Movable Feast

Krystal Clarke is 38 years old, but says she has lived 11 lives already. They include being a head chef on yachts and founding FoodSaucy, a luxury dining company that brings the personal chef experience on board, ashore and pretty much anywhere else clients want to enjoy it.

“I was never meant to have a job where I sit in an office at a computer all day,” Clarke says. “I like moving around and thrive on being busy.”

This past summer, she freelanced aboard the 133-foot (40-meter) IAG Serenity at the Newport charter show and during several charters. She prefers freelancing to a permanent job on any single yacht; she likes the freedom and flexibility to work on her own business, and to continue learning new things.

Clarke says she’s always been self-taught. She grew up moving around with her single mom, who was a nurse in the U.S. Air Force. When her mother was deployed during Operation Desert Storm, she lived with relatives. “The military life taught me to be independent, to adapt to different situations and embrace the world around me,” she says.

She credits her country-cooking skills to her mother and grandmother, who used slow-cookers and sometimes skipped plates altogether. “On occasion, we would have a pound of scallops with mushrooms for dinner, eaten directly from the frying pan,” she recalls. “This was very special to me.”

Early on, she developed a taste for healthy food. When she and her older brother were given an allowance to buy snacks, she would go for fresh green beans and sparkling water.

She tried to focus on a business degree in college, but her passion for food eclipsed her studies. During summers, she volunteered as a missionary, helping children with the Youth Peace Corps in Romania, and she put herself though school with jobs at high-end restaurants.

“As I had school during the day, I took those impossibly early kitchen jobs such as a pastry assistant beginning at 5 a.m. before going to my classes,” she says. “Another part-time job was at No. 9 Park in Boston’s historic Beacon Hill, a fine-dining institution and the closest to Michelin-star dining in the city.”

Eventually, she moved to California and enrolled in a culinary arts college. She worked on the side, and says she knew more than the instructors thanks to her hands-on experience.

“So when my executive chef asked me to sign on full-time, it seemed the obvious path forward,” she says. “This was not just any restaurant. It was one of California’s top French restaurants, Mille Fleurs. Working under master chef Martin Woelse, it was a priceless education in the foundations of French cooking.”

Then she met a captain, who turned into a boyfriend and led her to discover a life of working on boats. She cooked on his 80-foot Andrews racing sailboat for a time that included a race from Southern California to Cabo San Lucas, and the Transpac from California to Hawaii.

After a few years of cooking at a 45-degree angle, Clarke vowed only to cook on land or aboard luxury motoryachts. She worked a lead position at Addison, now a three-star Michelin restaurant in San Diego, and became executive sous chef of the Resort at Pelican Hill in Newport Beach. After a partnership in her own restaurant, she undertook what she calls “a culinary pilgrimage” through Europe, working on organic farms, at vineyards, in bodegas and at high-end restaurants.

“I know how to get my hands dirty,” she says, “and at the same time, I do well in Michelin-star restaurants.”

Clarke settled in Barcelona, where she took maritime courses and landed an internship at the three-star Michelin restaurant ABaC. This was the beginning of her yachting career, with the off-season spent working at what’s now a one-star Michelin restaurant, Hisop, also in Barcelona. She also traveled with another chef to open Michelin-style pop-up restaurants throughout Spain.

In the galley, Clarke aims for camaraderie with her crewmates. She says food prep should be fun. She listens to podcasts while cooking. One of her goals is to have her own podcast sharing her journey, hoping to motivate others to take similar chances in life.

She also thrives on a good charter challenge. She says that when a group includes one guest who can’t eat gluten, one guest who wants no sugar, another guest who is sensitive to salt, and a guest who is a vegan, she can make everyone happy. Her portfolio of signature dishes reads like a cookbook for the United Nations.

Perhaps it’s because she, herself, can’t get enough of different tastes. She named her company FoodSaucy because when she’d eat chicken nuggets as a kid, she would grab eight different sauces for the four little morsels. “A sauce can make or break a dish,” she says.

“Working with food is the perfect profession for me,” she adds. “A good chef has to be capable of multitasking, and as food trends are ever-changing, I am never bored of cooking.” 

For more information: foodsaucy.com, denisonyachting.com
or any charter broker

This article was originally published in the Fall 2023 issue.