By Laura Rancie.
After an illustrious 26-year career on the seven seas and calling the British Virgin Islands home for most of that time, it is now back to Brisbane, that Chef Lisa Mead has settled in…for the time being.
When I sat down to interview the well-respected superyacht Chef, it was this
particular line that made me laugh and realise how much she has seen,
adventured and travelled during her years.
Lisa: "It was during COVID that I returned to Australia. It made more sense to
be in Australia at that time than stuck on a Caribbean island unable to work."
I thought to myself…said no one ever! We joked that it’s not a line you
would typically hear. It’s true that Lisa has had her fair share of adventures,
as one does when they cook for the world’s most rich and elite, day in and day
out.
Overseas Lisa had been doing a TV cooking show in the British Virgin Islands but then when she found herself land-based like a mermaid without a tail, during the COVID years her PR agent suggested: "Why don’t you start a podcast? Then you can still communicate with the outside world."
Having done radio previously, she liked the idea. The podcast‘Tales from a Luxury Yacht Chef with Lisa Mead’ now almost 70 episodes deep, ranks in the top 10% of entertainment podcasts globally.
Lisa’s guests include superyacht crews from around the world
that she has worked or bumped shoulders with, superyacht owners, past charter
guests, yacht Chefs and people connected to the global yachting industry. What
happens is a release of memories in the form of crazy fun stories about food
and adventure, as well as people that have inspired her life’s journey.
When asked if there is a particular guest that stands out on her podcast, Lisa
instantly replies: "Captain Evan from Colorado! It was our first charter
together in St Martin in the West Indies, on a 3-week charter. It ended up
being the worst charter in all my 26 years of chartering – the guests were just
awful and our crew were stuck with them for 3 weeks.
"But it was a great way to bond with a new crew because we were clinging onto each other for dear life. The episode with Captain Evan was fun because we got to relive and tell those stories – how we worked through the process of some pretty intense situations and came out becoming great friends on the other end. There are some really funny bits in there.”
What about the most aspirational meal you’ve ever made out at sea?
"I worked for two Texan owners on a luxury motor yacht who had clients come on for the week. They wanted to impress their guests and loved Japanese food. We were anchored in Peter Island in the British Virgin Islands and could see all these sea urchins sticking up near the rocks in the shallows.
"They loved uni and asked me if I could get some for them. They said: ‘We’d really like to have uni as an appetiser before we do dinner tonight – we know you like snorkelling, do you think you can go in and get some and make the uni?’
"So, I was like… er okay. I dived in and got 40 of sea urchins. Obviously, they have big long black spikes and the Captain helped me get them off the bottom of the sea floor with a bucket. I had to use tongs and a sharp knife to try and cut them in half without piercing myself with the point part of the sea urchin, without metal or mesh gloves or protection. I ended up saying, if you want me to continue this charter you may want to reconsider that as an idea until I can get the right equipment.”
Born in Penang and having grown up in Singapore, to Lisa Asian food is her comfort. When off charter, she loves curries, specifically - a dry curry like a beef rendang.
I realised during our chat that out at sea, you can’t easily
duck out to the grocery shop to buy those last-minute ingredients you forgot to
buy. When I asked Lisa about being organised in a superyacht kitchen, her response
was enlightening:
"Yacht cheffing is quite different to working in a restaurant. Sometimes you
are out on a boat for a very long time or anchored off an island with no shops
for days on end and you’re running low on stock. In the British Virgin Islands where I was
mostly based, I had provisioning agents on shore, that I could call up and say
I need XYZ for tomorrow and they would make it happen even to the point that it
was extreme.”
Can you give us an example?
"One time I was talking to guests about barramundi which is obviously not local to that part of the world, which made the guests want…you guessed it…barramundi. I was able to get a provisioning agent to have it flown in and brought to the yacht by fast boat within a day or two.
"Same with kangaroo meat – anything in the world can happen when there is no food budget. Also, it's getting to know the other Chefs on the other boats. You may be at anchorage and you see Chefs from another boat and you’re low on mint so you call up your Chef friend on the motor yacht next to you and say ‘Hey, can I swap some mint out for your sun-dried tomatoes?’ The Captain would then go do the exchange.”
When asked about the most ‘WOW I can’t believe I did that’ moment in her life, Lisa instantly knows what that was and smiles back:
"I can’t believe I sang 'Summer Loving' with Olivia Newton-John in the galley while I was making her afternoon tea. She was a guest, and I’m a big fan of not only her but 'Grease' too. I was humming in the kitchen while I cooked and she walked past and said, ‘I know that song’. So she started singing with me. It was pretty fun!”.
To listen to more of Lisa’s stories and adventures, be sure to tune in to her podcast, Tales from a Luxury Yacht Chef with Lisa Mead.
