Deon Foster spun through a whirlwind of duty stations in her 20s and 30s as the wife of a Marine aviator. Through them all, cooking remained her north star. No matter where in the world she landed—Oahu, Yokota, Stuttgart—she was always at home in the kitchen.
“Even when I was a child in Baltimore, I’d take mesh and sieve mud like it was gravy for mashed potatoes,” she recalled. “Without lumps.”
That playtime presaged Foster’s considerable career at the Kitchen Koop, the gourmet shop she opened in Olde Towne Portsmouth in 1998, catering to avid at-home chefs and pros with top-of-the-line equipment, gadgets, and goods as well as classes that could coax culinarians out of kitchen klutzes and ramp up connoisseurs’ repertoires.
“A woman came in recently and told me, ‘If I had never seen your store, Ms. Deon, I’d never have become a chef,’” Foster related. “She was seven when she first came here. Now she has a couple restaurants in Charlottesville.”
Mosey in yourself and surrender to sensory overload: the heady aroma of rich coffee and dark spices, picturesque displays set against exposed brick walls, the soft rhythms of cool jazz, the sweetness of a complimentary Christmas cookie, and, best of all, Foster chirping from her office loft, “Hey, hello!”
She’s stuffed the Koop with Cuisinart appliances, Stonewall Kitchen specialty foods, pots and pans, and table linens. Pickling kits and pepper mills, cutting boards and wine bottles, cookbooks and teapots, and, yes, sieves, sit chockablock on antiques she’s gathered on her travels: a French marble-topped butcher’s counter, a cast-iron stove, a grain bin.
The idea of becoming a small business owner started percolating when she was at Camp Lejeune in Jacksonville, N.C. She read in Food & Wine about a consultant in Texas named Joel McLendon who mentored aspiring epicurean entrepreneurs.
“I wrote him asking for help, and he called me,” she remembered, and then, affecting a Texas twang: “He said, ‘I got your letter. All you need is a minimum of 2,000 square feet and money, girl.’”
Then came military orders for London, and her budding dream got backburnered. Foster’s husband promised this would be their last move. “And so I wouldn’t be bitchin’ and moanin’ he told me there was a culinary school there,” she said. “But I had never heard of Le Cordon Bleu. I grew up in a family of 12.”
Faster than you can say “sauté”, she enrolled at the offshoot of the institute where Julia Child mastered her craft and, not unlike that expat, immersed herself in cuisine and pâtisserie.
An instructor asked where she had learned to make such a silky smooth béchamel. She shrugged. The creamy white sauce was identical to what her mother taught her while making macaroni and cheese.
Back in the U.S., Foster was drawn to Portsmouth. She’d stroll along High Street, gazing at the dilapidated buildings. She dug McLendon’s card out of her purse.
“I said, ‘You probably don’t remember me and he goes, ‘Tell me your name again, sweetheart.’” When she did, he said, “I remember you. Whatever happened to you?”
She told him about earning her diplôme. His reaction: “You did what? Now you’re ready to open a store and teach.”
“He was my guardian angel,” she said. He was there for her opening and through many tribulations. “Williams Sonoma in MacArthur Center opened when I did!” she said with a laugh as bright and fruity as a squeeze of citrus.
She weathered the 2008 market crash and COVID (“you just have to stick to it”), offering an unwavering wonderland for The Great British Baking Show devotees and Martha Stewart wannabes. And herself.
She cooks at home daily as if for a family of four, even though she’s now divorced and her children are grown (daughter, Monique, is an epidemiologist and son, Kyoto, an artist). It’s just she and E-Z Monie, the latest in a long line of chihuahuas.
She loves baking pies and is a self-professed “crab girl.” Classes on the crustaceans—soft-shells, her mama’s crabcakes, steamed, garlic crab, Imperial crab—were her favorites to lead. Acknowledging she can no longer do everything, she’s pared back and now books only custom classes. But the garden she planted behind the store, replete with herbs and a Japanese pear tree as well as pomegranate, peach, and golden plum, bears witness to countless throwdowns.
She’s realized all that she imagined long ago while observing a chicken gutting demo at Le Cordon Bleu and doodling on her cloth knife bag: kitchen…kitchen…kitchen koop. “What is this koop?” demanded her French chef. “It holds all kinds of things for the kitchen,” she replied. “Where is it?” he countered. A friend cut in: “It’s in her head.” And, for the past quarter century, in Olde Towne Portsmouth.
Go inside for unique kitchen equipment, tools, seasonings, tea, jams, and good conversation, visit The Kitchen Koop at 638 High St, Portsmouth, VA.
