Pro­lif­ic culi­nary am­bas­sador and TV per­son­al­i­ty Chef Ja­son Pe­ru wants to shake things up and makes no apolo­gies for his as­pi­ra­tions.

From the Caribbean to North Amer­i­ca, Eu­rope and Africa, he has siz­zled as a culi­nary ex­pert. He has “tak­en a bub­ble” on the lo­cal so­ca and so­ca chut­ney scene and has even thrown his hat in­to the po­lit­i­cal ring this year. His lat­est project is his soon-to-be-re­leased cook­book mem­oir, The Im­preg­na­tion of Flavour.

“Peo­ple’s crit­i­cisms do not stop me from do­ing any­thing. As long as my heart is in the right place,” he told Guardian Me­dia re­cent­ly.“I want to in­spire peo­ple. If there were more peo­ple to do this, we would be­come greater cit­i­zens and I am try­ing to do that every day of my life–get peo­ple ex­cit­ed about cook­ing; let them know they can make changes po­lit­i­cal­ly, get in­volved in mu­sic, dance; trav­el the world. Ed­i­fy your­selves. Do not sit at home and wait for things to hap­pen,” he said.

Pe­ru be­lieves in com­bin­ing his keen culi­nary skills with his busi­ness and mar­ket­ing acu­men and wel­comes op­por­tu­ni­ties to ven­ture in­to ar­eas out­side his “com­fort zone.” The avant-garde chef said he was build­ing a tem­plate for oth­ers to fol­low.

Hav­ing made his tele­vi­sion de­but on Syn­er­gy TV in 2007 on shows like “Celebri­ty Chef Wed­ding”, he land­ed his own cook­ing show, “Fast Food Fix­es in Five” a year lat­er. By 2011, he was con­duct­ing live pub­lic culi­nary show­cas­es and work­shops through Fa­nat­ic Kitchen Stu­dios to rave re­views.

In his nu­mer­ous tele­vi­sion ap­pear­ances, in­clud­ing on the for­mer CN­MG’s "Cooked", Pe­ru bal­ances pro­fes­sion­al­ism and whole­some­ness with a play­ful pas­sion for Caribbean cui­sine and adds a touch of in­ter­na­tion­al flair. When he talks about lo­cal cui­sine, there is a love in his eyes which, he said, trans­ports him back to his child­hood days of fry­ing bakes in his moth­er’s kitchen. He of­ten ex­udes boy­ish hap­pi­ness when he in­fus­es anec­dotes about his moth­er, He­len, fa­ther, Er­rol, or friends in gen­er­al while on set.

Fond­ly called, “the Orig­i­nal Bub­bling Star” for his abil­i­ty to “bub­ble” a de­li­cious, in­no­v­a­tive pot, Pe­ru has emerged as the go-to chef for the unini­ti­at­ed and for many who get stuck while try­ing to re­call how to make their home-cooked favourites.

As a culi­nary am­bas­sador, he has trav­elled ex­ten­sive­ly, with North Amer­i­can show­cas­es and fes­ti­vals like the Cur­ry Fest in Or­lan­do in 2014 and Ire­land’s Guin­ness Meatopia in 2019 be­ing some of his more re­cent stops.

Tele­vi­sion shoots for the Trav­el Chan­nel in New New­found­land, Cana­da, from 2016 to 2018 and tele­vi­sion shows in Bar­ba­dos from 2016 to 2018 have al­so kept him busy. Ad­di­tion­al­ly, Pe­ru has been a brand am­bas­sador for An­gos­tu­ra Ltd, Carib Brew­ery Ltd, KitchenAid Caribbean and is in his sev­enth year with Chief Brand Prod­ucts. Along with oth­er no­table chefs, he al­so has a line of kitchen uten­sils with Bergn­er Eu­rope.

He has been the culi­nary man­age­ment con­sul­tant for a ho­tel restau­rant in Guyana since 2017 which al­so opened a Bistro and Wine Bar un­der his guid­ance last year.

