In one of those uncanny mysteries of life, I had seen Norma Shirley more often in the last few weeks than I had in the last few years. I had gone to the newly renovated Grog Shoppe for the first time with a good friend and fell so head over heels in love with the pumpkin soup that I returned the next day with a gaggle of women to have the soup again. Dame Shirley teased me about the gaggle of women I had brought to lunch and she harangued me to bring a gaggle to the High Tea benefit being held a few days later. She thrust five tickets on me and I dutifully demurred.

Lunch at Norma’s On the Terrace was always an important ritual for me whenever I came to Kingston. When I was famished, it was the moistly succulent oxtail. When I was just peckish, it was the lightly embellished shrimp salad. I would usually go to lunch alone, peep into her office to tell her I was there and then wait dutifully at a table for the thick headband to emerge.

This signature fashion accessory also handily collected the perspiration when she was cooking – it was both style and function. Only once did I ever see her without it. It was at Susie Berry’s high-octane Nobu dinner in Strawberry Hill. I did not recognise her and passed the turban less Norms without saying hello. “Eh eh yu no see me!” she slapped my hand. I would not recognise Elizabeth Taylor without her diamonds nor Norma Shirley without her signature headband. Her illustrious layers of clothing and folds always contributed to a very regal presence.

Miss Norms would grab a glass of white wine, sit for a spell and regale me with the salacious shenanigans of customers, friends and enemies in New York, Miami, Paris, Montego Bay and Kingston. She was the consummate storyteller weaving the past with the present to predict the future.

She saw “cooking as fun, sensuous and sexy.” Integrating disparate flavours like guava jelly and wine soaked prunes lavished on pork chops. Fiercely independent, she would insist on training her staff in her mold. She disliked taking people “ruined by other chefs or by other establishments”. She preferred them green so she could mold in the right way-the Norms way.

She took risks with the food and brought stylish elegance to the plating. I remember a vigorous discussion we once had about why Jamaican food had neither expanded nor evolved. We Jamaicans tend to stick voraciously to the tried and true. We curry goat but never curry fish (which is actually delicious). We roast fish but not roast goat. Not Miss Norms! She de-piled and deconstructed the Jamaican plate-a formidable task in a country that resists culinary evolution- and introduced us to new and exciting flavours and textures.

She had soulful friends and vitriolic enemies as all visibly successful women must… Indeed, all great iconoclasts have deep admirers and virulent detractors.

I was a perennial starry-eyed admirer even of her sometimes cantankerous demeanor. Perhaps I found it humorous because I was never in the line of fire for her rancour being neither employee, nor competitor nor critic. I was too much in awe to broach any criticisms I fawned unabashedly. We got on very well.

In a documentary done for the Food Network about her life in the kitchen there is a scene in which she was expecting something to be delivered which was late and she slams down the phone on the supplier three times. Brilliantly the documentarian rewinds the scene again and again for hilarious effect. It is a riot!

With Miss Norms complicated layers of food and personae were always unfolding. She could be generous. She could be mean spirited. She was a great friend and a nasty foe. She could be effusive in her praise and she could traise with the most cantankerous of them! Like her foods, she was one of the most interesting and complex personalities ever to grace our shores. And I adored her for it.

Sadly for us there are no obvious culinary heirs. Sadly for us there are no obvious personality heirs. Grand intimidating Jamaican women of class and culture who mastered the art of conversation have been replaced by soul-less diminutives who clamour for parties where the conversation is as flimsy as their dress and as nuanced as the bland over-catered food being served.

With Miss Norms gone, we are bereft of yet another icon and innovator. My palate will miss her culinary prowess. My enquiring mind – her juicy chats. My acerbic humour will miss her cantankerous rancour. My heart will miss her warmth. “Darling, sid down, mek mi tell u how it really go….”

Walk good, Miss Norms, walk good! Yu life did belly-full!