Hood Heroes, episode 15: Amine Laabi, a chef at the heart of his community
Amine Laabi considers that he is very lucky. Not because he managed to get by thanks to his passion — cooking — but because it allowed him to organize gatherings with his family and to inspire his community.
In fact, it was as part of a joint activity between the Binetna Center and the Saint-Michel Youth Forum, in which we took part, that he cooked a Iftar (meal that breaks the fast during the month of Ramadan) with twenty young Montrealers. For a whole day, he guided and taught cooking to teenagers, talking and laughing with them throughout the cooking process.
Behind the stove, Amine is a pro, but he constantly reminds us with his good humor and empathy that everything he does for teenagers comes from his own experience as a young person in a Montreal neighborhood.
“The typical career of a guy from Ville Saint-Laurent”
“I saw a lot of violence at a young age. I wasn't attracted to it, but I wasn't an angel either...” That's how the Montreal chef answers when asked to tell about the particularities of the neighborhood where he grew up.
It is Saturday at the end of the afternoon, and Amine has just finished cooking tonight's meal in the company of a dozen young people. A bit out of breath, he takes the time to sit down and make arrangements in order to tell us the story of his life.
Amine was born in Morocco, then his family immigrated and settled in the borough of Saint-Laurent, in the north-west of the city. At the age of 11, he discovered a new country, a new language, a new neighborhood. “I was not good at school,” he says with a laugh. In fact, I hated school. I had an attention disorder, which was not diagnosed at the time. It was very hard for me to succeed or to enjoy learning when I didn't understand why I was struggling,” he adds.
The Montreal native, now 31, leaves school in secondary, due to lack of motivation and success. Very early on, he started working for a living. “At 18, I found myself with several responsibilities. I had moved out of my parents' house with my brother, so I had to find a way to pay my rent and my bills,” he recalls.
According to him, he has the “typical background of a guy from Ville Saint-Laurent.” However, he is about to transform this stereotype and demonstrate that “coming from here is not a shame, but a source of pride.”
Focus on cooking
Although he worked hard to get by, sometimes multiplying jobs and extending working hours, Amine remained a motivated young person among friends and acquaintances who tended to let themselves be won over by disillusionment. “A lot of the guys I hung out with when I was a teenager ended up in prison and regretted trying to succeed by dishonest means. Some of my friends have also lost their lives, he confides thoughtfully. It made me think a lot and I realized that it was not too late for me to get out of it without going down that road.”
After nearly a decade working in sales, he felt ready to move up the ladder. However, the lover of good food was already thinking of enrolling in cooking school. But everything seemed to indicate that this was not the right path: he was going to have to give up his work and start from scratch, with no guarantee of success. “It was a real headache. As I left school in 3E In high school, I had to do my school equivalences before going back to cooking school. I had to figure it out,” he said.
So Amine had to “do everything for his passion”. Today, the outpouring of love and support he receives on social media and in life in general reminds him that his hard work has not been in vain. “I am a community guy, it always makes me happy and warm to my heart when I see guys from Hood enjoy what I do,” he said.
Who is there to inspire young people?
Having arrived in Montreal at a young age, Amine has an immigration background and recognizes herself in racialized youth who are affected by neighborhood violence problems.
“It really hurts my heart to see young people in my community involved in violent cases. I hear stories of violence worthy of a movie, too intense for me to believe it's real, the cook wonders. There are many who have left their jobs and their lives elsewhere to live a worse life here. I think there are a lot of young people who don't realize how much their parents fought and sacrificed for them.”
He also notes that there are not that many people of color who are examples for young people. “When I was young, there was just Rachid Badouri who I could identify with. I saw him on television and I told myself that I could get there one day if he had succeeded. Today, I hope to do that and when I receive messages from young people who tell me that they have been inspired by me, it feels like a source of pride,” he says with a huge smile.
Choosing the right path
“I guarantee you that among all those who have chosen the path of crime, not one has succeeded,” says Amine. That's what he keeps telling the youngest people in his neighborhood: “You'll either end up dead or in prison.”
He insists on the need to keep teenagers busy: “Young people need to develop passions; they need to be enrolled in sports, activities, whatever. If a young person is busy doing something they love, I think they are much less likely to end up in street gangs or something else linked to violence.”
The chef also insists on the importance of thinking about your future when you are young. While it's easy for teens to be influenced and lightheaded, he feels they need to believe in themselves and what they love to do. “If you're determined and want to work, you're sure to succeed in the long run. It's much better than doing stupid things, and that's for sure,” assures Le Cordon-Bleu, addressing his message to young people.
Full tour
More than 15 years after leaving high school, news reached the boss's ears. Recently, he was contacted by his school, Émile-Legault, located in Saint-Laurent, who invited him to go talk to young people about his career.
Unsurprisingly, this invitation greatly touched the cook. “It really did something for me,” he whispers. It's not a school with a very good reputation, and when I was asked to come and talk, I felt like I was in the place of the young people at the school, for whom there weren't really any resources.”
“To be taken as an example to prove to the young people of Saint-Laurent that it is possible to succeed, even if you come from the neighborhood, it moved me,” he adds, with stars in his eyes.
“All I knew when I was young was that I liked to eat,” he laughs. He goes on to tell us that cooking is what saved him professionally, but also in life. “Of course, it opened a lot of doors for me, but it also kept me a bit away from the hustle and bustle. I had a passion, a goal, and when you have these two ingredients when you are young, that guides you a lot,” he concludes.