Greater Miami Convention & Visitors Bureau的动态

Transcript

My dad was a Carpenter. And. Watching him build a chair and seeing how you put these pieces together is similar to how a chef builds their additions. You start with a potato, but how do you want that potato to end? When you're sitting down and you're thinking about constructing these different dishes, you'd think about OK to guess who are coming to my to my establishment, where they coming from, How would they receive this, this dish that I'm making or whether they're from France or whether they're from Tahiti. How am I going to translate this potato into something that they're going to love? So I was born in the Bahamas. My parents are Haitian. Remember being young, being a a kid, just seeing tourists come come off the cruise ship. So we were always nicer tourists and tourists are always nice to us. My parents being Haitian, they decided that they wanted me to connect with my Haitian culture, so we moved to Haiti. We lived in Haiti for a few years. I had the chance to travel all throughout the the island, which is great because it gave me a sense of it gave me a sense of home. My mom, she wanted me to. Look for great opportunities. So she decided that she wanted me to move to South Florida. She said, OK, you are going to either be a doctor or be a lawyer, be an engineer. That's Haitian parents for you. Right before I graduated high school, I had a friend of mine who was going to culinary school at Johnson and Wales at the time. Seeing the students in their chef whites and their hats, the autistic things they were doing with food, it it touched me. We're going to start doing, he started sauteing. The smell of the sautee, the garlic he used, the basil olive oil. That action just kind of ignited something in me and it said, you know, this is what I wanted to do. Thank you. Connor's school was kind of out of the the picture for me because it was too expensive at the time. So I decided, you know, let me check out Miami-Dade College. Speaking to one of the councils at the time, he sat down with me and he mentioned hospitality management, hospitality, I'm thinking hospitals. So I didn't connect the two. And then he explained to me hospitality deals with tourism and automatically when he said tourism, it clicked and I said OK, this is where I need to be. That childhood part of me connecting with tourists then woke up. Being in Miami-Dade and working full time, it was it was tough. I knew about financial aid but didn't apply for it because I didn't want to any kind of student that or anything like that. So he told me about this program called the Black Hospitality Initiative that that could help me pay for school. You went through the program with me and he went through all the forms. So we signed everything. We sent it. I I was still doing the same thing I was doing, just working, going to school and didn't think anything of it until they reach out to me. They told me that I I actually won the scholarship. BHR was so fundamental to to my hospitality career. For me it it just, it's such a relief. It takes so much off my shoulders because now I can focus on school. Being an executive chef, it's different from being a line cook, but we're all cooks. Is that kick of dopamine when when it's busy and everything is just chaotic, it's like you're you're conducting a Symphony. But that Symphony is in your head because everything else around you is just going berserk. I really felt like I was where I was supposed to be. The first time I was on Food Network was in 2012. I was contacted by them to be on Chef Wanted. Competition cooking and and regular industry cooking, two different things and unless you have both a little bit mastered when you go and do these competitions like the Food Network, you're not really going to make it. Food Network in 2012 gave me that experience and I'm forever grateful and I wanted to show. Yay. At the end of the show, I think I ended up with with about $9000 and I used that $9000 actually to start the the Children's Foundation. Being on the ground in Haiti and seeing the kids and doing stuff with them. It, it moved me more than than anything else because I imagine myself as that kid, seeing somebody who came from the same place I came from doing something great. It would resonate, you know, something with me. It's cooler for me to use the money to to do those kinds of things. You can't stand the heat. Coming back into the kitchen, I'm like, ohh, yeah, OK. That's why I love this business so much. French French crostini. Food is not only something to eat. Food is culture. Food is love. Food is life. And food is tourism. Being on Miami Beach. A big part of our economy is tourism, so being a chef here, we attract people from from everywhere to come here and experience what we call our paradise. Sorry to interrupt. So how was the dining experience so far? Excellent. We love it and I love this house. It's a little spicy. Thank you. So the sauce is a white wine sauce we have into the butter, hopefully through our hospitality. When you guys come, please make this your home. Thank you, thank you so much, thank you. They go home knowing what the Miami Magic is. Hi, my name is Chef Juvan Jiang and I'm the Executive Chef at Carlton Hotel and I am brought to you by Tourism. Yeah, alright.