Ralston Grant Executive Sous-Chef, Beaches Negril

Grant started out as a busboy at the Harmony Hall Restaurant in Tower Isle at the age of 18, but on realising that he wasn’t very fond of it, decided to try something he was certain he could do well — cooking. When he was 11 his older brother had taught him, and fond memories of those training sessions prompted him to request a transfer to the kitchen, where he started out serving lunches in the staff canteen. While there, he became even more fascinated with the food preparation process. “I started picking up on things really quickly,” he explains. Soon he knew enough to move on, and got a job in the pantry at Sans Souci Lido resort, where he was responsible for making salads. One year later he was promoted to supervisor, and was awarded a prize for being the most improved employee in the company. He was also promoted to assistant garde manger cook the following year, and entered several culinary competitions over the next seven years. Grant later moved on to Sandals Dunn’s River as chef garde-manger and was promoted to souschef shortly after. He was also given the opportunity to work as a chef de partie at the Hilton Oceanfront resort in South Carolina for a year. Following this, he returned to Sandals, but again opportunity came knocking — this time in the form of a celebrity cruise line where he spent four years as a sous-chef.

The need to spend more time with his wife and two sons, who he says are “growing up very fast”, brought him back home in October of last year, and he got a job as the executive sous-chef at Beaches Negril. He’s now fully acclimatised, and has made a name for himself as one who is “creative, and always infusing local dishes with elements of different cuisines like Asian and Italian”. Already there are plans in place to go even further in the food industry. “People are always surprised to find that I didn’t study the culinary arts at all. Cooking is just my passion… I learnt everything through apprenticeship. I want to be a food and beverage director in the next couple of years, so I will be enrolling in the Runaway Bay HEART Academy to study that soon,” he concludes, before getting back to manning the hotel’s busy kitchen.

Leroy Sewell Executive Chef, Grand Pineapple Beach Resorts

For most people, grating 400 coconuts per day with grandma would not have translated into a culinary love affair, but a minute into our conversation we confirmed that Chef Leroy is certainly not like most people. “Mama would boil coconuts to make coconut oil for sale, and my brother and I would help her. We always roast the bananas afterwards and eat it from the coconut shell with the leftover custard — that is when I discovered my love for cooking,” he explained. Still, he didn’t see himself becoming a chef, and instead took electrical courses at Ocho Rios Secondary School with the intention of getting tertiary education in the field. Alas, “mama never have it” (no funds), and he ended up looking for work at hotel Jamaica Jamaica where he was hired as a steward. After 3 1/2 years, he was transferred to the pantry as a cook, and quickly promoted to range cook thereafter. He spent six years there before moving on to Beaches Boscobel as a sous-chef, where he was in charge of manning the main restaurant.

Two years later he was made redundant, and a number of relief stints came up — he would act as an executive chef in different hotels when the chefs were on leave — before working at Sandals Grande, Ocho Rios, as a banquet chef for eight years. “I started to yearn for a change after a while,” he shares, “but I enjoyed working at Sandals, so I decided to apply to the Turks & Caicos property — there was an opening for an executive chef.” As fate would have it, however, he was instead offered a job as Grand Pineapple’s executive chef, and he decided to go with it.

Many are amazed to find that Chef Sewell entered the food industry at the ground level. Indeed, though he is highly competent, his laid-back persona and willingness to do “whatever it takes to make the operation run smoothly, from sweeping the floor to scouring the pots” continues to amaze his staff.

Reflecting on his culinary journey, the accomplished chef told Thursday Food, “I enjoy working at Grand Pineapple because it has given me a real chance to prove myself — to make changes and utilise my expertise.” The unassuming 45-year-old father of six has been a mentor and teacher to many over the years, and counts chefs like Kevin Campbell, Ralston Grant and Percival Patterson among his success stories. Today Sewell can’t help but feel a sense of pride when he reflects on his career. “The fact that I am here at Grand Pineapple is one of my greatest achievements, when I think of how I started out. I’ve done a few courses here and there, but to be honest, passion has helped a lot. And the culinary competitions that I entered annually at Jamaica Grande pushed me even further, as I knew that everything I put out should reflect not just me, but my team as well. I am blessed to be given the opportunity to share my knowledge with the younger chefs, and that is what drives me. Being a chef is demanding, but rewarding, and I want my team to do well, so they can have a bright future in this industry. Nothing would make me happier than to leave this job knowing that my apprentices are all OK,” he concludes.