The Secret Life of TK Dutes

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You just had to be there.

When podcast producer-turned-restaurateur Tiara Darnell closed her groundbreaking soul food restaurant, Blaxicocina, in Mexico City, she was forced to ask the same question TK was wrestling with: Who am I after the thing I thought would define me? Together, they reflect on leaving careers that no longer served them, building community from scratch, the rise and fall of Blaxicocina, and why sometimes choosing yourself means letting an old dream end so a new one can begin. 

This side quest explores reinvention, creative risk, and the freedom that comes from refusing to keep life on the hardest difficulty setting.

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๐ŸŽ™๏ธ The Secret Life of TK Dutes is hosted and executive produced by me, Keisha TK Dutes. 

๐Ÿ™๐Ÿพ Special thanks: Tiara Darnell, Mike Brown (Producer), C. (Engineer), Faybeoโ€™n Mickens (Marketing), Pat Mesiti-Miller (Theme Music), 


๐Ÿ‘‰๐Ÿพ Follow Tiara online: @Blaxicocina & https://blaxicocina.com/
๐Ÿ‘‰๐Ÿพ Follow Mike Brown on IG: @theartoflettingopodcast
๐Ÿ‘‰๐Ÿพ Follow TK on IG: @tastykeish | @philosfuturemedia
๐Ÿ‘‰๐Ÿพ Go behind the scenes on Patreon: patreon.com/c/SecretLifeofTK



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Creators and Guests

Host
Keisha "TK" Dutes
Host/ Executive Producer
Editor
C.
Multidisciplinary artist/ Post Production Support
Producer
Mike Brown
Producer, Episode 4

What is The Secret Life of TK Dutes?

The Secret Life of TK Dutes is the story of what it means to become when the system wonโ€™t let you be. One woman sets out into the world, looking for ways to get ahead as an Artist. Producer. Daughter, Sister. Partner.

Together with those who bear witness, TK throws away the scripts and looks for answers, in airports, dentists offices, across borders.

Each episode is a new world, pioneering the art of loose autobiography to build the picture of a life in a community of voices.

What happens when you stop doing what is expected of you and start doing YOU?

A better life can be a hustle. It doesnโ€™t have to be a secret.

Tiara:

This is the hardest part for me is to introduce myself because I feel like I don't know who I am still. Like, and even even just saying that I can feel, like, the tears, like, you know, because this has been such an emotional journey from I think a lot of it has to do with the unlearning of, like, capitalism and just just so many things. But I'm a try to articulate who I am in this moment, and we'll see. Maybe by the end of the podcast, I'll have a better introduction because I'll be somebody else in that moment.

TK:

We all have our journeys that shape us to be who we are today. Some of y'all might know mine is leading me down a path of travel and self discovery. But leading to that, I was depressed. I was depressed. I couldn't take any more career rejection and disappointment.

TK:

The people whose job it was to care about me, they didn't really understand me. My cat fucking died and I just couldn't hold up the fort for everyone else anymore. So I left. I left New York. I left home.

TK:

This secret life side quest is the beginning of my outside era. Here and in the next few episodes, I adopt Mexico City aka CDMX as my part time home. I wandered the streets, talked to people with my best bodega Spanish, and took it all in. People watching, going to parks and museums, trying to figure out if I should leave it all behind and start over. That's when my friend, Tiara Darnell, food writer and pioneering soul food restaurant tour gave me a project to work on for her then new restaurant, Blaxicocina.

TK:

And that project was one of many things that inspired me to keep coming back to Mexico City and work towards finding the presence and peace that I so longed for at this point. And I'm glad I could do that project for my homegirl because Tiara's journey is special to me. Because just when I saw myself in her pivot from podcasting to entrepreneurship, she made another pivot.

Tiara:

I am a former podcast producer, editor who used to work at Spotify. I'm a former restaurants entrepreneur. I've I've lived a lot of different lives, and now I am somebody who see, that's what I'm saying. I don't even know how to answer this question. I'm just, like, I'm just out here right now trying to figure out my next pivot since closing my restaurant.

