Five years ago David Brathwaite was on his way from New York City to Florida when he stopped for lunch in Mechanicsburg.
It turned out to be a fateful meal. The restaurant at which he and his wife stopped had an opening for a cook, so he filled out an application and was hired the next day. The experience he brought with him included three years in his own restaurant and cooking classes from the New York Hotel School. Last year, Brathwaite won the "Iron Chef" competition sponsored by the Carlisle Area OIC Learning Center, and today he is the Holly Inn's new executive chef.

Good combination

The cooking tradition the chef brought from the Caribbean via New York mixes well with the inn's provisions of fresh salads and herbs, Holly Inn Group president Maria Hollinger says. "My mom always said, 'learn to cook,'" recalls Brathwaite, and so he started in the kitchen when he lived at home in St. John on the Caribbean island of Barbados.
His mother's advice served him well in the Barbados Defense Force (Army), where from 1981-88 he prepared food both "in and out of the field" for 300-some men.
Brathwaite eventually went to New York City. There he met his wife, went to cooking school and established his own restaurant, the Bimshire, in Brooklyn. "Bimshire" is an English nickname for Barbados.
By the time he moved to Carlisle, though, he cooked mainly "just American style food." From the purely American cooking at the first area restaurant in which he worked, Brathwaite joined a firm that manages several upscale establishments on the Miracle Mile, a strip on Route 11 just north of the Pennsylvania Turnpike.

Was a vendor

That is where he was working two years ago during the first Carlisle's Own "Iron Chef" competition. He attended as a vendor, meaning he brought and distributed sampels of his food. He was invited back in 2005, for the competition that he subsequently won.
" I think the Iron Chef Competition is a challenge any cook or chef should enter because it gives you experience in showing your expertise and talent in competition. It gives syou the power to compete against others under stress," says the executive chef.
Speaking of his new position at Holly Inn, Brathwaite says, "My style of cooking here, I try to bring a little bit of West Indian style of cooking and add it to the American style of cooking to create a different kind of flavor."
Holly Inn Group president Hollinger also likes Brathwaite's style, and considers the Iron Chef Competition Award to be a positive contributing factor to his presence.
"He has very much the kind of philosophy just I have," says Hollinger. "He enjoys food."