Meet Kerline Ordeus | MHA-MHRM, Head Chef and Cultural Curator

We had the good fortune of connecting with Kerline Ordeus and we’ve shared our conversation below.

Hi Kerline, we’d love to hear more about how you thought about starting your own business?
Honestly, it didn’t begin with a business plan. During the Covid pandemic, I was navigating student loan debt, a heartbreak, and that in-between phase where you’re asking yourself what’s next. I was cooking and hosting constantly. For friends. For coworkers. They would always say I should open a restaurant. Cooking was therapy for me during a hard time. It kept me going. Soon after that, I started content creation. I didn’t know much about making videos. It’s funny because if you look at my old videos, you’ll see exactly what I mean. But I learned by observing. I’ve always been a sponge. My content took off and I grew quickly from a few hundred followers to 87k. Eventually, people started asking for more. Haitian food. Catering. Private dinners. I paused and realized something was forming on its own. When I looked around Los Angeles, Haitian cuisine wasn’t widely represented, at least not in the way I understood it. I didn’t see many spaces that carried the depth and care I grew up with. At the same time, I was building a career in healthcare administration, working full-time inside complex systems and learning how institutions move. I didn’t leave one world to pursue the other. I kept one foot in the Health world, and the other in the food world. KO Kitchen has always been a one-woman operation. I develop the content, write the recipes, plan and market the events, manage the logistics, and cook the food. There isn’t a large team behind the scenes. The work is layered and demanding. But it’s organized. My background in healthcare taught me how to build systems that can hold weight. I’m drawn to both the creative and the operational, the storytelling and the spreadsheets. The mindset is the same in both spaces. KO Kitchen didn’t expand overnight. It was built with intention. Culture is serious work. It’s important to me that we tell our own stories and shape our own narrative.

Can you open up a bit about your work and career? We’re big fans and we’d love for our community to learn more about your work.
My career has always moved in two directions at once. I studied Health Sciences and went on to earn master’s degrees in Healthcare Administration and Human Resource Management. I worked through school, that wasn’t optional. After graduate school, I competed for a national healthcare fellowship. Hundreds applied. I was selected, the first Black woman in that program. Kansas City shaped part of my professional life. Los Angeles shaped another. Today, I work in healthcare operations and change management, which is a concise way of saying I help complex systems function better. I’ve always been curious about what happens behind the scenes. How things run. Why they break. How to rebuild them. At the same time, I built KO Kitchen.

I didn’t leave one world to create the other. I built them simultaneously. When I moved to LA, I didn’t see Haitian cuisine represented with the depth I knew it carried. I also missed home. That gap, cultural and personal is what pushed me to create something intentional. What started as content grew into catering, private dining, workshops, and cultural gatherings. People come for the food, yes, but they stay for the context, the care, the atmosphere. Balancing a full healthcare career while growing a business hasn’t been dramatic. It’s been disciplined. Early mornings. Late nights. Boundaries. A lot of documentation. I don’t move fast for the sake of it. I’m interested in how to be sustainable. What sets me apart is that I understand systems, institutional and cultural and I move carefully within both. I’m not interested in building something loud. I’m invested in conserving heritage and creating memories that last for generations. I’m building something that can endure. Ultimately, my work is about preservation and visibility. If culture is going to be shared, it should be handled with care.

Let’s say your best friend was visiting the area and you wanted to show them the best time ever. Where would you take them? Give us a little itinerary – say it was a week long trip, where would you eat, drink, visit, hang out, etc.
If my best friend were visiting LA, I’d show them the version of the city I actually love, layered and eclectic, full of natural beauty and the pulse of culture. Soul? Inglewood — Somerville and Country Style Jamaican. Thai? East Hollywood. Beach and eclectic food? Santa Monica — Fia, Cassia, Élephante. Downtown? Fixins, and we’re definitely grabbing Haitian patties from Restoran Lakay. I love to hike, so we’d start at Griffith Park, then grab a croissant at Lou, The French On The Block and coffee from Coffee Confessionals. Even though I cook for a living, my friends are real foodies, so we’d explore. Dinner at Saffy’s where you can linger, maybe something by the water like Élephante. There would be a museum day, likely the California African American Museum. A picnic at Barnsdall Art Park. Sunset at El Matador State Beach. If there’s a pop-up like Everyday People or Blvck on the Block, we’re there. And yes, one night I’d cook. Simple. Music on. No pressure, just laughter. What I love most about LA isn’t just the food, it’s the people. If you move slowly enough, the city starts to feel like home.

The Shoutout series is all about recognizing that our success and where we are in life is at least somewhat thanks to the efforts, support, mentorship, love and encouragement of others. So is there someone that you want to dedicate your shoutout to?
First, my mother. She was a farmer. She taught me to respect the land before I ever thought about cooking. My brothers sharpened my cooking without even realizing it, men cook where I’m from. And the women in my village who cooked with so much love and pride shaped how I understand food. They may never see their names printed anywhere, but they’re in every dish. I also want to acknowledge my partner, Zoe, for being steadfast and standing by me no matter the season, even when food takes over our lives. And my friends, the ones who gently insisted I stop downplaying what I could do. There were seasons where I was rebuilding quietly. Their belief came before mine did. And the community here in Los Angeles, the diaspora, creatives, queer folks, elders, people just looking for something real. None of this exists without people showing up and trusting me with space. I don’t take that lightly.

Website: https://www.haitianko.com/

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/haitiankokitchen?igsh=NTc4MTIwNjQ2YQ%3D%3D&utm_source=qr

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=61563523358572&mibextid=wwXIfr

Youtube: https://youtube.com/@haitiankokitchen?si=abLL3U-pnb2pf6dL

Image Credits
Red Dress 7ven Monae