Lee An­na Ma­haraj

leean­na.ma­haraj@guardian.co.tt

As or­ders pile up at Don­nelle’s De­lights in the Queen’s Park Sa­van­nah food court, Don­nelle Ryan-Hus­bands serves her sig­na­ture shark-loaded won­tons and sor­rel-in­fused wings.

While her in­ven­tive dish­es have earned her loy­al cus­tomers, they are the prod­uct of a jour­ney that took her from the cor­po­rate world, through a pan­dem­ic, and to fi­nal­ly own­ing a food busi­ness she once thought was out of reach.

“As a child I al­ways liked cook­ing and bak­ing. I think food makes peo­ple con­nect and be hap­py. Even dur­ing fu­ner­als, I saw that some­times eat­ing makes them for­get the sad­ness,” the 45-year-old Ch­agua­nas res­i­dent said.

Ryan-Hus­bands drew in­spi­ra­tion from her moth­er, who was a cook at the Mount Hope Hos­pi­tal.

“My mom, Don­na, would cook and bake for us and she would al­so do it on the side to make her ex­tra in­come,” she shared.

But as Ryan-Hus­bands rem­i­nisced on the times she would make rice, lentils and stew chick­en, she al­so re­called the feel­ing that her dream of be­com­ing a chef was un­re­al­is­tic.

“I al­ways want­ed to do cook­ing and bak­ing, but grow­ing up, I nev­er had that kind of men­tor­ing and guid­ance. So, I thought, it’s ei­ther you be­come a nurse or a sol­dier, po­lice or of­fice work­er. When I fin­ished school, I start­ed to look through the pa­pers, and I saw va­can­cies for ac­coun­tants. So, I de­cid­ed to start study­ing, and that’s how I end­ed up in ac­count­ing,” she said.

Ryan-Hus­bands ad­mit­ted that she nev­er liked ac­count­ing but it paid the bills. In 2018, it land­ed her a job at Guardian Me­dia as an ac­counts clerk. But she nev­er let go of her true call­ing.

“I re­al­ly do have a pas­sion for all things culi­nary. When I turn on the TV you will see me go­ing straight to Food Net­work or scrolling the in­ter­net and look­ing at food pages. And I take joy in serv­ing peo­ple. It comes from be­ing a Chris­t­ian, be­cause my church is ser­vice-ori­ent­ed,” Ryan-Hus­bands not­ed.

That joy fu­elled her to pur­sue culi­nary train­ing cours­es and keep cater­ing on the side, even though she was a full-time ac­coun­tant.

“I would make bake and shark on a Fri­day and sell it to my col­leagues at Guardian. They loved it and asked me if I bought it from Mara­cas,” she shared.

Even­tu­al­ly, Ryan-Hus­bands de­cid­ed to make the bold choice of leav­ing her sta­ble job to pur­sue cater­ing full-time.

“I was build­ing up my­self to go full-time and I just de­cid­ed to go for it. In­stead of just try­ing to bal­ance work­ing and do­ing the cater­ing on the side, be­cause I wasn’t get­ting enough time to pre­pare for events. And I al­ways want­ed to do cater­ing,” she not­ed.

How­ev­er, a few months af­ter leav­ing her job, the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic hit T&T.

“I went full-time in Oc­to­ber, and then the March of the next year, COVID came. It was chal­leng­ing, be­cause I did go back in­to the cor­po­rate world, be­cause I had no mon­ey and I couldn’t func­tion dur­ing COVID,” she said.

Just weeks af­ter start­ing her new job, she once again took a leap of faith and re­turned to cook­ing full-time.

“I just went to one job and I on­ly stayed there a cou­ple weeks, be­cause I thought if I’m do­ing this, I have to do it and stick to it. I mean, if it’s not mak­ing sense, then I would clear­ly try to get a job again. But I could not fo­cus on cater­ing with a full-time job,” she con­fessed.

Once again, she left the work­force and did cater­ing full-time, but un­der dif­fer­ent con­di­tions. Ac­cord­ing to Ryan-Hus­bands, it was some­thing she had to adapt to. In­stead of wait­ing for cus­tomers to find her, she went look­ing for them.

“I start­ed to look and ask around. So, I would ask peo­ple if they’re hav­ing a birth­day par­ty or an­niver­sary cel­e­bra­tion…I’d do cake, cup­cakes, and even dou­bles. And I’d tell them, you know, I’ll do no-con­tact de­liv­ery by drop­ping it off in their garages,” Ryan-Hus­bands said.

In 2023, she was able to pur­chase a food truck and get her own spot at the Queen’s Park Sa­van­nah.

“It was sur­re­al. Grow­ing up, I nev­er thought that I could have a ca­reer, much less have my own busi­ness. And to know that I could ac­tu­al­ly do some­thing that I am pas­sion­ate about and have my own busi­ness. It meant a lot to have my own truck,” she said.

Now, Ryan-Hus­bands cooks what she de­scribes as Asian-Tri­ni fu­sion meals, with her loaded won­tons, spe­cial­i­ty wings and a wide va­ri­ety of bo­ba tea flavours. All of which she shared were in­spired by her fam­i­ly.

“I tried cubed meat over won­ton skins dur­ing the pan­dem­ic. That was one of our movie night favourites at home, and we would call it loaded wan­tons. My daugh­ters were in­to the bo­ba so I tried it. Dur­ing Fla­va Vil­lage, chil­dren would be cry­ing and ask­ing their par­ents for bo­ba,” she said.

She added that her hus­band and son al­so as­sist with the food truck.

Ryan-Hus­bands plans to open her own restau­rant soon, where she can con­tin­ue serv­ing peo­ple the way her moth­er once did, us­ing food to bring peo­ple to­geth­er and help them for­get their bur­dens.