Tiara:

I think the entrepreneur part is still there, but the restaurateur part, I just don't really see myself going in that direction again anytime soon.

TK:

We we have these kind of mirroring stories, but in our own experience. Right? Like this podcast thing, this industry that's so extractive, media. Right? Media is so extractive.

TK:

We experienced it from a couple of different points of views. And ultimately, I think we both came up with, like, similar you know, these people playing in our face. So before we even get to where where we at today, what was the thing what was happening to you in podcasting that like caused you to say, nah, dog. You're not I'm not gonna let you play in my face no more.

Tiara:

I would say that it actually started before podcasting. So I'm originally from Prince George's County, Maryland, and I did the Peace Corps Morocco for two years. And leaving Morocco, I was on a path where I thought I was gonna study geography, and I got interested in wine, which led me to Oregon. While I was in Oregon, I did do the wine thing, but I ultimately walked away from that. And I ended up working at the front desk at Oregon Public Broadcasting as a receptionist.

Tiara:

And I was a receptionist, but I always had dreams of being on the 2nd Floor with the journalist. I wanted to be up there telling stories. I wanted to be in that sort of environment, but the receptionist job was the one that opened up for me, and that was how I got my foot in the door. Enter Spotify and the SoundUp boot camp, which is how we met. And, like, that was, you know, all well and good.

Tiara:

I still maintain. I didn't do a good pitch, but my product was a 100%. Should've got some money for that. But after the Spotify thing happened, yes, I did get hired by them. And it was kind of a similar situation where I got there, and I felt like, oh, man.

Tiara:

This is my dream job, dream company, because Spotify is very swaggy from the outside. Until you get in there, then you realize, oh, this is just another tech company, and you're still dealing with the same complications as a black woman who's new to the field. So I got hired at Spotify in August 2020. So I was already working remotely. I was working freelance, so I was able to just be wherever.

Tiara:

But I got hired by Spotify. The first Christmas of the pandemic comes up. I go back to Portland to visit a friend. He's telling me, like, you should go to Mexico. Like, why are you even here?

Tiara:

You're already working remotely. Just go. And I just decided, like, f it. And so I think the pin that I was putting in is, like, all of these, all of the disillusionment that I had from OPB to the University of Oregon to getting to Spotify to work there, and then really feeling like I was given like, breadcrumbs to work on. Like, I wasn't really I remember when they when I got let go, you know, they were like, oh, is there anything you want to say?

Tiara:

And I'm just like, the thing that I really wanted to say in my heart was like, I'm really sorry that you guys didn't get the best of me, because I would have killed at this if I had gotten the opportunity to do things I wanna do.

TK:

We went over this already, but you can never hear it enough. Being a black woman at work, especially in corporate or media or nonprofits, anywhere. It's like death by a thousand cuts. It's never just one workplace. It's a culmination of how people generally treat black women in every workplace.

TK:

According to a 2025 Wells Fargo report, black women earn 70% as much as white men, see the lowest number of promotions, and even before being pushed out by anti DEI efforts by the Trump administration, people have always played in the faces of black women at work. So what do we do? We leave. We leave even when the leaving is hard. We leave before they drive us crazy.

TK:

We leave to take a chance on ourselves because it's all we can do. And it seems to be working because according to the same Wells Fargo data from before, black women owned businesses grew by 13% with revenue up almost by six percent. Come through, sis. And you can include my business, Filo's Future Media, in that number. Sometimes though, it's more than about changing jobs.

TK:

It's about trying something totally new and following your heart in the biggest ways. Yo. So after leaving Spotify, what did you do? Like, what led you to opening the restaurant?

Tiara:

I think I just I kept freelancing for as long as I could and then kind of, like, the work just started to dry up. And I think a lot of that had to do with the fact that, like, the tech layoffs were really, like, happening much more frequently. And so you have a lot of talented people who are, like, you know, in the pool now taking up, you know, whatever they can get. And and then employers who are like, oh, I can get this real seasoned person for this little amount. So let me go, you know, over here, whatever.

