Debbie Solomon is a Champagne woman. She offers to pop a bottle of bubbly as soon as I arrive at the West Hollywood apartment she shares with her husband. But that seems like a little more than I can do on a weekday afternoon, so instead we end up sitting at her dining room table, sharing a couple glasses of red. It’s the day before Christmas, Los Angeles feels nearly empty, and the streets outside are quiet and bright. Inside, it's festive and cozy, with a lighted tree in the living room and a glittery red centerpiece on the table. Solomon has been home for a few days; she takes off for London the following week. This is the first time she’s had the holidays off in four years.

Solomon is Rihanna’s personal chef—yes, that Rihanna: RiRi, island queen, Puma designer, and multiplatinum-selling artist whose most recent album, Anti, had her hailed as one of three black women who radicalized pop in 2016. Solomon serves breakfast, lunch, dinner, and plenty of late-night snacks to the music icon.

She stumbled into the job almost by accident when she was working as a chef de partie at the Sunset Marquis Hotel and doing a little bit of private cooking on the side. One day she got a phone call from an unknown number; the person on the other end of the line had seen a blog post that a former client had written about Solomon’s cooking and liked her style. Could she drop off some food at Sony Studios?

Photo by Tasya van Ree and Nitsa Citrine

Solomon made curried chicken with rice, peas, and plantains. The unknown number called again the next day and asked for a lamb shank. After that, it was pasta carbonara. (“Carbonara,” Solomon repeats, worshipfully, and we get off track for a few minutes talking about how much we love pasta.) She only found out who she’d been cooking for once she got the job.

Like just about everyone in America, Solomon was already a Rihanna fan. “I bought [Rihanna’s first album] because she was a Caribbean girl, and I'm a Caribbean girl,” Solomon says. “I was proud to see a black girl really doing her thing. I liked that she doesn't give a shit. I liked that she can be herself and have others be comfortable enough to be themselves.”

Solomon is a stylish, stunning woman herself; I spend half of our interview trying to figure out how someone this young could be this successful before she mentions her actual age—and it turns out I was under by about a decade. She could be her own lifestyle brand if she wanted to be. But that’s not what Solomon’s about.

No, she’s a chef—and her life is, even by a chef’s standards, particularly insane. Her first weeks on the job were trial by fire: “First was Super Bowl at her house. Deep end. Then her twenty-fifth birthday party in Hawaii. Then tour. I didn't know what the fuck I was doing.” Rihanna had never had a personal chef before; there was no one Solomon could ask for advice.