Whether she has a knife, microphone or cuatro in hand, Simmone Edwin can make you and your tastebuds dance for the Christmas season and beyond.
She is one of the singers and lead cuatro player for the Voces Jovenes parang band, as well as the food stylist, chef consultant and CEO at her own company, Meraki Catering. And she recently won the second season of the televised Maggi Food Court Caribbean competition in Jamaica.
During one intense week of shooting and eight episodes, Edwin, 35, beat three other chefs from TT, eight from Jamaica, and one each from St Lucia, Guyana, Barbados, and The Bahamas. The win brought her respect from colleagues across the region for her skills, as well as US$10,000.
“I was randomly scrolling through Facebook when I saw an ad for a competition in Jamaica, all expenses paid, with a prize of US$10,000. I figured, ‘What’s the worst that could happen. I could as well try my hand at it.’ A few weeks later I got called, and after an interview they selected me as one of the Trinidad chefs.
“That experience in itself was wild. We shot in June and the competition aired in August. It was great getting to meet those regional chefs. Aside from winning the competition, meeting them was really rewarding.”
The show aired in TT and Jamaica, and can be see on Maggi Caribbean’s YouTube channel.
After getting an associate degree in culinary management at the TT Hospitality and Tourism Institute (TTHTI) in 2008, Edwin moved on to Miami to attend Johnson and Wales University where she achieved a bachelor of science in food service management with a concentration in international hotel operations in 2009.
She told WMN she was able to speed up her degree through a study abroad programme in Belgium, before returning to the US for about a year to get work experience. On her return to TT, she worked at several restaurants and hotels until she landed the job of a baking and pastry arts facilitator at TTHTI.
Impressed by her cooking skills, friends and family had encouraged her to have her own food business for years, but she was not interested. But, after six years at TTHTI, she resigned in 2017 to start her own food business, Meraki Catering, based in Diego Martin.
“The school wasn’t going in the direction I envisioned for myself and my career so I decided to leave in 2017. And I didn’t want to end up in a job where I was at the whim of my employer. I wanted to be in control of my own destiny so I opened my business and slowly built my clientele.”
[caption id="attachment_992677" align="alignnone" width="770"] - Angelo Marcelle[/caption]
In 2020, Edwin was head chef at Adams Bagels but, just before the covid19 pandemic hit TT, she left to focus on her business full-time.
“It was the scariest months of my life, thinking what kind of mad timing I had with this, not knowing if would be able to make money. It turned out that year was the most fantastic thing for my business.”
She converted her home kitchen to a work