Tiara:

So it was a lot of all that things all of those things happening. But I think also too, once I had signed the lease on the restaurant phase, you know, it doesn't take much anybody who's done anything who's done a restaurant or something similar to it, like, it just takes over your entire life. You just literally don't even have time to do anything else. And especially in those early stages when you're trying to get things going, like, you gotta think about chairs and napkins and, you know, and fonts on the menu and, like, I don't know, just all the different things. And so I really just didn't have the capacity for it anymore.

Tiara:

On top of that, like, I just yeah. I just wasn't finding the work as easily or wasn't coming as easily and, you know, begging people to hire you when you can be doing your own thing over there.

TK:

Okay. So I wanna take you back in time and like let's talk about Blaxicocina. Let's talk about that time period. I'm very grateful to have been part of it. If you you know, that's how I feel.

TK:

I don't know if you agree, but I felt like I was part of the moment. Right?

Tiara:

You were. You were. And that was a special time. Like, yes. Oh, that's a whole other topic right there.

Tiara:

But, yeah, the Mexico City today is not the same as it was when I came before, and it's only now that Blaxicocina is gone that people are really giving me my flowers and like, yo, that was a really special place and nothing like it has existed since then, and it's actually really missed.

TK:

When you had Blaxicocina, first of all, was it you were the first black woman soul food restaurant in Mexico City?

Tiara:

Yeah. There was no there was no physical representation of, like, the black American from The US because The Americas are more than just The United States Of America. There were no there was no physical representation of our culture, but you could find aspects of our culture because obviously, like, you know, soul music, hip hop, all those things have traveled, you know, things that are that have been used against black Americans, like, you know, our love for, you know, fried chicken and, like, that kind of stuff. Like, you can find like, actually, Mexico City went through a whole moment with fried chicken during the pandemic. It was actually actually a food trend during the pandemic here.

Tiara:

And so there was just like, you know, there were there were elements. There were different elements of, like, black American from The US culture that were here, but, like I said, no physical representation. And the first thing that I did was, I started this event called Soul Food Sundays, which is a pop up out of my apartment. And that I did maybe for, like, three or four times out of my apartment. Then I started doing pop ups out of restaurants, you know, when they would be closed, like, a Monday or Tuesday or something like that.

Tiara:

And then that turned into me jumping and taking the risk to rent a physical space and open up to something because I could see that the black American community was growing here. And, you know, like any immigrant community, we want a slice of home. We want things that remind us of, like, where we came from. But also too, for me personally, I have always loved cultural exchange, and I wanted to be able to share this authentic representation of the black American experience through food with Mexicans. And Mexico City was a place where I could see that happening and see it growing, and I wanted to be able to plant my, you know, seed and and grow it and share it.

Tiara:

And, you know, that's what we did for two years and it was the first black American soul food restaurant that this city had seen, the biggest city in North America.

TK:

And, like, how did it feel like to be building because to me it was it was a community hub. To be building the space for community for black people that miss their food and for Mexican people to try it. And like did you know in the moment, did you know you were building a cultural hub, a place of of community and of like integrated like vibes?

Tiara:

I knew that I was building that. I also knew that I couldn't execute that by myself because, again, you know, I'm a foreigner, a newcomer. You know, I knew I was I was building something, but I needed somebody like Hill, like I said, who was my boyfriend at the time. He's a Mexican national. He was really the person who was able to help me translate what I was doing, in the literal sense, but also sort of, like, in the more abstract sense to be able to reach Mexican I do speak Spanish for the record, and I spoke Spanish when I when I came here.

Tiara:

It's gotten much better since then, but I spoke Spanish enough to be able to do this. But I still needed somebody who knew the culture to be able to help me do this. And especially to like, I know my side, and I know my people. You know your side. You know your people.

