Thursday Food checked into the fab Secrets Resorts & Spa at Freeport, Montego Bay last weekend and we were sufficiently impressed with the delectable fare. We nabbed time (beachfront, of course) to quiz the hotel’s super-talented two senior chefs about what keeps them so intrigrued with food.

Paul Evans, Senior Sous Chef

Paul Evans’s chef journey began like so many of his peers: as a child in the kitchen at home. “I was always in the kitchen with my mom trying to help out,” the Secrets senior sous chef shared. We are engaged in conversation beachside, the aqua-green ocean breaking its tide mere footsteps away Evans remembers as a 10-year-old: “I always had a little pot on the stove beside hers. Coming from school. I would help with dinner and sometimes she would run me out of the kitchen, saying, ‘Yu going to burn yourself up’, but that was where my passion started and it grew from there.”

Attending Marcus Garvey Technical High in St Ann, home economics was one of Evans’ strongest subject areas. By this time, his gut instinct was that his professional destiny rested in the culinary field. “I went to the Runaway HEART Hotel and Training Institute, pursued the commis chef course, graduated at Level 3 and started working at Ciboney in 1992 shortly after.” Evans, who left Ciboney as a restaurant manager, would have subsequent stints as a junior cook at the Ritz Carlton and an executive chef at Coral Cliff.

A proud staffer at Secrets since its inception a little over a year ago, Evans who is second in command to the executive sous chef, tells us that preparing meals on the Japanese habachi grill is without a shadow of a doubt, his favourite aspect of cooking. In fact, he entertains thoughts of opening his very own Asian-themed restaurant. “I would love to have a Japanese restaurant with 3 habachi grills and I know I could make it out there,” he told Thursday Food. Fingering ace culinary chef and tutor Dennis McIntosh as a mentor, Evans says “he always tries to pull me with him and motivates me to do my best… he emphasised that as a black man, one has to be strong and creative to be competitive with overseas chefs.” The unabashed joy that Evans brings to his craft bodes well for the next chapter of his journey.

Kirk Myers, Executive Sous Chef

It’s a mammoth task being second in line to overseeing buffet spreads, meals done-to-order, the turnover of tables, and getting the best from your line staff at a bustling 700-guest-room. But it’s a challenge Kirk Myers, executive sous chef at Secrets Resorts & Spa, has embraced with a spirited gusto.

“We have a high volume of persons so learning to manage the crowd, scheduling and opening restaurants and effectively managing that crowd while ensuring we have the adequate staff to guest ratio is a necessity, as is satisfying our guests, owners, and staff…it has been a challenge but so far we have been doing a good job of it,” Myers says, breaking out a smile.

He can pinpoint the exact moment his interest in the culinary profession took hold.

“I was probably around six, watching Hill and Gully Ride on TV and they had a feature on garde mangers creating ice carvings at the Jamaica Cultural Development Commission competition. I was intrigued… and fell in love with the culinary arts right then and there,” the executive sous chef informs. Like his colleague Paul Evans, he excelled in home economics during his adolescent years at Jose Marti Technical High School in St Catherine. He subsequently went on to the University of Technology to pursue supervisory management studies and recently was certified as an executive chef with the Culinary Institute of America.

Employed at Secrets since last August, Myers is appreciative to be able to work alongside other nationalities in the kitchen. “The cultural mix here is really good,” he notes. “As a chef, when I need confirmation about certain foods, we have authentic access to it. Italians work here so we can query the correctness of a pasta dish or of you do a paella, there is someone Spanish so you can get straight authenticity from that person. It definitely helps you as an individual to be a better cook.”

Myers divulges that he is a huge fan of Mashuru Morimoto of Iron Chef fame because he considers his talent, insurmountable. “I really respect him because he is very true to his Japanese roots and also fuses that with contemporary cooking that makes him cutting-edge. He is a mature chef but is also hip.”

Prior to joining the Secrets family, the 28-year-old Myers worked with HEART Trust/NTA at its Runaway Bay Training Institute in St Ann as executive chef and also at HEART’s Kenilworth campus in Hanover as its executive chef in charge of project development. His resume is also marked with previous work engagements at Sandals Royal Caribbean and Iberostar where he worked as a garde manger — the very job that so entranced him as a child watching Hill and Gully Ride.