Branch of the Boston Public Library PHOTO: COURTESY BOSTON PUBLIC LIBRARY

On May 5, Tabb hosted a community listening session to chat with library regulars about the programs that would be useful to them. She says folks expressed interest in learning how to build a pantry from scratch, taking a knife skills class and practicing accessible cake decorating techniques. She also plans to host diet-specific cooking classes for populations that have certain medical needs.

These programs will be added to the robust schedule of culinary author talks and wellness workshops, including a two-session seminar June 7 on pregnancy wellness and cooking for new mothers, with a specific focus on Black mothers, hosted by Namita Kiran-Thuene and Dr. Lucy Lomas, OB-GYN.

Tabb’s background in anthropology gives her an interesting perspective on how food shapes people, communities and history.

“I think that a lot of cultural exchange comes from sharing food,” Tabb said. “It’s a really interesting tool to understand people that are different from us by exploring how they cook, what type of food they eat and how they enjoy food together as a community.”

That approach is serving Tabb well in her work researching the seafood foodways of the Mashpee Wampanoag, who are native to Massachusetts and eastern Rhode Island. She plans to collaborate with Wampanoag tribe members on workshops related to that cultural tie.

The breadth of the programming at the Nutrition Lab allows a wide group of community members to benefit from the resource. Tabb hopes to impart history, connectivity and hard skills on library goers during her time as rhef-in-Residence.

“I want more people to know how to cook and know how to cook in a way that feeds their body and their soul,” Tabb said. “I find so much joy and happiness from food and cooking myself and I’m just really excited to be in a position where I can share that with a lot of other people.”