Tiara:

Like, let's, you know, figure out how do we how do we do this together. And so when I first started out, my audience and, like, the people who came to restaurant were mostly other black folks from The US. By the end of the restaurant closing, I would say that it was probably, like, a good seventy, thirty Mexican to black Americans. And I think a lot of that has to do with the fact of, you know, like, really pushing to make Mexican folks feel welcome and to understand what it is that, you know, I was trying to do, what the food was, and explaining it to them, you know, like, the conversations that I had with people. You know, if I just take cornbread, for example, this is a civilization built on corn.

Tiara:

Like Mexico and corn are they love corn down, but they also do not make grits here. Like, that's not a dish that they eat. They also they have cornbread, but it's more of a dessert. It's a sweet thing. It's not salty and savory like how we do it.

Tiara:

You know? So things like that were really opportunities to be like, well, this is what we do with corn, you know, and, you know, this is this is corn that, you know, y'all are growing here, but we just, you know, prepare it differently in in our culture. The only reason that I closed was because, like, the landlord wasn't doing what he was supposed to, and the place was falling apart, and I didn't have the money to invest in it to keep it going. And then once I realized, you know, that my blood pressure was sky high from the stress of it, and I was at that age where I could have a stroke or a heart attack. I'm not giving my life for chicken and waffles.

Tiara:

It's not happening. So it was time to close. And, you know, I was really proud of what I did. It was really hard because I felt like a huge loss of my identity, was gone when I closed the restaurant, and I'm still still kind of recovering from that. Hence, my sort of sloppy introduction when we started this conversation.

Tiara:

But, I'm still I am proud of what I did, and it took a while for me to to really process it and to to realize it. And I think that this is only this is probably marks the beginning of me being able to even talk about what I did from a place of, like, wisdom and understanding versus just raw emotion because it was so traumatic coming out of it, and I hadn't processed everything. But it really was a wonderful place, and it's kinda one of those, like, if you know, you know. If you were there, you were there, and you know how special Blaxicocina was. And a place like that could not the way it started, the the the trap brunch where people was outside smoking on the corner and, like, all that kind that could not happen in Roma or Condesa.

Tiara:

It couldn't happen back then. It certainly couldn't happen now anywhere, I think, in the city because the way that foreigners have just inundated this place, like the rules and the the flexibility, you know, the grace that I was given, it just doesn't it it's not there anymore. It's not there anymore.

TK:

The time period in Mexico City that she's talking about, that was a special time. It's still kinda happening to a certain extent. In 2020 though, COVID caused such a stand still in our daily lives that for the first time, we all had to figure out what to do next. A wave of black people, myself and Tiara included, we all went to Mexico City for respite for respite from the exhausting conditions of The United States. And it was so many of us there.

TK:

I would literally walk down the street and bump into someone I knew from The States. They would invite me out and I would meet in fellowship with a whole new group of folks. All of us in a transformative time period, shedding who we were and embracing who we might become. And we were all looking for the same thing, relief. Part of seeking that relief for me was art.

TK:

When Tiara mentioned the huge loss of identity after she closed the restaurant, I wondered for myself, was I gonna leave podcasting behind forever And could I be brave enough to claim the new role of artist? Tiara saw that. She saw something. She saw what I hadn't claimed yet. And on my next visit, she asked me to create something for her then new restaurant, Blaxicocina.

TK:

I had no idea what to do, what to try, how to go about it, but I did know I had to say yes. Yo, I arted this shit. This is my first large size piece about four feet, about two feet, and it's going in this restaurant. My friend's restaurant is Blaxicocina, inspired by Mexican, I guess, architecture, the walls out here, the street signs, the foliage, and I love gold. And these are cowrie shells, which in African cultures, you know, it means good fortune.

TK:

So I can't I and I wanted to share with you, like, on, you know, how you've you've built the space, how it it impacted me and kinda on my it was my time. Right? Like, I came to Mexico City, and I was looking for some sort of relief relief and release. And, I mean, was leaking all I call it I say I was leaking. Like, all of my feelings, my anxieties, my fears, my disappointments, my everything was leaking out.

