Toyin Alli was already running two businesses out of a single sandwich when I caught up with her at Union Market back in May 2019 – cooking each morning at a shared incubator kitchen, then splitting the food between her Puddin’ stand and her food truck, Biggie, a $2,000 former ice cream truck she rebuilt herself with new brakes and parts bought whenever she could afford them.
For the 119th dinner interview, Toyin told me about quitting a government job at Amtrak’s inspector general to chase the food business full time, the kitchen mistake at a Taste of DC festival that accidentally became her signature bread pudding sauce (she wouldn’t tell me what it was), and how she wants to open an affordable commercial kitchen so other chef-owners don’t struggle the way she did. “I wish somebody would have helped my ass,” she told me. “A little bit of guidance can go a long way.”