Chef Jennifer Hill Booker on fighting food waste and returning to Windstar

Through the line’s partnership with the James Beard Foundation, Hill Booker last formulated recipes, led on-board cooking demonstrations, and interacted with passengers on a Windstar voyage in 2022. ‘I guess I did a good job because they invited me back!’ she told Seatrade Cruise at F&B@Sea in Miami, where she joined the ‘Culinary Horizons: Land-Based Chefs Take on Cruise Cuisine’ panel. ‘I’m excited for it! They’re a top notch cruise line. I’ve met everyone from the president, Chris Prelog, right through to the people pouring the drinks and everyone is extremely lovely and passionate about what they do.’ 

The ‘Baltic Beauty’ itinerary will take in Copenhagen, Germany, Poland and more. ‘I’m just getting ready to create the recipes,’ said the chef, who again joins the cruise line as a James Beard chef. By attending F&B@Sea, said Hill Booker, she was able to see various vendors, products and ideas for some added inspiration. 

Sustainability 

The professional chef, cookbook author, culinary advocate and culinary instructor started her journey in the cruise industry eight years ago, when she was first invited on board a cruise ship as a guest chef. The idea of guests being able to take ‘one trip and go to 10 different countries, try 20 different cuisines, and meet 100 different people,’ excited her the most about cruise food and beverage. 

Today, at her Arkansas-based restaurant Bauhaus Biergarten, a major priority is ordering from local producers, and reusing and repurposing food to prevent food waste. Growing up, her family ran a farm where she saw firsthand the effort involved in cultivating food. ‘Sustainability is extremely important to me. I was raised in an agrarian family.’ 

The journey to slashing food waste has seen Hill Booker travel the States as part of the James Beard Foundation’s No Waste Impact fellowship, ‘I would talk to chefs and culinarians and restaurateurs and encourage them to reduce their food waste. It’s not a sexy conversation until you start talking about money and you tell them that for every dollar they make, 40 cents of it is going in the trash can. Then they sit up a little taller and they pay attention.’

As an example, ‘Let’s say we have mushrooms: we love the caps of the shiitake but what can we do with the stem? How can we make that attractive..? I mean, we’ve talked about it for years, but [it’s about] really pushing for chefs to create a menu that’s leaning heavily on what’s available locally and then repurposing food waste.’ 

A Le Cordon Blue-Paris certified chef, Hill Booker shares her style of cooking not only thorough her restaurant but via her culinary company, ‘Your Resident Gourmet,’ in her two cookbooks, ‘Field Peas to Foie Gras: Southern Recipes with a French Accent’ and ‘Dinner Déjà Vu: Southern Tonight, French Tomorrow,’ as well as on her website ChefJenniferHillBooker.com.

‘I like to talk about food and teach people to cook and create because it empowers them,’ she explained. ‘If I can teach someone to feed themselves and feed their family, that’s a skill and a power no one can ever take away from them.’ 

Next year’s F&B@Sea will run from April 9-10 at the Mana Wynwood Convention Center, concurrent with Seatrade Cruise Global 2025 from April 7-10 at the Miami Beach Convention Center.