Sama­ra Leza­ma is a 25-year-old chef who grew up with her five sib­lings and par­ents in the com­mu­ni­ty of D’Abadie. Fol­low­ing her sec­ondary school years at St Joseph’s Con­vent, Port-of-Spain, Sama­ra set foot in Pe­ru to do mis­sion­ary work, which al­so al­lowed her to be­come flu­ent in Span­ish. Af­ter Pe­ru, she de­cid­ed it was time to pur­sue her dream of be­com­ing a chef.

It was a dream that she had her mind and heart set on. She start­ed with an un­paid in­tern­ship at one of the best restau­rants in the world —COI in San Fran­cis­co. Then, she ea­ger­ly start­ed at the Trinidad and To­ba­go Hos­pi­tal­i­ty and Tourism In­sti­tute, from which she grad­u­at­ed in 2018. While at school and just af­ter leav­ing she was able to trav­el and work in New York, Basque Coun­try, Mu­nich, widen­ing her culi­nary hori­zon in top tier kitchens. Hav­ing worked un­der world class chefs in places like Aqua­vit and Etxe­bar­ri. Af­ter work­ing at a 5-star ho­tel in Mu­nich, Sama­ra re­turned home and is to­day the proud chef and own­er of her cater­ing com­pa­ny Chef Sam­palam. Sama­ra shared more about her jour­ney as a young chef and en­tre­pre­neur with the WE mag team. Check out what she had to say to us:

What was the biggest chal­lenge you had to over­come and how did you deal with it?

My heart was set on do­ing my culi­nary de­gree abroad, how­ev­er that nev­er worked out for me. In­stead, I trav­elled and worked at some of the best restau­rants in the world (ac­cord­ing to the Aqua Pan­na and San Pel­le­gri­no list). I was able to learn not on­ly the school cur­ricu­lum but I was al­so taught how to work ef­fi­cient­ly and ef­fec­tive­ly in any kitchen.

What are you work­ing on at present, what is keep­ing you ex­cit­ed?

Cur­rent­ly, I do dai­ly lunch­es—so week­ly I post a reg­u­lar menu. I al­so have a sal­ad menu for the more health con­scious. The lunch­es are cou­pled with cater­ing events which make for a very busy time and a tired chef. The food keeps me go­ing, the chang­ing menus, the cre­ativ­i­ty and chal­lenge of fresh ideas, get­ting to cook ex­act­ly what I like to eat and in­tro­duc­ing it to the east com­mu­ni­ty keeps me go­ing and mo­ti­vat­ed.

What is your ul­ti­mate goal or biggest dream for your fu­ture?

To open a thriv­ing restau­rant and be­come a house­hold name. I al­ready have the name worked out in my head. Now, it is just to see my dream through to fruition. I ab­solute­ly love tast­ing menus and hope to bring it to Trinidad in a man­ner where we as a so­ci­ety can re­al­ly ap­pre­ci­ate and ac­cept that style of din­ing.

Tell us some­thing about you that peo­ple may not know.

De­spite do­ing knee surgery, I still opt­ed to be a chef.

What are you most grate­ful for?

I am most grate­ful for my fam­i­ly and their un­wa­ver­ing sup­port (es­pe­cial­ly at un­god­ly hours of the day).

Do you have any ad­vice for oth­er women who may want to get in­to the culi­nary field?

Go for it! Think of an end goal, sit and put pen to pa­per as to how you need to get there and just start. It’s def­i­nite­ly not go­ing to be easy but trust the process, sur­round your­self with pos­i­tiv­i­ty, do your part and watch things un­fold bit by bit.