TK:

Right? Like you could see it on the Internet. You can hear it in my voice. I was just pissed. I was angry.

TK:

I was tired. I was sad. I was sick. And then you and you said, you know, I'm opening this restaurant. I'm watching you open the restaurant and then you go, oh, you wanna make some art, TK?

TK:

And I'm like, wait, what? And you invited me to just create something. And I was just like, okay, well, in my heart I was like, I'm coming out and maybe that's how I will make it a retreat for myself. Like, this is my project and I'll just like, you know, let's see what happens. Like, I had no idea what it was gonna be or what I was gonna do.

Tiara:

You really put a whole retreat together for yourself. Yeah.

TK:

It was. But I'm just so thankful that you, like, invited me to try something because I'll tell you to this day still, it's my only large piece and it's my first large piece. I never made anything bigger than that. I never made anything to that scale. It was two feet by four feet from what I remember.

TK:

And I just like got a piece of wood and I just started working on it. And and what I for me to for me to you, it was what I envisioned for not just your restaurant, but for your journey. Right? Like I just wanted my friend to have like continued wealth. I wanted my friend to have like a place to hang her shingles, you know, like like whatever that word is, like that term is.

TK:

But like that's that and then like in this space that I was so inspired by. So I just wanted to thank you for that and I remember bringing it to you. Do you remember do you remember that day that I brought it to you?

Tiara:

I'm always so mad at doing the social media

TK:

stuff with art. That's beautiful. You like it? I love it. I love it.

TK:

Oh my gosh.

Tiara:

Like vaguely, but like so much life has happened since then. Still have it. It's big. I feel like it's bigger than what you just said,

Tiara:

but yeah.

TK:

You welcomed a lot of artists to bring their things to your space. Was that always part of the plan?

Tiara:

Yeah. I mean, I think it was it's just, you know, like, yeah, I I had this vision of this thing that I wanted to build. I didn't really know what it was gonna look like, and it's not like I had any prior restaurant experience, but I always wanted to be a home for community. And so you can say that, but, like, what does that look like in practice? It looks like inviting people to make art to be a part of the space.

Tiara:

It looks like inviting, you know, DJs and different people who wanna share, whether they're poets or, you know, a wayward saxophonist who just, like, happen to show up with a saxophone one night, you know, and do a thing. You know? So it really was just kind of and then maybe it's a reflection of myself too because I'm not, you know, a highly manicured, like, you know, flashy. You know, everything is really I just I show up how I am, and this is how I feel comfortable. And so I feel like the space was a reflection of that too.

Tiara:

And it I think that's actually been one of the hardest things is, like, I don't know where I'm going yet or what I'm gonna do with, like, all of these things that I have that are so personal from the restaurant in my time here. But you know, this art like it really means something to me and it's gonna mean something again. The question is where and when, I don't know.

TK:

If the only guarantee we have in this life is change, how do we welcome it? Going you know, just mentally going back from, you know, your pivot from podcasting to entrepreneur, restaurateur to now. But from podcasting to restauranteur, did that first pivot of leaving podcasting, trying something new, did that help you move on from this from the restaurant faster? Like, did you have, like, something in your body that already knew, like I'm familiar with how what moving on feels like.

Tiara:

I mean, I'm sure the answer is probably yes. Maybe in that time, I didn't see it that way, but I think like I said, Spotify and getting to work there was sort of, like, a dream for me. Like, it felt like I had arrived at something that I really wanted. And then when it didn't end how I thought it was going to end, and especially because it didn't end on my terms, that was really difficult. And the restaurant I mean, I had hoped to be able to be moving and grooving with the restaurant open for the World Cup.

Tiara:

And, you know, we're a year and a half, out from the closure of the restaurant, so I didn't get to make it to that milestone that I had in my mind. And so maybe if there's any connection between those two things, it's just sort of, like, the realization that, like, sometimes you don't get like, things just don't get to end how you want them to. It doesn't mean that it wasn't successful or that you didn't achieve something. This is just not the, like yeah. Just like the the path versus the vision were just two different things.

