Celebrity chef Adrian Forte is making major waves in the Caribbean, lending his superior chef skills to dining an elite clientele of celebrities and high-rolling travellers. After making a name for himself as a fixture in Toronto’s booming culinary scene and as a fan favourite on Top Chef Canada, Forte set his sights on sunnier skies and on building a network of top-notch chefs to cater to the growing global demand for his offerings.
The early days
It was Adrian Forte’s grandmothers who fuelled his passion for cooking. Both his mother and father’s mothers were chefs, which is ultimately how his parents met. “I was living in New York with my grandmother when she was no longer a professional chef and worked in the hospitality industry in the wellness realm,” says Forte of his younger years. “I would just see her come home after being at work all day, jump into the kitchen and within a matter of 30 minutes put something amazing together – it was incredible and remarkable and seeing her transform these ingredients looked like magic to me at 13 or 14-years-old. It made me to want to start cooking.”
So, when his grandma would be at work, he’d be busy experimenting in both an effort to learn a few tricks of the trade and to make life easier for her. “I’d be getting meat ready, seasoning it, and organizing things so that when she came home, it wasn’t as hard for her,” says Forte. “Then, eventually, I started cooking meals on my own.” This passion ultimately lead Forte to pursue his post-secondary education in the culinary realm.
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Fresh from culinary school at Toronto’s George Brown College, Forte started running his own catering company – and it became a quick success. “I knew this chef that had his own catering company, and I kind of just jumped right in,” said Forte. “I had the business mind and I was just hungry, so he made me a partner in the business out the gate. It was a really good way to get my feet wet.”
Forte explains how he approaches life with a “sink or swim” mentality. “So, I jumped in, and we were catering a lot of different parties in the city, so a lot of people got to know me through those,” says Forte. “I would literally schlep a barbecue up like four, flights of stairs, to the top of these rooftops and clubs and sling jerk chicken on cocoa bread sandwiches and I did that for quite some time. I have an unmatched work ethic. I work really, really hard and even if I’m not the most talented chef [out] there, there is nobody on this planet that’s going to outwork me, and that’s just been my work ethic and my ethos forever and it’s never changed.”
This work ethic paid off. It wasn’t long before Forte went to work for Maple Leaf Sports and Entertainment (MLSE). “I worked with the Raptors and was part of this culinary hit squad,” he says. “Each time MLSE would open a new project, myself and a bunch of chefs would man the project. So we opened Real Sports and the food program at the BMO Field when it opened. So, whenever there was a new project there was a specific culinary team that would do everything all the way from ideation, and go in and make the whole thing happen prior to them hiring kitchen staff.”
Kitchen to business mindset
After three or four years in the role, Forte – inspired by a career switch of another chef colleague – who turned his focus to consulting. Armed with the expertise and corporate background from his time at Real Sports, Forte started reaching out to struggling bars and restaurants, asking them if they needed help. “I would meet these restaurants or restaurateurs that weren’t doing so well, and hold these events,” says Forte. “A lot of people would come out and it would help bring revenue to the restaurants and it helped me understand how businesses worked and the concept of scalability.”
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Forte was also a pioneer in Toronto’s pop-up food scene. “I had my own crowd and I had a DJ and we’d just market through social media and word of mouth and, you know, the grassroots market of making and handing out flyers,” says Forte. Once he moved on from the pop-up food and party scene, Forte helped run business at hot Toronto restaurants, like Rock Lobster and The Libertine. In 2015, he opened up Dirty Bird Chicken and Waffles in Kensington. “ I feel like my career has been like a crescendo that just keeps going up,” says Forte. “It’s never been a situation where I’m ever stagnant. I’m just always doing bigger and better and always doing the next big thing. So that’s kind of how I got my start in Toronto.”
Man of many hats
When Forte says his career meant wearing many hats, he means it. In addition to his chef and consulting work, Forte’s career history includes time spent working in television production as a food stylist and in product development for Saputo Cheese. He credits himself, in part, for the rise in popularity of halloumi cheese.
It didn’t take long for Forte to find his way into the television world, becoming a beloved finalist on Top Chef Canada. “I made halloumi a thing,” says Forte. “Most people don’t know that. I actually won a Food Service Award for Most Innovative Product, which I still have a ton of photos and evidence of, but I basically made halloumi popular in North America from different ideas, recipes, and content.”
Prior to Top Chef Canada, Forte says he enjoyed being in the background and stayed out of the spotlight compared to some of his celebrity chef counterparts. But when he was approached to audition for the show, he thought it over and figured he had nothing to lose.
“It was summertime so Saputo was slow. And I wasn’t really doing a lot of private chef work so I figured, you know what, why not?,” says Forte. “So, I went and did the cooking audition for the production crew, obviously made it and then went on the show and the rest was history, man. I was a fan favorite, and absolutely loved my experience there. Doing Top Chef made me realize I wanted more. It just ignited that fire in me, being able to go up against some of the best chefs in the country and stacking up against them. It really made me think, that maybe I should start taking my career a little more seriously and instead of helping to build up other chefs, why not build up myself?”
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To Turks & Caicos and beyond
At a certain point about three years ago – after being a Top Chef semi-finalist, making a name for himself as a successful entrepreneur and receiving a book deal – Forte felt that there was not much left for him to do in Canada. “I didn’t want to open another restaurant because I’ve done that before,” said Forte. “I’ve had successful restaurants, I’ve had failed restaurants. Pandemic aside, I realized that there was no market for what I wanted to do. I want to use the best ingredients in the world and cook amazing food and just put on these elaborate, crazy events and I didn’t really see where I was going to get that kind of market in Toronto. We just don’t have many of those types of people with that much money in our city.”
