Private Chef Becky Grace Bay, Turks & Caicos Islands

Cooking is my passion and feeding people my joy!

My, mostly Indian, neighbours introduced me to the world of curry spices, and I gained knowledge and shared recipes with everyone I met. I traveled extensively through Europe and parts of Asia, taking the tastes (and ingredients) back to my little African kitchen where I experimented with many international cuisines. Living the past 30 years in Turks and Caicos, I’ve hosted hundreds of dinner parties, catered events, worked as a private yacht chef, managed a café, and attended professional chef courses at the Culinary Institute of America. As a private chef, I have now found my niche.

I am so lucky to have been raised on wild meat, fish and fowl, plus vegetables grown by my family and put down in various forms. Certainly that is where the seed for my interest in food was planted, aided by the fact that my mother taught me to cook and bake as a child. I moved to a tiny village in East Africa at the age of 20, armed with the Better Homes and Gardens Cookbook, who's red and white checkered cover still adorns my bookshelf, though the pages are now loose somewhat out of order. I read every page, and during my five years there taught myself to cook with every ingredient I could find.

African, American, Caribbean