Charis­mat­ic Pe­ru al­so has a con­sid­er­able so­cial me­dia pres­ence and has teamed up with equal­ly wit­ty co-host, Kezzieann Miller to pro­mote Caribbean cui­sine via their Food­ie Na­tion pre­sen­ta­tions on YouTube.

Cook­ing has al­ways come nat­u­ral­ly to Pe­ru he said, but build­ing his brand has not. He has had to over­come ad­ver­si­ty and some­times feels mis­un­der­stood be­cause of his bold ap­proach and show­man­ship which he picked up while at uni­ver­si­ty.

Orig­i­nal­ly from San­ta Cruz, Pe­ru grew up try­ing to em­u­late fa­mous British chef, Ains­ley Har­riott and Amer­i­can celebri­ty chef, Emer­il La­gasse. He end­ed up gain­ing weight rapid­ly and was teased at his sec­ondary school, Bel­mont Boys’ Sec­ondary. It was gym in­struc­tor Kevin Leigert­wood who helped build his con­fi­dence, train­ing him to bal­ance ex­er­cise with mod­er­ate eat­ing.

Af­ter com­plet­ing an As­so­ciate De­gree in Culi­nary Man­age­ment at the TTHTI, Pe­ru at­tained four schol­ar­ships and earned his As­so­ciate de­gree and BSc in Culi­nary Arts at John­son and Wales Uni­ver­si­ty, Mi­a­mi and lat­er, his MSc in Mar­ket­ing with a Mi­nor in Me­dia Stud­ies at the School of Busi­ness and Com­put­er Sci­ence, Trinidad.

“I suf­fered a lot when I went to the Unit­ed States. Be­ing a Caribbean boy, I was looked down on a lot be­cause of the in­gre­di­ents I knew. We have some­thing called Sai­jan bha­ji (moringa leaves which have now gained in­ter­na­tion­al recog­ni­tion) here and if I were to speak about it, they wouldn’t know about it. I was ridiculed a lot, so I had to tough­en up,” he re­called.

Back home af­ter uni­ver­si­ty, nav­i­gat­ing the lo­cal culi­nary field was al­so tough, but Pe­ru ad­just­ed.

Re­la­tion­ships with the op­po­site sex too, have taught the ini­tial­ly “shel­tered”, “kind­heart­ed” and “sweet” Pe­ru some hard life lessons, he ad­mit­ted.

His for­ay in­to chut­ney so­ca, with the song, “Bub­ble with Me” in 2014 and in­to pol­i­tics as the UNC can­di­date for Ca­roni East in this year’s gen­er­al elec­tions have al­so test­ed his re­silience.

Dur­ing the ini­tial COVID-19 lock­down, he launched “Feed the Na­tion 1000”, sourc­ing spon­sor­ship and or­gan­is­ing vol­un­teers to cook and dis­trib­ute meals week­ly to 1,000 needy peo­ple.

“I used it as my in­tro­duc­tion to pol­i­tics to show that if this is what I can do as a chef, imag­ine what I could do on a con­stituen­cy or min­is­te­r­i­al lev­el with greater re­sources,” he said.

He said this “up­set” some who most like­ly felt he was over­step­ping his bounds, but he said he would not be de­terred.

“I think I've had a pro­cliv­i­ty for pol­i­tics since 1995. I was about 11. I have al­ways loved the ex­cite­ment, the en­vi­ron­ment that pol­i­tics fos­ters. A lot of peo­ple shun it, but I love to see how these he­roes...these guys who have bril­liant ideas can change a coun­try.

“Be­ing a chef, I am able to do cer­tain things, but be­ing in pol­i­tics lets you do it on a dif­fer­ent lev­el.”

In the mak­ing for 18 years since he is an avid doc­u­menter of his ac­tiv­i­ties, Pe­ru’s cook­book mem­oir will be re­leased in No­vem­ber. In it, he pairs recipes with the sto­ries which sparked them. From recipes he mod­i­fied dur­ing his in­tern­ship in Grena­da, to meals cooked for girls with whom he went out on first dates, Pe­ru promis­es a jour­ney of “im­ma­ture, ma­ture, whim­si­cal and awe-in­spir­ing” ad­ven­tures turned in­to food ideas.

