MONTEGO BAY, St James — Emmy award-winning Chef Glenroy Walker and his wife Theres
a are determined to make Jamaican food sexy.

Less than a month ago they launched Kitchen 721 at Whitter Village in Ironshore, Montego Bay. It’s not a flashy venue but the menu speaks volumes and the eatery gives Walker a chance to be a mentor and pass on his hard-earned skills.

“What I want to have is a successful venture and to continue with doing what I always pride myself on doing, which is training and developing young people in the field to be better at the craft of cooking,” Walker told the
Jamaica Observer.

“This gives me the perfect opportunity to be close to them where they report directly to me on a day-to-day basis where I teach them how to manage, teach them how to be independent and be confident in doing what they do,” he added.

Walker is also eager to stamp his presence on the western resort city’s gastronomy scene.

“I want to bring somewhat of a difference but also to enhance what Montego Bay already has. I want to enhance the Montego Bay offering, to be a part of the change of what you see in Montego Bay… What we want to do is be a part of ringing in the changes, offering something new, offering something sexy,” he said.

His track record gives him credence. The multi-award-winning chef has an impressive resume with previous stints at the Ritz-Carlton luxury hotel chain and Sandals Resorts International (SRI). While a senior group executive chef at SRI, he was chosen to share his culinary expertise and intricate knowledge of Jamaican cuisine at Jamaica House during the Rio 2016 Olympics.

“I think it was 2011 when I won the Jamaica Observer Food Award’s Rising Chef of the Year and prior to that I would have won multiple gold medals in the Jamaica Cultural Development Commission (JCDC) culinary competition that used to be held on a yearly basis in Jamaica,” he said.

“Also prior to the Jamaica Observer Food Awards, I won the NOWFE, which is the acronym for the New Orleans Wine and Food Experience, I won gold and best in show. I competed against several top chefs across the southern side of America,” he revealed.

Walker’s profile also got a fillip from his appearance on A Taste of History, an Emmy-award-winning
PBS television series hosted by culinary historian and restaurateur Chef Walter Staib. Walker copped an Emmy for his part in a 2017 episode which was filmed in Grenada.

His wife Theresa, who is just as passionate as he is about Kitchen 721, told the Observer that presentation is what sets them apart from everyone else.

“He has a passion for how things look, presentation, because food is art for him. And so, as an artist, his food, his creations are not just in the flavour, but it’s in the presentation and it has to be, ooh la la, sexy. He speaks French too,” she explained with a chuckle.

“He has that little suave about him. If you notice a lot of our social media posts, it always has to be #sexyfood. That’s his thing. We model that concept, we think the public deserves just absolutely sexy food and so, if you notice our menu, all of it, all of our menu has something sexy on there,” Theresa added.

Her interview was done in between tending to patrons’ needs on what was a busy day at Kitchen 721. Theresa explained how the restaurant got its name. Impressed by a venue called Kitchen 24 which he encountered on a visit to Canada, Walker suggested their restaurant should be Kitchen 21 but the name was already taken, on
Instagram, by a business outside Jamaica. Theresa then suggested they pivot to a play on her husband’s birthday, July 21.

“So then I’m like, ‘You know what, let’s do 721’,” she told the Observer.

The Walkers are banking on expertise amassed over the years to make Kitchen 721 a success.

“We have a catering operation that we’ve been doing now for a year. We serve the event space in that way and we found how well-received our cuisine has been,” Theresa said.

“We also do a private chef’s table every month and [for] that one year we’ve been doing it, every month it’s full,” she said proudly.

Despite that success, she said, they could not ignore their regular customers’ calls for more.

“The message is always the same, ‘Oh my God, we’re missing this kind of cuisine. It’s not in Montego Bay, we can’t even get some of this in Kingston’,” related Theresa.

“We feel that Montego Bay, Jamaica’s tourist capital, and Jamaica’s gastronomy that is known worldwide, we should be representing here in Montego Bay. The best cuisine should be coming out of MoBay,” she continued.

The menu includes long-time favourites as well as a number of healthier options.

“We have our local fare or our Jamaican dishes like our oxtail or curry goat or escovitch fish, we do that to order. We have our jerk chicken but we also have our penne alfredo, you can have that with shrimp or chicken,” disclosed Theresa.

“We have our salmon and we have a tonne of bowls for the healthier options. We have our sexy poke bowl and for us, our moniker is sexy food. It’s been an outpouring of support. I didn’t recognise that the need was so great and the void was so deep and vast for real healthy food. Our bowls have just been flying off the shelves because they’re pretty much salads or complete meals and people gravitate a lot to our bowls because again, you know, flavour is very important,” she added.

The ambiance has also been carefully crafted.

“You have a fireplace and you have a cup of hot chocolate, and you’re cuddled up in your blanket. You know how comfortable that feels? That’s what you’re supposed to feel when you walk in the door and then, to boot, you have friendly staff,” said Theresa.

Chef Glenroy Walker with his Emmy Award. 

Chef Glenroy Walker plates dishes during one of his monthly chef’s table events. .