With Christmas Day now exactly a week away, Debbie Houston is still hoping that a surge of late orders over the extended Christmas season can turn her fortunes around, even if in a modest way.
Her ten-year-old Glitzy Glamour and Culinary School has taken a proverbial pounding since the coronavirus pandemic descended upon Guyana in March this year and which is almost certain to cast something of a ‘damper’ on Christmas. Like others who ‘spread joy’ through their culinary skills, however, Debbie appears to hold the view that the spirit of the Yuletide season could make the difference and that the adage about the way to people’s hearts being through their stomachs still holds good.
In an industry, the lucrativeness of which is accentuated at this time of year, Debbie is keen to, for the umpteenth time, lay her credentials literally on the table.
Setting aside her degree in Social Work from the University of Guyana, her culinary skills have, over the years, been sharpened by sojourns in Trinidad and Tobago, at the Carnegie School of Home Economics, and through various on-line courses in aspects of food preparation. These days, she pours her energies and her skills into making the Glitzy Glamour and Culinary School a sought-after destination as much for ‘foodies’ as for persons interested in enhancing their culinary skills. Where the menu is concerned, she says she offers a bewildering array of food… pastries, cakes, vegetarian dishes (as well as dishes that are mindful of the culinary requirements of diabetics). Nor is there any cultural exclusion here. She also boasts a proficiency in the ‘turning out’ of Indian dishes.
Glitzy Glamour and Culinary School was established once Debbie had retired from the Prison Service in 2010. Her entrepreneurial pursuits have been good to her, the range of her culinary skills having opened up opportunities for her across the board… Whether it be Christmas, Mothers’ Day, Fathers’ Day, or a birthday; then there is Diwali, Eid, Phagwah, and the various other occasions that give reason for gatherings where people would eat and drink… all of these are occasions where she looks forward to ‘feeding’ people and pocketing some hard-earned money of her own.
We spoke with her about how she had fared for the greater part of 2020. There had been a huge reduction in patronage. Last year she had been “fully booked” for the duration of the months. We didn’t bother to ask her the reason for this year’s drought. Weddings, birthday and other gatherings had vanished like butter ‘gainst the sun. This year, she said, she would particularly miss the lucrative staff parties thrown by large institutions where, sometimes, the numbers to be catered for amounted to in excess of three hundred. Those occasions left you with mixed feelings of exhaustion and satisfaction. The two, she believes, go well together. Both the number of parties and the numbers that would gather at those parties would decline considerably this year. Already, fewer orders were coming in… and the customary flood of seasonal Black Cake orders has slowed to a near trickle. It appeared that the COVID-19 pandemic has engendered a great deal of penny-pinching. The circumstances, Debbie had discovered, had apparently driven many of her clients to ‘brush up’ on their cooking and Black Cake-making skills. Some had even gone to the point of ‘taking in work,’ thereby creating a much more crowded and competitive sector.
She is, she says, undaunted, confident it seems, that the standards which the Culinary School had set would mean that her mainstream clientele would keep faith with her.
Not that there had not been disappointments. When she had started the Culinary School she had hoped that there would be a pool of support to keep her going particularly during those periods when the weighty catering started to pour in and more particularly to have people whom she could train to meet the wider needs of the local hospitality sector. Good help, she discovered, is hard to find and she conceded that over time, there were only a few youngsters that she could recommend to the industry with a clear conscience. Most of the people whom she had trained were housewives bent on raising their game in their own kitchens. Some of them had long migrated taking with them what they had considered to be ‘fallback skills,’ in the event that they discovered that jobs were hard to find in their new homelands.
Glitzy Glamour Culinary School offers elementary and advanced courses in culinary skills, including baking. The courses last six weeks and eight weeks, respectively. Tuition costs are $10,000 and $16,000, respectively. There were times during the earlier months of the pandemic when enrolment had been reduced to one person per class.
Debbie wanted us to tell our readers about her Christmas promotion. The year, she is doing a deal that gets every buyer of an $8,000, one-pound Black Cake, a half-pound Sponge Cake, free of cost. She wanted us to provide a ‘plug’ for her other goodies too… like her chicken puffs, twenty five of which will set you back $4,000 and her one-pound Diabetic Cakes that cost $6,000 each. She is also offering eggless cakes at $6,000 each.
She wanted us to say, too, that in the days ahead she wants her phone to ring ‘off the hook,’ as we say in Guyana. Debbie Houston can be reached on 680-4171.