De­scrib­ing it as a “must-read” and “the new Caribbean-cen­tric sta­ple,” he said he de­cid­ed to share to make peo­ple hap­py and con­tin­ue to get them ex­cit­ed about food, es­pe­cial­ly dur­ing this pan­dem­ic where many are cook­ing at home and have been re­quest­ing recipes.

Q&A with Pe­ru

Known for his bold flair and mean cook­ing skills, culi­nary am­bas­sador, TV per­son­al­i­ty and tal­ent­ed chef, Ja­son Pe­ru, fur­ther chats with Gillian Cal­iste about his trav­els and likes.

Chef, you’ve trav­elled ex­ten­sive­ly, what keeps you an­chored to Trinidad, pro­mot­ing lo­cal cui­sine?

I was for­tu­nate enough to ob­tain four schol­ar­ships; one from the T&T Gov­ern­ment and I al­ways said rather than con­tribute to the brain drain, why not come back to Trinidad and To­ba­go. I was al­so able to bet­ter ap­ply my tech­niques to this mar­ket and I al­ways gave back. My lo­go is red, white and black. I’m al­ways about rep­re­sent­ing our food and rather than rep­re­sent­ing some­thing in­ter­na­tion­al that peo­ple al­ready know, we have a great cul­ture, so many great races, we should rep­re­sent some­thing unique. Why not own it, sell it?

What's the best coun­try you've vis­it­ed?

Ugan­da. Trinidad had opened up our con­sulate there and I was se­lect­ed with two oth­er chefs to spend two weeks show­cas­ing our food. I did that al­so in Venezuela in 2007. Hugo Chavez had in­vit­ed me.

The kind­est peo­ple I met were from Ugan­da. It’s not on­ly that we went on the (riv­er) Nile, they were the nicest and most hum­ble peo­ple. I cooked with the poor­est peo­ple in Venezuela on the hills. Peo­ple talk about the kind of pover­ty we have here, but it’s glo­ri­ous here. When you trav­el and see the pover­ty in Venezuela, these peo­ple had noth­ing, but they were so hap­py and they were try­ing.

Any strange food you had in Ugan­da? What did it taste like?

I had os­trich and it was nice…tast­ed like beef. I had crick­ets.

What do you do to re­lax?

I like fly­ing my drone, a DJI In­spire. I like to dri­ve to the beach and I like shoot­ing at the range. I don’t drink, I don’t smoke and I don’t re­al­ly favour the fete scene, the crowds.

You’ve had a hard day, what’s your go-to food?

Some good, au­then­tic In­di­an food…mat­tar pa­neer–peas and In­di­an cheese in a light cur­ry sauce–naan bread…pota­to sal­ad, fried rice, fried chick­en, callaloo.

A dish you failed at?

There were two things I failed at–learn­ing to speak French and mak­ing barfi. Ha­ha!

What is this fas­ci­na­tion with pork I hear that you have?

Pork is my favourite meat in the whole wide world. Every week I butch­er and mince my own pork, sea­son it and make fresh pork sausages and peo­ple (clients) go crazy for it. I think I make pork bet­ter than any­body in this coun­try. I make bar­be­qued pork, roast pork, char-siu pork. I am a pork mas­ter.

Speak­ing about pork, what’s your favourite fes­ti­val to cook for?

Christ­mas then Di­vali. From a boy, I've al­ways been en­chant­ed by Christ­mas. My birth­day is De­cem­ber 31 and De­cem­ber is my month to have fun. We made bread on Christ­mas Eve, a great ham. In the morn­ing at my grand­moth­er’s house in San­gre Grande, we’d have chul­ha or fire­side cur­ried duck, buss-up-shut and dhal­phuri. We’d stop by each fam­i­ly mem­ber and you’d get pota­to sal­ad and Chi­nese chick­en, turkey and ham, cur­ry. It’s a great day.