Summertime nostalgia for most people includes ice cream and so it is only fitting that this week's guest is Lokelani Alabanza, a pastry chef by training, and the founder of Saturated Ice Cream, her own brand of plant-based, hemp-derived CBD ice cream made in Nashville, Tennessee. She creates beautiful flavors like Sweet Potato Gingersnap, Juneteenth, and Sunflower Butter Stacciatella, that spur the imagination while educating consumers about African American culinary history.  Lokelani’s professional journey started at the New England Culinary Institute. From there, her love of food took her around the world. Starting in Denmark for her first kitchen job to her time working as a private chef in Japan, her travels expanded her palate and refined her ability to create incredible food.  It was in Los Angeles, under the tutelage of renowned pastry chef Elizabeth Belkind, that Loke’s passion for pastry cooking was ignited. There, she worked with Dahlia Narvaez and Nancy Silverton at the James Beard award-winning restaurant Campanile, before landing in Nashville, as Culinary Director for Hattie Jane’s Creamery. Lokelani’s time there grew her passion for ice cream, expanded her experience (while at Hattie Jane’s, she created over 300 flavors), and her love of integrating nostalgia into her cooking.  In this episode, Lokelani and host Brad Johnson discuss her exposure to world travel, her rise in the restaurant industry to become a pastry chef with mentorship from renowned pastry chefs, and how she learned to perfect her ice cream making skills. After being laid off during COVID, Lokelani explains the decision to start her own business and why she decided to make plant-based, CBD ice cream as well as create unique, monumental flavors honoring African American heritage as she wrote about in an article titled A Monumental Flavor for the Oxford American Food Issue - Spring 2021. * * * Please follow @CornerTableTalk on Instagram and Facebook For more information on host Brad Johnson or to join our mailing list, please visit: https://postandbeamhospitality.com/ For questions or comments, please e.mail: [email protected] omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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