Guyanese chef celebrating Guyanese food, family and values

By Shaniya Harding

THE joyful familiar atmosphere, as sounds of happy conversation and laughter among family, rises throughout her grandmother’s home as the smell of food resonates from the kitchen where the women of the family come together to create dishes celebrating culture, tradition and above all else, family. These are some of the memories Althea Brown could relate to as a young woman growing up in Campbellville, Georgetown, Guyana.

Althea Brown is a Guyanese-born chef. After leaving Guyana as a teenager, Althea saw the need for Guyanese food in her life and other people’s lives seeking to recapture the true Guyanese essence in food. After the long and arduous process of learning to cook and learning to teach others with her recipes, Althea is finally launching her book titled ‘Caribbean Paleo’.

The book, which combines healthy gluten-free foods with authentic Guyanese flavours was launched in true Guyanese fashion on September 6, Althea’s birthday. The event was hosted at Herdmanston Lodge, and many of Althea’s family and friends were there to support her. But the evening’s question and answer segment between the author and the audience was perhaps the most memorable, with the audience tossing questions to Althea about her experiences, opinions and future endeavors.

“In terms of the book, I really wanted this book to be a true representation of who I am. And yes, I am Guyanese. Undoubtedly, I am Guyanese. And there has to be Guyanese recipes in this book.” Althea then went on to say, ‘I wanted to show that we can enjoy the flavours and authenticity of Guyanese recipes with some slight tweaks.” Althea admitted that has had her fair share of issues with different foods, particularly her sensitivity to gluten. And being Guyanese, she set out in her book to craft healthy recipes for those who love Guyanese and Caribbean foods but may have certain sensitivities or allergies. In her recipes, she swaps regular flour for cassava flour, among many other things, to make the food she loves healthier and better for those like herself.

The evening came to a close with Althea signing books for the numerous fans, friends and colleagues at the event. One of the questions asked was if Althea feels as though she has made her country of Guyana proud. Althea expressed that yes, she does. But countless happy, supportive Guyanese people said that Althea has taught them so much that both she and her book are proudly considered Guyanese.

About the author
At 18, Althea’s family moved to the United States of America. The change, she said, was drastic, but it also made holding on to her sense of tradition all the more important. “It was a huge culture shock for me. I grew up in Campbellville. I feel like I had a very sheltered life. I basically went to school, went home, went to church, those kinds of things. And suddenly, I was in Brooklyn, having access to everything you can think of. Everything around me was new, and I was soaking it all in and then also feeling the pressure to be successful like, this is it,” Althea told the Pepperpot Magazine.

Altha’s first love for cooking was instilled in her by the women of her family. And she says that her family played a big role in shaping how she is. “It’s hard to say who I am without talking about where I’m from. I went to Bishop’s and I spent the first 20 years of my life thinking I wanted to do law. And then going to school and studying law and then working in marketing. And then I had a life change when I had my son and decided to be a stay-at-home mom. And I started really focusing on nurturing my family and suddenly I have this American kid, but I’m Guyanese. How can I make sure he understands where we’re from and what our culture is and what would that look like?” She said,

Althea admitted that at the beginning of her cooking journey, she was not, as she puts it, nailing the flavors. She was, in the beginning, still very invested in pursuing law. So, the leap she took from law, to marketing and then to the culinary arts was a very uncharacteristic move for her. “I think me as a person is really a mix of this really buttoned up person that wanted to be a lawyer and wanted to dot my i’s and cross all the t’s and dot all the i’s. And this mom who wants to be nurturing and giving things back to the family. And then this person who is overtly Guyanese and wanting to make sure that my kids understand where we came from and that food is a big part of who we are and where we came from,” Althea said.

“I absolutely hated everything about school. Even though I was good at it, it was never what I wanted to do forever. But I thought this is what I had to do,” she explained. Althea finished college a semester ahead with two undergraduate bachelor’s degrees. After she successfully completed college, Althea was hit with the hard fact that law school is expensive. She decided to take a year off and work in order to tackle law school. She got into marketing, and it sparked her creativity, causing her to never look back. “I loved the creativity of marketing. A part of my brain was turned on in a way that I didn’t know could be turned on just looking at ads and campaigns. Even that creativity goes into my platform and what I am doing, which I love.”

Althea never returned to complete law school but rather embarked on an entirely new mission: the creation of ‘Metemgee’. Metemgee is Althea’s online platform that gave rise to her first set of recipes. It began just after she moved to a new state, where there were no Guyanese cook shops or food nearby. But Althea had her mother and sense of culture, and she began crafting her recipes. She began taking notes from her mother and began sharing them on her blog in 2013 as a hobby. Her blog went through a variety of name changes, first called ‘Honeymooning with Food’ and the name ‘Pepperpot’ was even considered. But Althea settled on Metemgee and as her recipes grew, so did her following. Althea admitted that at first, she wasn’t too fond of the name Metemgee.

As she stated, “For years, I struggled with it being called Metemgee. It was out there, but I wasn’t proud of it. I had to constantly explain what Metemgee was to people who weren’t Guyanese. It was such a pain for me I wanted to rename it to something like Althea’s Kitchen or Cooking with Althea. But my husband told me, no, you build a brand and you let people learn it,” Althea said. Today, Althea takes pride in explaining that Metemgee is a Guyanese dish. And, of course, she is always happy to answer the question that often follows: where is Guyana?

One of the reasons why Althea and Metemgee skyrocketed was because of the authenticity she displayed. Althea sought to show her life and recipes in the most natural, real and raw ways possible. “I didn’t want to have this persona that most people have on the internet; of my house is clean or my kitchen is fancy, look at me. But life is hard. Life as a mom is hard creating content and sharing is hard. But I love food, here’s the food.” And in 2019, she officially relaunched Metemgee, treating it as a job, with full dedication. And within a few months, Metemgee took off.
Caribbean Paleo will be available on Amazon and in other stores in Guyana. Althea dedicated the book to both of her grandmothers and to all the women who made magic in the kitchen because of what they were taught.