About Chef Shanika — More Than a Chef | Chef Shanika Experience

Where It Started

I'm a Washington, DC girl, and food has been part of my life for as long as I can remember.

I grew up watching my great-grandmother, my grandmothers, and my father cook. I was little, but I was paying attention. I watched what happened around the kitchen, around the table, and especially around a full plate.

I still remember people coming to the door of our family home asking what had been cooked for dinner. My family was big, and food wasn't always plentiful, but somehow my great-grandmother or grandmother would still find a way to put a plate together for somebody.

That stayed with me.

Long before I understood what hospitality was, I understood you feed people.

My mother added another layer to that. She loved bringing people together. Weekend gatherings, family parties, a house full of people — she worked hard to make sure everybody was welcomed, fed and taken care of.

I was being taught something without anybody having to sit me down and explain it:

You serve people well. You make room. You give what you have. And you make people feel cared for.

That's where Chef Shanika started.

The Table Taught Me

My cooking is rooted in Southern food and soul food because that's what I grew up eating. That's home to me.

But I've never been someone who wanted to stay in one lane.

Over the years, experience and curiosity pushed me to learn more, taste more and cook beyond what I grew up with. My culinary education at Auguste Escoffier School of Culinary Arts gave me another foundation to build from, but a lot of my education has also come from simply being willing to explore.

Today, I'm comfortable moving between Southern and American cooking, African, Asian, Jamaican, German, Puerto Rican and Mexican influences, as well as more refined and fine-dining styles.

That's one of the things I love most about what I do.

I don't want every plate to taste like it came from the same kitchen.

My Approach

I don't believe a private-chef experience should feel like somebody handed you a menu and told you to pick three things.

Your experience should feel like yours.

I take the client's vision seriously — what they like, what they don't like, what they're celebrating, how they want the evening to feel and what their dietary needs require.

Some clients want familiar food elevated. Some want to be surprised. Some want Southern comfort food. Some want something completely outside of what they normally eat.

And sometimes, they want a little bit of everything.

That's where I come in.

I curate each experience around the person sitting at the table, not just the food going on it.

Approach to Hospitality

I was raised around Southern hospitality, but I bring my own version of it to the table — refined Southern hospitality with a little DC city-girl edge.

For me, hospitality isn't about putting on a performance.

It's noticing.

It's knowing when somebody needs something before they have to ask. It's making people comfortable without making a production out of it. It's remembering the little things. It's knowing when to step forward and when to give people space to enjoy their evening.

That same instinct I watched in the women and people who raised me is still very much a part of how I work today.

The food matters.

But how people feel while they're being served matters too.

Clients & Experience

Over the years, I've had the privilege of preparing meals for people from different worlds — entertainers, creatives, professionals, ministry leaders, private hosts and families who simply want something special.

I've served Bryan Andrew Wilson as a personal chef for more than four years, creating meals designed around his lifestyle, preferences and schedule.

I've also had the privilege of serving Candace Haynes, an actress, choreographer, creative director and producer associated with the Emmy-winning HBO series DTF St. Louis.

Those relationships mean something to me because private-chef work is personal. You're being trusted with someone's home, their table, their preferences and sometimes a very small part of their everyday life.

I don't take that lightly.

The goal has never been to simply cook for somebody.

It's to know who I'm cooking for.

Rooted in Service

The same lessons that taught me to cook also taught me to give.

I watched my family share food even when there wasn't always a lot to spare. I watched my mother work tirelessly to make sure people had what they needed. Those memories shaped more than my cooking — they shaped how I see service.

Giving back isn't a separate part of who I am. It's part of where I come from.