Celebrating exceptional Women in West African & Caribbean Food Culture (part 1)

In honor of Women’s Month, this post celebrates phenomenal women who helped shape our West African and Caribbean food culture. Here are some legendary West African & Caribbean female chefs.

1. Mariya Russell

After participating in a career academy in high school, Mariya became fascinated with the idea of becoming a chef. This prompted her to study at the Cooking and Hospitality Institute of Chicago.

She worked as a server at Oriole and subsequently as a sous-chef and chef de cuisine. She then became a chef at Kumiko and Kikkō. While working on the Kumiko and Kikko project, she received a Michelin star before her 30th birthday, making her the first Black woman to receive the award.

2. Edna Lewis

Edna Lewis was an advocate for quality cooking and championing the use of fresh and in-season ingredients.

She famously co-authored The Taste of Country Cooking (1976). The Taste of Country Cooking became a number 3 best seller in the cookbook category on Amazon and ranked number 5 in US sales in 2017, nearly 40 years after its publication. Edna’s motivation and dedication to quality cooking with Southern foods, according to a 1989 interview with The New York Times, was mainly to recapture the good flavors of the past, which she enjoyed as a child. She believed that food didn’t taste as it used to.

3. Leah Chase

Leah Chase, otherwise known as the Queen of Creole Cuisine, was a multiple award-winning chef. She advocated for both Creole cooking and African American art. Her restaurant, Dooky Chase, served as an art gallery and a gathering place for political movements. The name came from her husband, a jazz trumpeter and bandleader, Edgar “Dooky” Chase II. Her initial knowledge of food started after the Great Depression when she and her siblings helped cultivate a 20-acre strawberry farmland owned by her father’s family. Chase began working in the kitchen at the restaurant during the 1950s, and over time, Leah and Dooky took over the stand and converted it into a sit-down establishment, Dooky Chase’s Restaurant. She eventually updated the menu to reflect her family’s Creole recipes and recipes such as Shrimp Clemenceau, available only in white-only establishments. In 2018, Food & Wine named the restaurant one of the 40 most important restaurants of the past 40 years.

4. Mashama Bailey

Mashama Bailey is a two-time recipient of the James Beard Award, trained in a French technique. She learned how to cook from her mother and grandmother. She began her culinary career interning at a seafood restaurant called Aquagrill in SoHo after graduating from Peter Kump’s New York Cooking School. Miss Mashama has served as chairwoman of the Edna Lewis Foundation since 2017, and their goal is to revive, preserve, and celebrate the rich history of African American cookery by cultivating a deeper understanding of Southern food and culture in America.

5. Hilda Baci

Hilda Baci is a Nigerian chef who sparked the interest of the Nigerian and eventually foreign online community by attempting to break the Guinness World Record for the longest cooking marathon in May 2023. She broke the record at 27 years by surpassing the previous record holder, Lata Tondon, who held it at 87 hours and 45 minutes in 2019. Miss Hilda broke the record at 93 hours, 11 minutes after extending the cooking marathon for 100 hours, as opposed to her original goal of 96 hours. Hilda eventually lost the title in November 2023 to Alan Fisher, an Irish chef.Fisher cooked for 119 hours and 57 minutes.

She got into culinary art because of her mother, who is also a chef. Originally a graduate of sociology, her success in the culinary world proves that a passion fuelled by a drive for excellence can turn you into a trailblazer in your field.

The list continues in our next post. We will be celebrating more exceptional women who have shaped the West African and Caribbean food culture and have excelled in the culinary field.

This is M here wishing you a wonderful women’s month celebration. Accelerate your actions for greatness.

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