That’s where the breezy Turks & Caicos come into play. “At the time, my buddy, Chef Dev, had been coming down to Turks for seven years and I hit him up out of the blue, being like, ‘Hey man, I’m looking to do something different. I just want a change. I’m bored of Toronto,” says Forte. “He’s like, ‘I’m going to Turks for two weeks. You want to come?’ I said sure, booked my ticket, and the rest is history.”
Cooking for the stars
Now, the celebrated chef is living the dream in the beautiful Caribbean paradise, with an A-list clientele that includes the likes of Drake, Alicia Keys and other celebrities alike. As the in-house chef at Emara (the estate previously owned by Prince, located on the secluded Turtle Tail peninsula in Providenciales, the largest island in the Turks & Caicos Islands) and a handful of other sprawling, ultra-luxury villas, Forte spends his working days shopping for fresh ingredients and cooking for his high-end clientele. While spending his off days traveling the world for inspiration and new dining experiences–with a side of quality cigars and whisky, “because when you work hard, you got to play harder,” says Forte. For good measure, of course.
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when you work hard, you got to play harder…
Chef Adrian Forte
Bling Empire’s Christine Chiu, recently hosted her birthday party at Emara.
Alicia Keys and Swiss beats recently hosted a birthday party at Emara in Providenciales, Turks & Caicos.
“When I first got here, people were a little bit apprehensive about me. Turks [& Caicos] is one of the most beautiful places on earth; you know, the pristine blue waters, the vegetation, the sand. It’s just a very beautiful place,” says Forte. “So, by right, people are going to be very protective of it, and they’re going to be protective of hospitality, which is the number one industry here. So, when I first got here, people were a little bit apprehensive about me working here as a chef. But, you know, I came with a lot of good baggage; a lot of my clients from Canada and the US are very well known celebrities. So, having them come in here and like — basically, I helped push tourism by getting my clients to come here; my clients would come here because I’m telling them, ‘this is the place you want to be.’”
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Not long after the relocation, Forte managed to find the time to release a cookbook, “Yawd,” last June. “It’s a modern Caribbean cookbook, so it’s a lot of African recipes,” says Forte of the cookbook. “It’s basically just recipes that I, as a chef, like to eat at home. So nothing too expensive here, or too crazy. It’s just the food that I genuinely eat when I have time and I’m relaxing. So, I figured why not compile all my favorite dishes so people can enjoy them themselves in the comfort of their own home. They don’t have to spend thousands of dollars to hire me to cook it. They can just make it themselves.”
In terms of next steps, Forte has plans to expand further globally and is in high demand everywhere from Miami and Los Angeles, to New York and Atlanta. He attributes this growth to the power of word-of-mouth referrals. “Whenever I do a very good job with a client, they refer me to other clients,” says Forte. “My name is in rooms with people that you probably can’t even imagine. It’s actually pretty crazy. Some of the phone calls I’ve been receiving, and people I’m talking to, that try to fly me out…just because people are always trying to one up each other. It’s crazy! The demand is through the roof. So right now, my main focus is to expand my business.”
What’s next for Forte
Chef Forte has his sights set on creating a larger network of chefs in major cities – acknowledging that he “can’t be everywhere at once – that will function as a staffing agency that places these chefs at high-end events. “I have a bunch of chefs in Toronto working for high-net worth and celebrity clients, with my guidance, and I check in with the class to see how they’re doing,” explains Forte. “So, I was basically just managing them, and that’s why I started my hospitality group, the Kingston Group, because I found myself passing off work.”
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A lot of this work passed off by Forte goes to chefs who are of Afro-Caribbean descent, to support the Black community. Although he wouldn’t elaborate much, Forte hints that a new restaurant in France is currently in the works – a spot he intends to open around the time of the Paris Olympics.
“I saw that there was an opportunity to make money because there’s a niche market there that’s being underserved because there’s no good Caribbean food,” says Adrian Forte. “That’s why we tried to test the market with the ghost kitchen versus a brick and mortar. When it comes to the product that we’re doing in France, everything’s already been tested.”
As for advice for his younger self and for budding chefs, he stresses – whether it’s what they like to hear or not – that it’s never easy. “The more successful you get and the more you accomplish, the more work you’re gonna receive – and when I say work, I don’t necessarily mean work as in ‘clients.’ I mean, it’s gonna get even more difficult,” says Forte. “So, you really need to have a tough mental state of mind, because if you really want this, if you’re passionate about what you do, then as cliche as it sounds, it really and truly doesn’t feel like work anymore. And for me, it doesn’t feel like work… Every day I get up and I’m just having fun. I’m just expressing myself artistically… But yeah, the reward for hard work, in my opinion, is more hard work.”
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Forte’s cookbook, Yawd
All the Modern Afro-Caribbean recipes you need.
CREDITS
Shot by: Nick Merzetti; Fashion/Art/Editorial Direction and Production by: Steven Branco; HMUA by: Angela Lee; Gaffer: Francis Chang; Words by Erin Davis, Steven Branco and Mursal Rahman. A Stamina Group Production. Special thank you to Regina Molina and all of the Emara team, Hala Rafati and the Halo & Co. team, Md Bespoke, Sarah Meyer and the Turks & Caicos tourism board, Wymara Resort & Villas, Tim Gallant and the Siren Communications team, as well as H&M Canada and the Md Bespoke teams for the help and support. It takes a village, and it couldn’t have been done without all of their support.
