How Chef Shaw-naé Dixon Went From Hip-Hop Caterer to Opening Up One of New York City’s Most Exciting New Restaurants

On a balmy September evening in Staten Island, Chef Shaw-naé Dixon is getting ready for her house to be packed. In just a few hours, her quaint and homey soul food staple, Shaw-naé’s House, will be bustling with guests.

Tonight, Al Roker and his Weather Hunter team will be in attendance, anticipating a bevy of soulful classics, including oxtail, ribs, fries, mac and cheese and jerk chicken. I am also supposed to stop by, not only to witness Shaw-naé in her element — The New York Times celebrated her personable cooking approach, noting how she often spends her evenings out chatting and bonding with each guest — but to also treat my wife to some of her hearty cuisine. Unfortunately, my wife is sick, so I text Shaw-naé to tell her I’ll be missing her service to be of service to my lady instead.

“Have her boil pineapple skins with soursop leaves and ginger and sip throughout the day,” she texts back. “Mullein extract can also be ordered on Amazon. This knocks that s—t out like LL COOL J. TALK SOON. I LOVE YOU.”

Thankfully, I had already been able to visit Shaw-naé’s House on my own a few days before, where she greeted me with a warm, intentional hug and a quick kiss on the cheek.

“I think a bird just took a s—t on me,” Shaw-naé told me before our embrace. I noted that usually implies good luck. “I don’t need any more luck,” she quipped with a full belly laugh.

Listening to Shaw-naé’s life story, that sentiment could very well be true. Both of these interactions are indicative of her approach to cuisine and hospitality as a whole. She’s a caretaker first, cook second. For Shaw-naé, food is a means of community, a way of expressing love, dating all the way back to her grandparents. As a Staten Island native, Shaw-naé’s father and mother were both born on the island, with her grandparents living out in South Jersey, “sort of doin’ the Jeffersons ‘Movin’ on Up’ thing,” as Shaw-naé tells it. Her grandmother went to Pratt and became a nutritionist, so good food and intentional cooking became a priority in Shaw-naé’s family early on. She has no formal training, but her family taught her everything there is to know about food.

“She used to call her house the, ‘Do Drop In,’” Shaw-naé says. “She always felt like she had to have something prepared for people to eat. She always cooked massive amounts, like for a marching band. When my husband and I met, he asked me, ‘Why do you cook so much food?’ I said, ‘I can’t help it. My grandmother taught me when someone walks in, you have to have food prepared.’”

Shaw-naé’s rich family history has become an instrumental part of her approach to food. While sitting in the “living room” of her petite restaurant, which is stuffed with Wu-Tang memorabilia and other eclectic knick-knacks, she tells me that her ancestors were the first Black settlers to ever reside on the island. Her first ancestor, Captain John Jackson, came over in 1799 and became the first Black purchaser of land on Staten Island. An oysterman and farmer, Jackson “created the farms and created the businesses behind oystering.”

“He also brought Harriet Tubman in multiple times with groups of slaves and freed them here in the community,” Shaw-naé says. “So I have this whole historical legacy attachment to my lineage. I was supposed to be an entrepreneur. I was supposed to be somebody in the community that was doing all this stuff, not just with food, but with empowering my people.”

This historic settlement founded by Jackson in 1828 would be called Sandy Ground and go down in history as the oldest continuously inhabited free Black settlement in the United States. As a successful oyster-gathering and farming village, farmers harvested blueberries, sweet potatoes, asparagus and, most importantly, strawberries.

“Strawberries were the biggest, and that’s because when our counterparts came here and poisoned the water so we could no longer oyster,” Shaw-naé says, “they found out our businesses were staying up because of the farms. So they came and burnt the farm down. But when they burnt the farm down, they burnt the land, and the strawberries grew out of the sand. So they named the community Sandy Ground because when the ground became sandy, the strawberries flourished.”

As we move to the kitchen, Shaw-naé reaffirms to me that this powerful history is the backbone of her business and her success. It’s why she’s able to stand over her stove, sauté some collard greens, and lather up her ribs in some of the best BBQ sauce the city has to offer. I’d go into further detail about what I saw, but scribed in chalk on a pillar right outside the kitchen reads, “NDA required beyond this point. Deadass.”

While Shaw-naé has worn many hats over the years — social worker, teacher — she got her official culinary start catering in the entertainment industry, more specifically in radio and hip-hop circles. After quitting her job in 2014, she began selling food directly out of her home, spreading the word via handmade flyers. Very soon after, she found herself chasing down 50 Cent’s car outside the Javits Center to give him a few of said flyers. She recalled banging on his car window, crying out to him that she had previously worked with Power star Michael Rainey, who is from Staten Island.

“I’m like, ‘Open the window!’ 50 Cent looks at his driver and is like, ‘Yeah, open the window!’” Shaw-naé recalls. After handing the rap mogul a few flyers, she asked to cater for the set of Power. He allegedly agreed but never called. (50 Cent could not be reached for comment for this story.)

“I figured it was because I was bein’ crazy,” Shaw-naé says with a laugh. She refined her approach but kept her hustler spirit going, and eventually, after “harassing the receptionist for two weeks on the phone,” landed a gig catering The Breakfast Club and iHeart Radio. She didn’t receive any payment for the work at first, because she said all she wanted to do was feed the team and showcase her food.

