I Love Caribbean Food. Food in General, but Specifically.
Desiree’s Kitchen – I find creativity and variety in life to be big necessities for my happiness. Do everything once, I say. Be a Jack of All Trades. A Short Resume: I’ve performed as a cellist and pianist, cared for rescued wild animals, worked with metal, masonry and carpentry. I’ve designed websites, made art, including sculptures, costuming, plush toys, jewelry… all sorts of nonsense. All of these “scratched the itch”, but not like the art of cooking.
HISTORY LESSON: Cooking Through College
2004 – During my first shot at College, I, 17 and an overachiever in high school, was studying Psychology and Music Performance at Florida State University with almost a full scholarship. I had a work-study job doing Sound Engineering for the Opera Hall. And for some actual cash, I worked the line at Gumby’s Pizza shop in downtown Tallahassee.
What I hated: College. The dorms, the cheering, the cliques, the entitled and opinionated professors. Michael Moore on campus. 8 AM classes of redundant crap. It wasn’t what I expected. It was high school all over again. I wasn’t having any of it.
What I loved: Tossing pizzas late at night for a crowd of hungry students, drunkenly gazing through the kitchen window. I put in what was probably mediocre work, with no professional kitchen experience. I was covered in flour, but I was completely amazed by the camaraderie in the kitchen through the chaos. Joking, laughing, teasing. Tickets, cheese and pepperonis everywhere. However, come 4 AM, when everything was clean and the oven was cooling off, that slice of “fuck-up” pizza on my walk home was worth every bite.
Cooking was a healthy distraction from me being away from family and friends. I wanted to believe life had different plans for me than the Miami party scene. But College was not the plan either. And Desiree’s Kitchen wasn’t a thought yet.
After less than a year at FSU, I eventually dropped out. I explored the countryside of Florida for a few months with my Dad, close to Lake Okeechobee. I eventually moved back to Miami with my Mom where I would work in various offices. I just cooked at home, learning Cuban family recipes. I got back into studying music at Miami Dade College and after 4 years, I finally got my Associates degree. I had decided to study Hospitality Management at Florida International University.
Desiree’s Kitchen: My Next Chapter
So life happened, I was enjoying my 20’s in Miami, and got involved in the growing Wynwood art scene and never finished school. Transitioning from Miami’s suburbs to Downtown Miami, I scored a job helping open Salsa Fiesta‘s flagship store and found myself managing a restaurant with very little experience. I learned a ton on how to run a busy restaurant from my Kitchen Manager, Artemisa. She made me confident in my abilities as a leader and cook in a restaurant. I am grateful for the time I had under her wing. I fell in love with the idea of cooking as a creative hobby and eventually, a promising career.
By now it’s 2010. I did a hundred things between then and now. I learned a lot about art, business, myself, the world. I fell in love with Miami and all the food in it. And even though I didn’t work in a restaurant, I would make food at home with the intention of growing as a cook. I was always trying new techniques and recipes. The original Desiree’s Kitchen. I would sometimes sell sandwiches and desserts out of crock pots at clubs in Wynwood with an old friend. We fed locals and various artists and had a blast!
In and Out of the Heat of the Kitchen
Somehow, I got into Graphic Design, Website Design and Virtual Administration with a few small businesses for years. I kept the goal of wanting a restaurant in the future alive, sometimes catering and always learning.
I made a personal vow that by 30, if I wasn’t already working in a restaurant or on my own food project, I would abandon the proverbial Office Job “ship” and jump back into a kitchen or risk sacrificing my dream forever. I had a very honest conversation with Chef Richard Hales at his restaurant BlackBrick, and he had all the right words I needed to hear to know that this was what I supposed to do and how to get there. I didn’t know how, but I would.
It wasn’t until I moved to Cape Coral, FL in 2016 that I wouldn’t cook in a professional kitchen again, a month after my 30th birthday..
