Edward Wooley.
Chef Smelly is an East Oakland son. Eight years of pop-ups across the city turned his mother's Louisiana Creole recipes into one of the Bay Area's most-followed kitchens — and brought him home to a permanent address on Broadway.
The chef.
Edward Wooley grew up in East Oakland in a family of cooks. The "Smelly" nickname doesn't come from the food — it comes from his younger years on the streets, a chapter he's never tried to hide. After two stretches inside, with another daughter on the way, he enrolled at Le Cordon Bleu in San Francisco and graduated in 2013.
His first kitchen job out of school was with chef Tanya Holland at B-Side BBQ. That's where the discipline got dialed in. The flavor was already there.
The recipes.
The menu starts in Louisiana, in his mother's kitchen. She gave him the recipes — gumbo, étouffée, the seasoning blends — and she still comes through the kitchen to make the salad dressings and help with prep.
The Bay Area gave him the rest: garlic noodles, Dungeness crab, deep-fried fish over crack & cheese. East Bay flavor on a Louisiana base. That's the whole formula.
The place.
2430 Broadway, in Uptown Oakland. Chef Smelly's runs out of Au Lounge — the bar handles the cocktails, the kitchen handles the food. Open Wednesday through Sunday, 1:00 to 9:00 PM. Closed Monday and Tuesday so the kitchen can rest.
Walk-ins welcome. Reservations recommended on Friday and Saturday nights, when the room turns over twice.
The following.
Eight years as a pop-up sensation before the doors stayed open every week. Crowds at Complex in 2015. Word-of-mouth that pulled in E-40, Stephen Curry, and a long list of regulars who'd rather not be named. Customers fly the food back to other cities.
Catering takes the same flavor out into corporate lunches, weddings, private dinners, and pop-ups across the Bay — same kitchen, same sauce.
If you put your mind to it, you can do anything.— Chef Smelly