Marie Mitchell

The Climb

Early in their career, Marie worked as founder at Pop's Kitchen (from 2015), a formative chapter that helped define the rhythm of her work and the contours of her culinary identity. Today, Marie is chef and co-founder of Island Social Club (since 2017) and author of Kin: Caribbean Recipes for the Modern Kitchen (since 2024). Together, those roles suggest a career that has grown outward in both practice and expression: one rooted in the immediacy of cooking, the other in the permanence of the written page.

Today

From 2017 to 2024, she served as chef, co-founder, and director of Island Social Club. That role placed her firmly in the kitchen and in the business, guiding the project across seven years with the practical pressures and creative satisfactions that come from building something that must live in the world every day. Since 2022, she has also been chef and author, a pairing that reflects a widening sense of purpose. Her writing has been framed by more than recipes alone: she said, “It’s much more than a cookbook: ‘It’s a springboard for having conversations, about how we move on past colonialism and its legacy, where food is the journey,’ she says.” Seen together, these chapters trace a public voice becoming clearer and more assured. The work is personal, but it is also expansive, carrying family history, cultural memory, and the texture of Caribbean cooking into spaces where those stories can be shared, considered, and revisited.

Signature

Marie’s signature dishes include Kin: Caribbean Recipes for the Modern Kitchen, Piña Panna Cotta with Caramelised Pineapple, Buss Up Shut Roti, Pops’ Mac Pie, and Reef Chicken. The names alone hint at her range: the balance of sweetness and sharpness in Piña Panna Cotta with Caramelised Pineapple, the unmistakable comfort of Buss Up Shut Roti and Pops’ Mac Pie, and the depth and familiarity suggested by Reef Chicken. Even Kin: Caribbean Recipes for the Modern Kitchen sits within that same arc, as both title and touchstone.

In Their Words “It’s much more than a cookbook: “It’s a springboard for having conversations, about how we move on past colonialism and its legacy, where food is the journey,” she says.” “I feel ecstatically proud, because I did think it was not going to be the book I’d always envisaged when I lost mum.”