AS TOLD TO BC PIRES

My name is Devon Joseph, and I am an artist working in the medium of food.

I come from east Trinidad, the village of Valencia.

I moved to Woodbrook in Port of Spain ten years ago. I’ve been living in Cascade about five years now. St Ann’s/Cascade reminds me of country life in Valencia. So I don’t really miss that peaceful country vibe.

My father, Phillip Joseph, and my mother, Susan Joseph, had two sons, me and my brother Kendall, and my two sisters Rianna and Kerryn. I am in the middle. My brother is the baby. My wife Robyn and I don’t have any children yet. She was a Ramkissoon. I met my “better half” in hotel school, the TT Hospitality and Tourism Institute. We’ve been married five or six years.

Robyn deals with the people. We’re in the hospitality industry together. But she is absolutely the mastermind of our business. She’s a superstar. I am merely the artist.

My boyhood was a little different from the typical Valencia boy’s story because my father and mother were very protective. A lot of the boys living on my street could go to the river anytime they want. Their parents weren’t scared of anything. They went fishing, bird-hunting, rough bush life. My brother and I never had that freedom to do as we please with our cousins. I still experienced real quality countryside life and that gave birth in some kind of way to my career because we did a lot of cooking by the roadside or riverside. A lot of open flames. We gather cashew nuts and roast them.

My first school was the Arima New Government School. I went to ANG straight up to standard five, and passed Common Entrance for Sangre Grande Junior Secondary School. We used to call it Sec.

I was raised Pentecostal, and I’m absolutely still a believer. I grew up in church. My second passion – and, for a time in my life, I wondered which I loved more – was singing in the choir. I love music. When I entered the culinary realm 20 years ago, I no longer had the time to attend church and to be involved in all the different ministries. The truth is, my career really did consume me from school straight up to now.

I made the national culinary team going to the Taste of the Caribbean competition in 2011 and lost the Caribbean Chef of the Year to a Bajan chef by three points. Of course, I couldn’t live with that!

So I made the team again in 2012 and won. I remain the only Trinidadian to have won Caribbean Chef of the Year in all the decades TT has been entering. In 2013, they invited me to judge the competition.

It took winning the Caribbean Chef of the Year to prove to myself that, not because I’m not academically inclined, it doesn’t mean I’m not great with my hands.

School just wasn’t something I liked! My favourite subject was recess. My first shot at CXC was real failure. The only reason I have no problem in making it known that I wasn’t the best schoolboy is just in case someone who is great with their hands but not good at school, it could possibly be inspiring to them.

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