Melis­sa Doughty

Kendell Mulzac is tal­ent­ed. He does not sing, nor does he dance or play an in­stru­ment. He is in­stead graced with the gift of blend­ing flavours and tex­tures. He can take that which ap­pears or­di­nary and turn it in­to a culi­nary mag­num opus. In Tri­ni par­lance, he pos­sess­es that prover­bial sweet hand. He has al­ready cre­at­ed a culi­nary gem. Mulzac, Hy­att Re­gency Trinidad's Chef de Par­tie, won gold and the ti­tle Pas­try Chef of the Year 2012 in the Trinidad Ho­tels Restau­rants and Tourism As­so­ci­a­tion's (THRTA) Na­tion­al Culi­nary Com­pe­ti­tion, with his dish, A Taste of Trop­i­cal Flavours. He is set to rep­re­sent T&T along with sev­en oth­ers at the Re­gion­al Culi­nary Com­pe­ti­tion to be held at Mi­a­mi's Hy­att Re­gency in June. Ini­tial­ly, the mere men­tion of the in­gre­di­ents ap­pears dis­cor­dant. But the co­conut crème caramel, atop pineap­ple cas­sa­va pone, served with gua­va beet sauce, pas­sion fruit mo­ji­to and se­mi-mac­er­at­ed fruit "stains the palate." The dish plays with tem­per­a­ture as well, blend­ing warm and cold. If there was ever a taste that epit­o­mised the Caribbean's sweet­ness and el­e­gant ease, this would be it.

But if it had been left up to Mulzac's fa­ther, he may not have been the award-win­ning pas­try chef he is to­day. At the ten­der age of 11 he re­alised he had a gift for cook­ing, but more im­por­tant­ly, he en­joyed do­ing it. Mulzac, the last of four chil­dren, was born on Moth­er's Day, had the op­por­tu­ni­ty to fur­ther a skill im­me­di­ate­ly af­ter sec­ondary school with the Jump­start Pro­gramme. "At first I had put bank­ing on my ap­pli­ca­tion. Ray­mun­do Vil­lafana, a fam­i­ly friend, saw my choice and asked me why I put that. I told him to do some­thing that would make more mon­ey. He then told me to fol­low my heart and mon­ey will come." And so his ca­reer as a pas­try chef be­gan. He trained for six weeks at the Hilton Ho­tel. While there the ex­ec­u­tive chef no­ticed Mulzac's tal­ent and told him, "You will be a great chef some­day."

He worked while study­ing for an as­so­ciate de­gree in culi­nary arts at the Trinidad and To­ba­go Hos­pi­tal­i­ty and Tourism In­sti­tute (TTHTI). In 2008 he joined the team at the Hy­att Re­gency, and in 2009 he en­tered the Na­tion­al Culi­nary Com­pe­ti­tion for the first time. In 2010 and 2011 he did not en­ter be­cause of time con­straints, but this year he could not es­cape his fate. Hy­att Re­gency Trinidad's ex­ec­u­tive chef, Fer­nan­do Fran­co, in­formed him that he (Mulzac) would en­ter the com­pe­ti­tion. This time he did not dis­ap­point. He mulled con­stant­ly over tex­ture and flavour, and af­ter sub­ject­ing his "tasters" (his 13-mem­ber pas­try team) to his dif­fer­ent dish­es, he dis­cov­ered the right dish. He then shared it with pas­try chef Mi­lan Smith and oth­er mem­bers of the Hy­att team and they all came to one con­clu­sion-this dish was be­yond any­thing ex­pect­ed. The rest, as they say, is his­to­ry.