Tiara:

You know? And so I think those are the connections that I draw between those two experiences. And now looking back, yeah, I can see how one thing prepared me for the other.

TK:

What's the lesson? What's what's the lesson for you for you and others? Like, on on some, okay, well, here's what moving forward looks like. Here's what letting go and shedding looks like. What's the lesson here?

Tiara:

Well, I feel like one of the lessons that I realized after I left and went to Brazil and was suddenly, like, in a country where my Spanish, like, didn't really matter at all. And I had to, like, learn the language again, you know, to be able to be understood and to get around, I had this sort of realization that, like, t, you we love like, I'm saying this a little like, I love that I'm ambitious. I love that I take big risk. But, also, I realized too that sometimes choosing to do things on the highest level of difficulty is also its own trauma response. And, like, I don't have to do that every single time.

Tiara:

So I started out, like, I want this restaurant. I I signed a lease on this big space. I had, like, you know, all this stuff on the menu. And by the end, like, the menu might have been, like, maybe down to, like, I don't even know, like, six entrees and then a few, like, you know, appetizer and sides, but it wasn't like that when we started out. And now if I could do it all over again, I would really focus on, like, a smaller space, something food truck size maybe or smaller, and where we only do one thing.

Tiara:

Maybe we only did the chicken and waffles, that's all you know, you execute it very, very well versus, like, trying to do all these different things where I didn't even have the recipe for a commercial kitchen down, and then we were, like, adjusting things on the fly. You know? Like, that just didn't really work. And it wasn't consistent when I first started out, but it was by the end. So I think that my lesson one of the most immediate lessons that I realized was, yeah, I don't have to do everything on the highest level of difficulty.

Tiara:

I'm in a good place right now. Like, there's a lot of people who, you know, Cali, Colombia might not appeal to them because it might seem very small. It might seem very slow. But after being in this big city and watching how Mexico City has just blown up, I'm really happy to be in a place that's smaller and quieter because that's actually what I need for me to be able to get ready for whatever is coming next. The story of Blaxicocina has really yet to really be told.

Tiara:

I'm getting to a place where I feel like I I'm ready to do that because I've just been, like, healing and keeping up with what's going on over here was not a part of my healing journey. And I needed to just, like, remove myself from it. And now when I'm here, I feel my old life, it doesn't fit like a glove anymore. There's still things that I belong to, but there's lot of stuff that I don't belong to here anymore and I'm okay with that.

TK:

Most people think growth means becoming someone new. I still get caught up in that. Now I think it might just be noticing when you've already changed and outgrown titles like podcaster, chef, entrepreneur, artist. You look around one day and realize the places that once felt like home don't fit the same, and life experiences have expiration dates. And instead of squeezing yourself back into those lives, into those spaces, you thank them.

TK:

You thank them for getting you this far. Then you keep going. You give yourself grace. You treat yourself gently and ease into the next version of yourself with everything you learned before. Not because you're fearless, but because your next life is waiting for you.

TK:

And maybe that's what it means to choose yourself again and again. Thank you to my friend Tiara Darnell for the realest of real talk. You can find more of it in the form of our full conversation at patreon.com/secretlifeoftk. You can follow her food writing and learn more about Blaxicocina on IG at Blaxicocina, b l a x I c o c I n a. I would love to hear from you.

TK:

So you can call me or text me on The Secret Lifeline at (929) 551-4363. Leave me a message. Let me know how you feel, where you're at in your healing journey, in your rediscovery journey. I wanna know. That and a five star rating and review helps because your experiences make people feel less alone.

TK:

The Secret Life of TK Dutes is hosted and executive produced by me, Keisha TK Dutes. This side quest was produced and sound designed by Mike Brown with production support by C A. K. A. G.

TK:

Trap House. Next up, we meet up with more black creatives in Mexico City making it happen. Let's go.