KINGSTON, Jamaica — The Jamaica Observer Table Talk Food Awards celebrated 27 years of the event with a resilience-themed staging on Thursday, June 25, and local company CHEW walked away with the award for Best Food Item.

Zoë Dawkins, the mind behind CHEW, which stands for Cook Happily Eat Wholesomely, won the award jointly with Nation’s Choice, recognised for their curry goat burger.

Dawkins says she aims to provide locally made items to enhance the overall cooking experience.

“I think as much as I enjoy what we have to offer locally and what’s on our shelves, I was really looking for something more because I love to travel and buy out supermarket shelves of other products and things that we can’t really get here. And in my mind, I was like, some of these items can actually be made here,” she explained.

Her offerings include Roasted Garlic and Thyme Spread, Likkle Sum’n Sum’n Seasoning, Onion Chilli Crunch, and Pickled Red Onions.

She continued, “Instead of just continuously buying products overseas, why not try to bring something to the market that’s different and that we know people would like?”

Winning the award, Dawkins said, is extremely validating for a business under one year old.

“We’ve only launched in November. We’re less than a year old. I truly don’t think I’d be here if it wasn’t for just the amount of people who have supported and bought and tried and said how much they enjoyed the product… I feel just blown away that I won our two awards tonight,” she said.

Reflecting on the theme of resilience, Dawkins explained that she too had been affected by the storm, as CHEW had been set to launch the Monday after the passage of Hurricane Melissa, which affected the island on October 28, 2025.

“As a small business that was just starting and trying to launch, to be completely thrown out of the spectrum with something like that… and not just a business, but the whole island, everyone was affected from top through to bottom,” she said.

“ I mean, I’ve really seen how so many people, including people extremely affected in the west and in the south, build back, and it’s almost inspiring knowing that while everyone is trying to get back to their lives, this is a business that was also trying to get Jamaica back to normal.  And I can appreciate the fact that after something so big like Melissa, we were resilient enough and we had customers who were resilient enough to support the brand.”

— Dana Malcolm