Brigette Joseph knew she want­ed to be a chef long be­fore she re­ceived her CXC re­sults at Holy Name Con­vent. While her class­mates were con­sid­er­ing next steps to uni­ver­si­ty, Brigette was fo­cused on the culi­nary arts.

“I was 16. Tra­di­tion­al­ly, there was on­ly one thing a chef could do, which was go and work in a restau­rant or a ho­tel. So, in my brain, it was ob­vi­ous­ly ‘that was what you were go­ing to do. You’re go­ing to go to school, you’re go­ing to work in a nice restau­rant or a nice ho­tel, and then you’re go­ing to work your way up un­til you be­come an ex­ec­u­tive chef, and that’s it,’” she re­called.

Now, as Brigette marks her 20th an­niver­sary as a chef, she has re­alised the path she planned was filled with sweet and savoury ad­ven­tures. In the end, she did not be­come an ex­ec­u­tive chef. In­stead, her path led her to some­thing more ful­fill­ing as a culi­nary con­sul­tant who has found a way to use lo­cal in­gre­di­ents to tell a sto­ry and, by ex­ten­sion, share Trinidad and To­ba­go’s iden­ti­ty.

“I think peo­ple saw An­tho­ny Bour­dain do his show Parts Un­known, but I don’t think they un­der­stood what he was re­al­ly do­ing. He was im­mers­ing him­self in the cul­ture and us­ing food as one of the ways to con­nect and bring out the con­ver­sa­tions.

“So re­cent­ly, I did a tour with a group of peo­ple to try to ex­plain our culi­nary his­to­ry. And just in talk­ing and giv­ing them in­for­ma­tion, it re­al­ly tells the sto­ry of Trinidad and To­ba­go and how we came to be, with all the mul­ti­cul­tur­al­ism. We could tell our en­tire sto­ry through food … from the pi­men­to and how the pi­men­to reached here, and how ban­da­nia reached here, and how we use all these things in our food. They came from dif­fer­ent coun­tries and dif­fer­ent peo­ple. Now they are our main sea­son­ing,” she ex­plained.

Her culi­nary jour­ney be­gan as the youngest stu­dent at the then Trinidad and To­ba­go Hos­pi­tal­i­ty and Tourism In­sti­tute (TTHTI), be­ing a year be­low the en­try age. TTHTI’s rep­u­ta­tion for pro­duc­ing top chefs was well known; some re­turn­ing home with gold medals from in­ter­na­tion­al food com­pe­ti­tions. For Brigette, TTHTI pro­vid­ed a ground­ing. As an in­tern, she found joy work­ing in a restau­rant, but she re­alised there was more to just cre­at­ing mas­ter dish­es. It was then she un­der­stood the mixol­o­gy of cul­ture and food, which gave her the courage to leave the is­land to ex­plore.

Her first vis­it was to Greece, since she liked Mediter­ranean flavours. “I found it was just like home. The cul­ture, the peo­ple. It was food that was dif­fer­ent. And at my first in­tern­ship, I was with Ray­mond Joseph; he was like a cham­pi­on for Caribbean and lo­cal cui­sine. And that has al­ways stuck with me. We are all made up of the va­ri­ety of ex­pe­ri­ences we have had in our lives. So ba­si­cal­ly, a menu of our lives,” she said.

That trip al­so trig­gered her to in­vest in her ca­reer. For the first trip, she saved all her “small cook” mon­ey for nine months. Liv­ing at home was an ad­van­tage since she did not have ma­jor ex­pens­es. But she gave up lim­ing, and the trav­el­ling bug stuck. “I would go away and see re­al­ly cool stuff that no­body’s do­ing at home. Taste new food, taste new cui­sine, just be ex­posed to new flavours and com­bi­na­tions, and that is how I am now. I am able to adopt and adapt,” she said.

Over time, she re­alised she was lean­ing to­wards plan­ning and lo­gis­tics. The adren­a­line rush of open­ing restau­rants was part of the joy. When she part­nered to do her own spot—GSpot on Mar­aval Road—she was more metic­u­lous. The in­ten­tion be­hind GSpot, she said, was good food us­ing lo­cal prod­ucts with an in­ter­na­tion­al twist. “That got the in­ter­est of many places, like The New York Times—it is al­ways nice to be val­i­dat­ed and to be seen. Then we won Ja­maica Ob­serv­er’s Ta­ble Talk food awards—best new restau­rant, the Trinidad ver­sion. It re­al­ly shook up the in­dus­try a lit­tle bit,” Brigette said.

Al­though the restau­rant is no longer op­er­at­ing and she now works on ma­jor lo­cal and in­ter­na­tion­al culi­nary events, one of the big­ger lessons Brigette learnt is to sup­port more lo­cal­ly grown pro­duce, from farm to ta­ble, as much as pos­si­ble. That’s where the pow­er lies, she said. In ad­di­tion, go­ing lo­cal proves that a per­son does not have to go to Eu­rope or the US to have a good time in this place.

One of Brigette’s big cel­e­bra­tions of her 20th an­niver­sary will be at the food event Goa­to­ber 2025: Feasts of Fire on Oc­to­ber 19. Goa­to­ber is an in­ter­na­tion­al cel­e­bra­tion of goat that start­ed in 2011 in the US and was first staged in this coun­try by jour­nal­ist and food ad­vo­cate Fran­ka Philip in 2019. Brigette is car­ry­ing her per­son­al ethos in­to the event’s pro­duc­tion, and her menu will en­com­pass all as­pects of the an­i­mal, from the meat to the milk to the cheese.

“I like start­ing those kinds of con­ver­sa­tions. I want my guests to have the best time and see the ver­sa­til­i­ty of the goat. The whole point of Goa­to­ber is for peo­ple to start to eat more goat meat; it is more sus­tain­able, it is health­i­er for you, it’s re­al­ly good. There is more to goat than cur­ry,” she said.

Brigette was one of the four chefs at the in­au­gur­al event, cook­ing along­side UK chef James Whet­lor. This time, she looks for­ward to cook­ing with two very sig­nif­i­cant fe­male Caribbean chefs: Trinida­di­an trail­blaz­er Deb­bie Sardinha and high­ly rat­ed New Or­leans-based St Lu­cian Ni­na Comp­ton.

“It would be very nice to see these women in the kitchen in ac­tion, for the guests to ex­pe­ri­ence these pow­er­hous­es. An amaz­ing op­por­tu­ni­ty,” she said. “My team and I are do­ing the lunch, and for the din­ner, I am tak­ing a very sup­port­ive role. I am go­ing to be as­sist­ing through­out the din­ner. It’s go­ing to be a very beau­ti­ful night.”

Those in­ter­est­ed in Chef Brigette’s culi­nary jour­ney can fol­low her on In­sta­gram @chef­briget­terj. You can al­so see her in ac­tion at Goa­to­ber: Feasts of Fire, where she will show­case her cre­ativ­i­ty and skill with goat in lo­cal cui­sine. Fur­ther de­tails are avail­able through Is­landEt­ick­ets.