{"id":172701,"date":"2026-02-11T00:56:07","date_gmt":"2026-02-11T00:56:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/172701\/"},"modified":"2026-02-11T00:56:07","modified_gmt":"2026-02-11T00:56:07","slug":"head-chef-at-miss-bs-reflects-on-lifes-lessons","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/172701\/","title":{"rendered":"Head chef at Miss B’s reflects on life\u2019s lessons"},"content":{"rendered":"

MISSION BEACH \u2013 As head chef at Miss B\u2019s Coconut Club<\/a> in Mission Beach, New York native Troy Williams has found his way in San Diego.<\/p>\n

Williams grew up in a place with a distinctively different culture and lifestyle than where he ended up: The Queensbridge projects in Long Island City, New York \u2014 the same area as rapper Nas and former Los Angeles Lakers player Ron Artest. <\/p>\n

Williams, 47, reflected on the differences in life in the Northeast compared to Southern California.<\/p>\n

In New York, Williams pointed out that some police officers\u00a0blatantly targeted\u00a0Black and\u00a0Brown people.\u00a0\u201cI\u2019ve had experiences\u00a0that\u00a0bordered on assault,\u00a0but (police) definitely were\u00a0profiling us,\u201d he said. <\/p>\n

Williams grew up poor during the crack epidemic. It was just him, his\u00a0brother, and their mom, who died when he was 11. He was eventually raised\u00a0by his aunt, who renamed both him and his\u00a0brother, giving them generic-type names to hide their racial background on\u00a0paper and with job\u00a0applications.\u00a0<\/p>\n

He added his aunt also made him read the dictionary, teaching him how to enunciate each syllable so they didn\u2019t \u201csound\u00a0Black\u201d when he recited them, so he would be considered more \u201ceducated.\u201d<\/p>\n

His aunt lived through the Civil Rights era. \u201cShe had an\u00a0even more trying time growing up,\u201d Williams said.<\/p>\n

Describing his aunt as being like a \u201cbig sister,\u201d Williams was strongly influenced by her, noting her lessons \u201ccarried me into adulthood.\u201d<\/p>\n

San Diego turned out to be the land of opportunity for Williams, who started as a line cook, excelled at it, and got promoted by the original chef at Miss B\u2019s in Mission Beach, whom he said \u201chad plans for me that I didn\u2019t even know.\u201d <\/p>\n

Those plans ultimately culminated in his promotion as head chef.<\/p>\n

Williams spoke of what Black History Month<\/a> means to him.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt educates me about my lineage, where I come from,\u201d he said. \u201cI get to know more about myself and what I came from. It allows me to reflect. I didn\u2019t just show up in Queens in 1979. There are a lot of ingredients that went into me being who I am.\u201d<\/p>\n

He added that the observance also inspires him and makes him grateful.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s good for non-Black people too to just acknowledge that we all come from different backgrounds and that it\u2019s good to celebrate and look at Black history in this way. It\u2019s better to try and understand each other than to go against each other.\u201d<\/p>\n

To illustrate his point, Williams said that he once worked with someone from a white supremacist background who wouldn\u2019t even speak to him until his perspective got \u201cturned around.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cHe just looked at me one day and said, \u2018You\u2019re just cool,\u2019\u201d said Williams, who added that he was astonished.<\/p>\n

\u201cAfter that, we became friends,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

\u201cTogetherness is how we get better,\u201d Williams said of that experience in overcoming racial prejudice. \u201cKindness does win.\u201d<\/p>\n

READ NEXT<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"MISSION BEACH \u2013 As head chef at Miss B\u2019s Coconut Club in Mission Beach, New York native Troy…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":172702,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[28],"tags":[68879,23250,11109,74,76,75],"class_list":{"0":"post-172701","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-san-diego","8":"tag-black-history-month","9":"tag-miss-bs-coconut-club","10":"tag-mission-beach","11":"tag-san-diego","12":"tag-san-diego-headlines","13":"tag-san-diego-news"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/172701","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=172701"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/172701\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/172702"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=172701"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=172701"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=172701"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}