I met the owner of the pub I currently work at, Mason Moyle, a week before he opened his Pub at an interview for a cook position (I started at the bottom), and I instantly felt at home. Within a week, he offered me the Kitchen Manager position and after a few years of tough work, a franchise drop and opening a new concept, we’ve been growing our pub Keg and Cow ever since with much success (knock on wood).
Learning to Cook and Lead.
I’ve learned so much about leading a kitchen and developing a menu. The last 7 years have been nothing but cherished memories and hard work, and I am grateful for every person I ever trained or worked with because you not only made our restaurant better, but you made me better.
So this blog, Desiree’s Kitchen, is essentially a capture of my journey as I strive for my own professional kitchen. Yep, you guessed it. I want my own Caribbean Restaurant. Feel free to start a Fundraiser, I’m also accepting investors, if you have a cute, rich uncle. I’ll make him lunch.
FACT: My Site Desiree’s Kitchen is THE place for me to be creative, scientific, innovative, and technical; It satisfies my left-brain and right-brain cravings. I literally get to bake my cake and eat it, too.
ALSO FACT: I am terrible at baking cakes.
But cooking is rewarding – the ingredients, techniques and flavors all stimulate my imagination, and Latin and Caribbean food reminds me of home. I recommend trying it, maybe with one of my recipes..
Desiree’s Kitchen – Why Caribbean Food?
My family’s history is culpable: My clan migrated to the US from Cuba. My maternal grandmother Cira was a graduated housewife, as were many women that left the island in the early 60’s. She made it to New York, with my young mom and aunt. She worked at a Lifesaver factory at night, and would tell us about coming home late smelling like candy.
Her husband, my grandfather Mario, who worked at a Cerveceria La Tropical brewery in Havana, joined them years later after a long political delay in leaving Cuba. Years later, after they relocated to Miami in the 80’s, my grandfather passed away. My parents had recently married, I was born in New York, and then we shortly moved to Miami to be with my grandmother. My sister was born two years later.
Our parents later separated, and we’d spend some weekends and summers in tiny towns near Lake Okeechobee learning about real Florida life from my very American dad – including fishing, dairy farms, off-roading, orange groves and gator meat. Back in Miami, we lived with my hard-working Mom, Abuela and Aunt and our home was a house of 6, only a small part of a 3-generation, very Cuban family.
Even though I got a taste of small town country life every once in a while, my life became predominantly Cuban in flavor, as did I – a girl that loved Merengue, Chancletas and Arroz con Pollo.
I Am Spoiled By How Great My Family Cooked.
There was a lot of cooking, with all sorts of Latin and European influences like Spain, Venezuela and even Poland. And when my Mom had a debilitating stroke when I was 10, (she fully recovered, thankfully) Abuela helped raise her grandkids, teaching us her homemaking ways. My dad’s parents lived in Miami as well. They cooked and took care of a giant Cuban family, kept the family together and watched Miami grow since the 1950’s. My grandmother was a loving woman, and a few of the best Cuban, Caribbean and even Chinese dishes I’ve eaten had been served by my late grandfather, the former Mayor of Sweetwater, at their big dining table in their home on Calle Cuba.
I find it a privilege to have had such cultural experiences growing up as a true Cuban-American kid. And wherever I was, food always kept everyone around the table. I admired my family’s passion about fresh, flavorful, traditional food, and as I grew up, it became more important to me as a personal philosophy when I cooked.
My Cuban culture helped me comprehend other Caribbean cultures I experienced growing up in Miami, and the delicious and diverse food that came with it. I love and study Caribbean food to learn the similarities and differences in the Islands’ people, their history and the world’s influences on the cuisine. After years of eating and learning, I’m using what I’ve tasted and the traditions I’ve been taught to pay a tribute to my Caribbean culture and the colorful city that raised me.
I look forward to feeding people and hope my recipes help you create important family traditions, Caribbean-style. I hope you enjoy Desiree’s Kitchen, I’m having fun creating it!
