At age 24 and after seven years working in the dessert industry chef Rebecca Sammy is living her dreams, first by working with pastry chefs in France and now by opening her own brick-and-mortar dessert shop in Trinidad and Tobago.
Coming from a family of entrepreneurs and inspired after returning from a six-month pastry internship at a Michelin-starred restaurant in France, Sammy is in the process of relaunching her business, The Angry Guppy Dessert Shop, which is scheduled to open on May 4 on Austin Street, St Augustine.
The name, she told WMN, stems from a nickname she got after someone told her she looks like an angry fish. And since she loves guppies, she decided to go with The Angry Guppy.
Sammy returned to TT from La Celle, a village in the central region of France, in December after interning at the hotel Hostellerie de l'Abbaye de La Celle to complete her associate degree in culinary arts at the Tobago Hospitality and Tourism Institute (THTI).
She recalled that her teacher, chef Lovelace, shared the link to the internship programme and she applied and was accepted.
[caption id="attachment_1078541" align="alignnone" width="683"] Rebecca Sammy did an internship at the hotel Hostellerie de l'Abbaye de La Celle, France. - Photo by Angelo Marcelle[/caption]
“I never envisioned myself in France. I didn’t even consider it as an option. It was the best experience of my life.
“I chose that restaurant because it was Michelin star. Michelin stars are a bit finicky in that they may seem a little bit elitist, but to get a Michelin star is a result of a certain level of work that I wanted to be part of.”
Sammy said she was the only woman in the kitchen for part of those six months, was the only Caribbean person and the only person of colour. She said being dropped into a country where she knew no one and did not speak the language was intense and intimidating, and as a shy person, it took her a while to get comfortable enough to start absorbing the language – of which she still cannot speak much.
But, she learned under amazing chefs, Kevin Raynal and Jérémy Bouin, who loved what they do and are very good at it, and who were kind and patient with her. She saw, tasted and worked with ingredients she only ever read of or saw in books or on TV and enjoyed the creativity of the team. Above all she learned a lot.
When she returned to TT she got a job at an established restaurant and quit after four days.
“My heart wasn’t in it. It made me very unhappy. I think I’m over working for people, so I think restarting the business full-time is really where my heart it right now.”
Sammy initially started the part-time business online in 2019, baking from her home in Curepe. But just a year later it all fell apart.
She told WMN when she was younger she wanted to be a veterinarian but it involved too much science so, at a very early age, she put aside that goal.
She was introduced to food by her grandmother who would grind seasoning using asil and
lorha, similar to a mortar and pestle, and her grandmother pu
