Chef Shorne Benjamin didn’t plan to become one of the most compelling voices in Caribbean cuisine. He planned to work on Wall Street. But somewhere between the 2008 financial crash and a moment of radical clarity, he walked into the French Culinary Institute and never looked back. What followed was something far bigger than a career pivot — it was a homecoming.
- My grandmother was a woman of radical generosity. My fondest memory and my greatest inspiration is seeing her use food as a form of currency to create happiness. She used her kitchen to help the less fortunate and feed the community. She taught me that a plate of food is a way to give back.
- I truly believed in the power of Caribbean flavors and felt they deserved a seat at the fine-dining table. I was passionate enough to choose being ‘uncomfortable’ in order to win. I wanted to make a permanent mark on my culture, and the kitchen was the only place I could truly do that.
- [Additional Read: How Celebrity Chef Colette Burnett Is Leading the Global Food Justice Movement ]
- The pandemic gave us all the gift of time. I didn’t want to rely on an unemployment check — I chose to create my own destiny. That period gave me the confidence to finally bet on myself.
- You simply cannot sell Caribbean food the same way it was sold 50 years ago. Evolution is how we stay relevant.
Growing up in St. Lucia, Benjamin watched his grandmother move through her restaurant kitchen in Soufrière with a quiet authority that never needed announcing. She seasoned fish with precision. She cooked with what he still describes as intention and devotion. And she did something that would shape everything he would later become: she used food as currency — not for profit, but for joy.
My grandmother was a woman of radical generosity. My fondest memory and my greatest inspiration is seeing her use food as a form of currency to create happiness. She used her kitchen to help the less fortunate and feed the community. She taught me that a plate of food is a way to give back.
That lesson didn’t stay in Soufrière. It traveled with him to New York, into the fine-dining world, and eventually into Fat Fowl — his Brooklyn restaurant that has welcomed more than 300,000 guests since opening in 2021. Her mac and cheese recipe still anchors his menu. Her meticulous approach to fish is still in his hands. When Benjamin cooks, he’s not just executing technique — he’s carrying someone forward.
Betting on Himself
The path from finance to the kitchen wasn’t impulsive. It was, by his own description, a deliberate choice to be uncomfortable in pursuit of something that mattered. When the markets collapsed in 2008, Benjamin didn’t scramble to rebuild a banking career. He asked himself a harder question: what actually deserves my life?
I truly believed in the power of Caribbean flavors and felt they deserved a seat at the fine-dining table. I was passionate enough to choose being ‘uncomfortable’ in order to win. I wanted to make a permanent mark on my culture, and the kitchen was the only place I could truly do that.
That conviction has been tested and proven on some of food television’s most competitive stages — “Beat Bobby Flay,” the finals of “Chopped” and the Grace Jamaican Jerk Festival Celebrity Chef Throwdown, which he won. Each appearance wasn’t just a platform for him personally. It was a statement about an entire cuisine that has long been underestimated by the fine-dining world.
[Additional Read: How Celebrity Chef Colette Burnett Is Leading the Global Food Justice Movement ]
Born in a Pandemic, Built to Last
Fat Fowl came to life during one of the most uncertain periods in recent memory. When the Andaz Hotel, where Benjamin was working, went dark overnight in 2020, he could have waited. Instead, he built.
The pandemic gave us all the gift of time. I didn’t want to rely on an unemployment check — I chose to create my own destiny. That period gave me the confidence to finally bet on myself.
The restaurant’s breakout moment came wrapped in two slices of bread. The Oxtail Grilled Cheese — deboned, refined, deeply soulful — went viral more than once and turned Benjamin into something of a subway celebrity in Brooklyn. But he’ll tell you the sandwich isn’t a gimmick. It’s an expression of his broader philosophy: take what people already love at a bone-deep level and show them what it can become.
‘Pardon My Caribbean’
Benjamin calls his approach New Age Caribbean — not fusion, not reinvention, but evolution. His brand phrase, “Pardon my Caribbean,” says everything about how he moves through the culinary world: with confidence, with cultural pride and with the quiet boldness of someone who knows exactly what he’s offering.
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You simply cannot sell Caribbean food the same way it was sold 50 years ago. Evolution is how we stay relevant.
That evolution brought him full circle in 2024, when he returned to St. Lucia for a residency at The Pavilion at Caille Blanc during Restaurant Week — the island he left as a teenager, now receiving him as an established chef. It was the kind of moment that doesn’t need much explanation. The community where he was born watched him cook. That was enough.
Back in Brooklyn, he’s focused on planting deeper roots — a flagship location, a staff that believes in the mission and a dining room where the Caribbean diaspora doesn’t just feel welcomed but feels seen. “I want our guests and my staff to see Fat Fowl as a place of consistency and grace,” he says. “A place where there is always a seat at our table for you.”
His grandmother would recognize that instinct immediately. It’s the same one she carried in Soufrière — the belief that a plate of food, made with love and given freely, is one of the most powerful things a person can offer.
Chef Shorne Benjamin is still offering it. Just on a much larger stage.
