Cooking the art they love

JASON AND JANELLE MELLOWES. (Nigel Browne)

By Natasha Beckles | Sun, January 15, 2012 - 12:00 AM

JASON AND JANELLE MELLOWES are siblings who put their heart and soul into cooking.

Not only do they take great pleasure in experimenting with new flavours, they revel in the joy on their customers’ faces when they savour their culinary treats.

Although neither of them wanted to be chefs initially, both can now boast having worked in kitchens in and outside Barbados.

Initially, Janelle wanted to be an interior designer mainly because her father is an upholsterer.

“I did art and everything for it but my last year at St Michael’s I decided that I loved to cook,” she recalled.

“My mother was like, ‘Are you sure, Janelle? You have one time to decide this, so are you sure this is what you want?.’”

Her art training still came in handy.

“Doing art for interior design still helped with culinary arts in that you have to learn how to use different colours for your presentation,” the 22-year-old said while relaxing in her Eden Lodge, St Michael home.

After successfully completing training in culinary arts at the Barbados Community College, Janelle went on to work for Island Caterers before moving to St Kitts to take up work as a pastry chef.

Most recently, she worked in Canada through the Canadian Hotel Workers Programme which gives Barbadian chefs the opportunity to hone their skills overseas. She will be returning in May, having been requested by the organizers.

Meanwhile, Jason wanted to be an accountant before deciding that he “just didn’t want to be stuck in a room dealing with numbers all day”.

“The kitchen allows you much more freedom,” he said, noting that he plans to have his own business one day.

“First I went to evening classes at PomMarine to do pastry and after that I went full time doing basic cooks,” said the hot side chef who lists his main influences as celebrity chef Gordan Ramsey and Joseph Robinson, whom he worked with at Hilton Barbados.

The 29-year-old found it hard to pinpoint what he loves most about his craft, noting that he was fascinated by “the tastes, the environment, how everything comes together when it’s done, and the reaction on people’s faces when they view the food”.

Like his sister, Jason has participated in the Canadian programme and has been requested to return in May.

Last year he worked at the J.W. Marriot in Muskoka, Ontario, in a fast-paced environment with about 150 guests every night.

“I learnt to cook more traditional Italian food and to do more multitasking in the kitchen because it was very small,” the NIFCA 2005 Bronze Award winner said.

For Janelle, baking allows her to both relax and explore her creative side.

She also has a love for making ice cream.

“I like to try new flavours of ice cream and sorbets and I love to bake cheesecake.

“The few clients I have, they really do enjoy my cheesecakes,” she said.

Janelle’s cheesecakes also found favour with the judges of the NIFCA Culinary Arts competition in 2010 where she won that year’s incentive award for Best New Product as well as a Gold Award.

Her entry was a soursop cheesecake with a chocolate ginger tuile, which is “similar to a paper-thin biscuit”.

This local success prepared her more than adequately for her overseas endeavours.

Still, she described the move to St Kitts as a bit of an eye-opener.

“I went to work at a restaurant which wasn’t finished being built, so we would work various functions on and off from another kitchen, but it wasn’t steady work.

“We were being paid because we were on contract.

“My chef, I knew him from doing my internship at Sandy Lane, so he was the one who asked me to come.

“I stayed mainly because of him, because he taught me so much,” she said.

Good experience

Canada, however, was a “really, really good experience”.

“All the imported stuff we get here, for them it isn’t imported; it’s just fresh. It was really good because the products are a lot cheaper than they are here. I can buy a crate of blueberries over there for $2 but here I have to pay $20 for them,” she explained.

The young Christian also appreciated learning about different cultures and people and “seeing the way they react to certain situations in the kitchen”.

“Here, if we get a certain amount of people we wouldn’t freak out, but some of them would freak out over a small number.

“We taught them a few things.

They enjoyed learning our cuisine.

I did sweet bread for them and they really liked it and they tried souse and they liked that,” she said with a smile.

Asked if her faith affects her work in any way, she noted that unlike many chefs, she doesn’t make a habit of cursing.

“Many people think that because you’re a chef, you will curse. It’s a major thing in the kitchen for chefs to curse, especially when they get annoyed. They just fling a pan and they start cursing. I don’t necessarily feel the need to curse,” she said.

Listing Cameron Steele from Sandy Lane Hotel and Luca Selvaggi from Italy as the chefs she looks up to, she said she wants to own a pastry shop by age 30.

Furthermore, she noted that she would like to do further training in another, possibly Asian, cuisine.

She advised young people not to become chefs unless they really love the culinary arts.

“There are lots of ups and downs and you have to be very tolerant but it can be a very rewarding career,” she said.

Jason, meanwhile, cautioned aspiring chefs that “it’s not as easy as it looks on television, but the rewards are pretty good and the pay is good too”.