“I didn’t work for them; I got the opportunity to feed them,” she says. She says she eventually persuaded Charlamagne to actually hire her to cater a special Valentine’s Day meal at his home in February of 2016, and more work transpired from there.

Shaw-naé and I exit the kitchen, and she hands me a plate overflowing with food. While I’m trying to be respectful, every instinct in me wants to gorge on this unbelievable meal. Shaw-naé explains how then-mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani is dying to speak with her, how the Venmo CEO invited her to some fancy app meeting, all while Al Roker is buzzing on her phone to give an update on Friday’s upcoming dinner service.

Shaw-naé’s catering business continued to pick up considerable steam until March of 2020, where she said she cooked meals for everyone from Cardi B to DJ Clue. The way Shaw-naé tells it, heading into the pandemic became a shifting point for her. She said she began experiencing spiritual visions, noting one in particular of faceless people ascending up an escalator as a numbered chart in the corner spiraled up into the millions. Then things came to a head in March of 2020 when Shaw-naé and her husband flew to Las Vegas for a business trip. When they arrived, reports of COVID-19 had begun to spread across the media landscape. It was only a few days before Shaw-naé said it was time to go.

“I told [my husband], I think I saw this already,” Shaw-naé says. “I go to Whole Foods and I buy $400 worth of vitamins and extracts. I give my husband all these vitamins. I bought two scarves, I bought sanitary napkins, and I made masks. We get on the airplane and I tell my husband, ‘Don’t take that off! Leave it on!’ My husband was like, ‘She’s nuts, but I’m listening.’”

When they arrived home, Shaw-naé says she told her husband to stop bringing the kids to school. Her husband, Jason, disregarded this, but a day later, school was canceled. As COVID-19 began to spread, Shaw-naé says she felt a spiritual call to take up meditation. She began meditating every day and started studying healthier eating habits and holistic food. As March turned into April and May, Shaw-naé started to rapidly lose weight.

“I felt my body start to breathe without me,” she says. “Like from my feet to my head, it felt like my skin was breathing. I felt something was not right.”

She booked a telemedicine appointment, but the doctor allegedly disregarded Shaw-naé’s concerns and told her she was glowing and looked healthier than ever. Shaw-naé pushed for an in-person appointment, and the doctor obliged. When she went in person, she was allegedly given the all-clear, except the doctor reportedly told her she was “severely anemic,” and they recommended a uterine ablation: an extremely common, low-risk procedure meant to aid in reducing iron loss during menstrual cycles, according to Johns Hopkins Medicine. Shaw-naé agreed and they booked the procedure for September.

“I don’t remember going into the doctor for that procedure,” Shaw-naé says. “My husband said [afterward] he literally hoisted me over his shoulder to carry me home.”

Shaw-naé said she was couch-bound and slept heavily for two days. On September 11, 2020, her family said Shaw-naé was lucid and cognizant and “sat on the couch, ate chips,” but Shaw-naé says she doesn’t remember any of that day either. The following day, Jason started a bath for Shaw-naé because he said she was “moaning and somehow in pain.” He ran the bath and left to go to the gym. Shaw-naé got into the bath fully clothed and left the water running. Her 13-year-old son found her submerged in the tub unresponsive. When EMS arrived, they pronounced her dead on the scene, but brought her to the hospital and ended up resuscitating her. They then put her in a medically induced coma. She awoke to her family crying and hugging her four days later.

“The doctors told my husband, ‘She’s fighting so hard to die,’” Shaw-naé tells me as I pull apart her BBQ ribs with my teeth. “They said, ‘We don’t know what the outcome is gonna be, but most likely she’s not gonna be able to talk, walk, or get herself dressed.’”

None of that ended up being true, and Shaw-naé made a full recovery. The chef says the doctors diagnosed the situation as a Disseminated Intravascular Coagulation, a rare, but serious blood clotting episode. Regardless, Shaw-naé says she experienced a spiritual calling while she was in the coma, noting that God told her to feed and provide for as many people as she could.

“For me, to emerge post-Pandemic and open up this soul food restaurant, it was like, ‘Why is she opening up this soul food restaurant? Who the hell is she?” Shaw-naé recalled. “When I pulled up in front of this building on Van Duzer street. I didn’t know what was in here, I didn’t know what it was. All I heard was a voice say: “That’s your building.”

Shaw-naé’s House opened in June of 2021, and it’s been a whirlwind ever since. The New York Times gave her a rave two and a half out of five stars. She’s been offered book and film deals for her incredibly unique story, and she’s is currently in talks to host her own cooking shows. Not to mention her House continues to be a hot spot for local and national celebrities. Shockingly, despite Wu-Tang inspired memorabilia decorating her space, the legendary rap group has yet to enter her home. Shaw-naé notes that it’ll happen when it’s meant to, and in the meantime, she’s devoted to her diners, her community, and her spiritual mission to help people through her unbelievable food.

“I believe that every single person coming into this restaurant is coming here intentionally,” Shaw-naé says as I finish my plate. “It’s not just the food, they’re coming here for a specific type of experience. Everybody’s not the same, but everyone here is treated the same. I believe that heals people.”

She then looks at my plate, and looks up at me and smiles. “Let’s get you some leftovers for your wife.”