Chef Alecia Swainbank in a floral headwrap, plating a Jamaican dinner at a long counter while guests watch from the far side of the table.

The live cooking show behind Jamaica’s #1‑rated restaurant is now in Sarasota.

Twenty years in the hills of Jamaica.
Tonight, your kitchen.

Invite Chef Alecia into your home for a five-course farm-to-table Jamaican dinner cooked right in front of your guests.

Check Your Date

From $200 per guest, all-inclusive

As featured in
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4.8/5 Tripadvisor · 836 reviews
20yrs In Negril, Jamaica
Observer Food Award 2015 · Westmoreland Parish
Featured Jamaica Tourist Board · Culinary Experience

Chef Alecia Swainbank · author of Forgotten Wisdoms: Ancient African Traditions for Modern Moms

What actually happens

This is a cooking show, not catering.

Most private chefs work behind a closed door and send the food out. Alecia does the opposite. She lays the ingredients on your counter, cooks in front of you, and tells you where every dish comes from.

Five courses over about three hours. Somewhere in the middle, people stop being guests and start asking questions.

See how an evening runs
A line of white plates dressed with star-fruit garnish and pickled vegetable sides, with a wall of fresh tropical fruit behind.
A stacked plated course of pepper shrimp over callaloo and yam, garnished with scallion and scotch bonnet ribbons.

Three ways to book

Choose your evening.

Signature

The Live Cooking Show

Five courses cooked in front of your guests over about three hours, ending with fruit flambé. She cooks, she talks, and by the end somebody’s holding a spoon. Two guests or thirty.

Vegan, vegetarian, gluten-free and allergy guests are welcome and well taken care of.

From $200 per guest · $1,200 minimum booking
Introductory rate through December 2026.

Learn more

Private Chef

One night, or your whole stay.

Chef Alecia shops, cooks and cleans up in your kitchen. Four courses for a single evening, or three nights and up with breakfast and lunch handled too.

Vegan, vegetarian, gluten-free and allergy guests are welcome and well taken care of.

One night from $150 per guest · three nights or more from $125 per night

Learn more

Hands-on

The Cooking Class

Learn to cook and spice like a Jamaican. Crack a coconut, make the cream, press the juice — then sit down to a three-course lunch you made yourself. Three hours, midday, in your kitchen.

Vegan, vegetarian, gluten-free and allergy guests are welcome and well taken care of.

From $150 per guest · $750 minimum booking

Learn more

The food

Jamaican cooking, done the long way.

Curried goat that took four hours. Jerk chicken with the char it’s supposed to have. Escovitch snapper. Callaloo, rice and peas, festival, ripe plantain. Fresh juice pressed that afternoon.

Vegan, vegetarian, and gluten-free guests eat the same meal as everyone else. No separate menu, no plate that looks like an apology.

See the menus
Four plates of golden pumpkin soup finished with a signature Z-shaped cream swirl, on a woven placemat with a hammered goblet.
Roasted pumpkin soup, finished with the signature Zimbali swirl.
A wide arrangement of hand-carved wooden spoons filled with chopped garden salad — julienned carrot, cucumber ribbons, tomato, and greens.
Chef Alecia Swainbank in a Rasta-colored headwrap and denim chef coat, plating pepper shrimp during a live dinner service.
The hand-painted wooden Zimbali Retreats sign in Negril, Jamaica.
Zimbali Retreats, Negril · est. 2005

Who she is

She learned this in the hills, from her grandparents.

Alecia Swainbank grew up on a family farm in the Jamaican hills, raised by her grandparents, cooking over woodfire before she cooked over anything else.

In 2005 she founded Zimbali Retreats in Negril. Its kitchen was ranked #1 in Jamaica on Tripadvisor for five straight years. Hurricane Melissa ended the Jamaica chapter in October 2025. She landed in Sarasota with the same knives and the same recipes.

Read her story

What guests said in Negril

4.8 on Tripadvisor. 836 reviews.

Sarasota reviews will show up once she’s cooked her first dinners here. Until then, twenty years of them from Jamaica.

Read all 836 reviews on Tripadvisor →

Press & recognition

Twenty years of coverage.

See full press coverage

Tell us about your evening

Tell us what you’re thinking. We’ll build the menu.

Alecia (or Mark, her husband and the guy who runs the calendar) will come back within one business day with a menu and a quote. If your date’s already booked, we’ll tell you.

  • From $200 per guest for the five-course cooking show, food included.
  • Two guests or thirty — the $1,200 minimum booking is the same either way. Parties over twelve come with a kitchen assistant.
  • 30% deposit holds your date. Balance due 48 hours before the event.
  • Free travel within 25 miles of Sarasota — and free anywhere in Florida for parties of ten or more.

By sending, you agree we’ll email you back at the address above. Nothing is charged until you approve a menu and quote.