When Norma Shirley left Jamaica in the 1950s it was to prepare for a career taking care of people. On hospital wards, that is. She was to be a nurse.

When she returned to live in Jamaica in the 80s Norma Shirley’s passion for ensuring the welfare of people was still alive and strong — except with a few detours and a tinge of ‘here’ and dash of ‘there’ along the way.

So these days when Norma Shirley dons an apron it’s not the white of a nurse’s uniform. Its colours are likely to be tropical and eclectic. Like her personality and the foods she prepares and styles.

You see, Norma Shirley long ago found a new way to minister to people. Her way. Via our plates. With fine foods. Jamaican in style but international in texture.

These quality haute restaurants serving Jamaican and Caribbean foods are the norm in most cities. It was not always so. There was a time when Norma Shirley was a virtual single person movement forging the claims of Jamaica in international cuisine — as chef, restaurateur and food stylist.

Not bad for a woman, who as a young bride, by her own admission, could hardly boil an egg.

On that score Jamaica, the world, and certainly our palates, owe a debt of gratitude to that husband, the connoisseur, who exposed Norma to fine foods. In the process Norma Shirley discovered herself. Preparing and presenting good food became her obsession.

Our can’t-cook Norma immersed herself in cookbooks, but extended their offerings by adding her own texture, style and context to the dishes she prepared. Like Norma Shirley’s personality they were, and are, bright and lively, embracing, delicious, distinctly Jamaican but with subtle hints of other places too. Which is to expected of a woman who has travelled the world and lived in Scotland, England, Switzerland, Sweden and the United States.

Ironically, it was not for the taste of her food that Norma Shirley first became widely known, but rather how she could make food look. Good and appetising.

In Europe and America she prepped plates for photo-shoots for some of the world’s leading style magazines. She also appeared on television.

Norma Shirley, having been a caterer and food stylist lifted her career in food another notch in 1976 when she opened her own restaurant in the town of Stockbridge, Massachusetts, where she gently eased a New England clientele into the effervescent joys of Jamaican foods.

She opened her first Jamaican restaurant in the 80’s at Belmont Road. This quality nouvelle restaurant was an instant success.

Norma Shirley now runs the internationally-acclaimed Norma’s on the Terrace at Devon House in Kingston where she does the Norma thing — titillating plates with excitement and passion.

But Norma Shirley’s contribution to the world of food does not end with the dishes she creates in her kitchens, how she dresses up a plate or her advocacy of a Jamaican and Caribbean cuisine. She had given the world, in her son Delius, a highly successful restaurateur, whose Ortinique restaurants in Florida, Washington, DC and Las Vegas are not only the spirit of his mother even as they chart new directions, reflecting the personality of the son.

So this self-taught chef, Norma Shirley, has been praised by the world and has been presented with many awards. The Jamaica Observer Table Talk Food Awards will add to the list.

For her pioneering role in building recognition of a Jamaican and Caribbean cuisine, for her sense of caring via our palates and the joy she provides via her food and for being Norma Shirley, the Jamaica Observer Table Talk Food Awards presents Norma Shirley with its Chairman’s Award for 2003.