Mehetabel Gyebi Aquinas
CV Get in touch

00Hello

Hello, I'm Mehetabel. I'm a chef. I also make sure the world hears about the food.

West African cooking with a modern hand, from a kitchen in Accra, and my own food brand, Dzidzɔ Ze, in Kumasi. Open to head chef roles, private tables, and brands that want their food to say something.

Download my CV Send an enquiry

Skip to my work Press any key to skip

Mehetabel in her apron, hands on her hips, smiling at the camera

01One grain

It starts with one grain.

My grandmother's kitchen in Koforidua, age nine. One blackened pot, one wooden spoon worn flat on one side, and a rule: you do not lift the lid until she says so.

1 pot, one spoon, one kitchen

Drag to turn the grain

02Many grains

One grain is nothing. A thousand is a meal.

A Wednesday special is sixty boxes of jollof, each one leaving the counter the way the first one did. Scale is not louder cooking. It is the same care, repeated until nobody can tell which box was number one.

  • 60 boxes on a Wednesday
  • 25 plates a service, on average
  • 500+ people fed last year

The grains settle into the number

03The ingredients

Rice is only the beginning.

Everything else in the pot is a decision. The tomato is where I shop, the onion is how long I am willing to wait, the pepper is who I am cooking for. Read them and you have read how I work.

  • Tuesday mornings at Agbogbloshie market, the same two women for six years. A pale tomato makes a pale pot, and no amount of heat will fix it. The dish is decided before the gas is on.

  • Onions are not done until they are done. The first time I rushed them for a table of forty I learned that sweetness takes exactly as long as it takes, and so does a cook who is still learning.

  • Heat without hurt. I taste, adjust, taste again, and I am always seasoning for the quietest person at the table, not the loudest.

  • The blends I grew up with, the ones I found in other people's kitchens, and the discipline of keeping them from shouting over each other. A spice should be recognised, not announced.

  • What is in the pot changes with the month. I write menus backwards: first what is good in the market this week, then what to do with it.

Tap an ingredient to read what it stands for

04The fire

Technique is what the fire reveals.

Nine years at the stove, from scrubbing cassava in a chop bar to running my own kitchen in Kumasi. Fire does not care about your plans. It taught me to cut faster, taste sooner, and say sorry to a pot only once.

9 years at the stove

Cold pan.

Hover or touch to raise the heat

Mehetabel in her apron, laughing, caught mid-service

05The secret ingredient

Everyone asks. It's love.

I cook because the kitchen is the one place where I know exactly what to do with my hands. I cook for the person who had a long day and did not expect to be looked after. I cook for my grandmother, who is not here to taste it, and for the table of strangers who will become friends by the second course. When the plate lands I want you to go quiet for a moment, the way people do when something is true. Then I want you to look up, find whoever you came with, and push the plate toward them so they can try it too. That is the whole job.

06The pot

Then you wait.

The smoky layer at the bottom of the pot cannot be rushed and cannot be faked. Neither can a kitchen. The largest brigade I have led was fourteen cooks, and I ask three things of every one of them: taste everything, call it when you are behind, and leave the station cleaner than the person before you.

14 cooks in the largest brigade she has led

Scrub the timeline to watch the colour spread

Mehetabel in her apron, smiling, one hand on her hip

07The plate

Eaten with the eyes first.

A plate is read before it is tasted. Where the colour sits, how much white space is left, which way the chicken faces: all of it is a sentence, and I want mine to be short and clear.

Her plates, from above

  • Jollof rice with a roasted chicken leg in a takeaway box, held over the serving tray
    The jollof. Smoky bottom, every time.
  • Grilled tilapia on a bed of charred pepper sauce, from above
    Tilapia on shito, the skin blistered, nothing hiding the fish.
  • A bowl of groundnut soup with a single rice ball, from above
    Groundnut soup. One omo tuo, placed off centre on purpose.
  • Kelewele with roasted peanuts and a drizzle of ginger syrup, from above
    Kelewele, but the ginger and the plantain both get to speak.
  • Waakye in a shallow bowl with all its sides arranged in a ring, from above
    Waakye, served the way the stall does it, just slower.
  • A dessert of toasted coconut, palm sugar and a tart hibiscus sorbet, from above
    Coconut, palm sugar, sobolo sorbet. Dessert that remembers where it is from.

08The table

Food is only finished when it's shared.

Twelve events this year, from a dinner for eight on a rooftop in Osu to a wedding where the table ran the full length of the garden. The food is the reason people sit down. The table is the reason they stay.

  • 12 events catered
  • 60 seats at the longest table
  • 300 people fed

Counting the people fed

A long outdoor table set for 60 guests, seen from above, before anyone has sat down

09The story

A dish nobody hears about is a secret.

I studied public relations and marketing before I ever ran a kitchen, and the two have never been separate for me. Three menu launches, five campaigns, and a Wednesday special that people had heard about before they tasted it. The cooking earns the attention. The telling makes sure it arrives.

BSc Public Relations with Marketing, UniMAC

  • 3 Menu launches
  • 5 Campaigns run
  • 330 Largest launch reach

Drag the handle to compare before and after

The Wednesday special jollof

One pot of jollof, every Wednesday, from a kitchen in Kumasi that nobody outside the family knew about. Two weeks of content and a single photograph of steam rising off the pot later, the Wednesday boxes were spoken for by Tuesday night.

BeforeAfter
Reach in launch week 50 330
Boxes sold in the first month 40 130
Reposts and mentions 1 12
The first Wednesday post, plain type on a plain background, no photography
Before
The Wednesday special, the pot photographed from above, the boxes lined up for delivery
After

10Work

What I've plated.

Menus I have written, tables I have served, launches I have run, and the campaigns that put them in front of people.

  • A Dzidzɔ Ze box of jollof rice with a roasted chicken leg, held over the serving tray

    Brand2026

    Dzidzɔ Ze

    Founder and chef · Kumasi · menu, online ordering and delivery

    My own food brand. Bold flavours, unforgettable taste: Ghanaian cooking made to order and delivered across Kumasi. A menu of main meals, platters, wraps and shawarma, snacks and drinks, ordered on the site or over Telegram, and event packages like the jollof and shawarma pre-orders for the Kumasi Debate Open.

    Outcome. [TODO] A number or a moment from the brand's first months: orders, regulars, an event catered.

    Visit Dzidzɔ Ze

    Used: West African cooking, Menu writing, Costing and margins, Brand partnerships, Social content

  • Service: a box of jollof and chicken filled from a tray of roasted chicken and sausages

    Menu2026

    The Wednesday special

    Founder and head chef · 1 pot, every Wednesday, 60 boxes

    A weekly special built around what Kumasi's markets are full of that week: smoked fish one Wednesday, the first good tomatoes the next. One pot of jollof, costed to the gram, cooked by me, boxed with chicken, and gone by the time it was cool enough to pack.

    Outcome. One hundred and thirty boxes in the first month, a list of regulars who order by Tuesday night, and a food cost that came in two points under target.

    Used: West African cooking, Menu writing, Costing and margins, Leading a brigade, Food photography

  • The wedding table set under the trees, before guests arrived

    Event2025

    A garden wedding for 60

    Chef and caterer · 60 guests, 4 courses, one tent, one generator

    Four courses for sixty people in a garden in East Legon, with a brigade of three and a kitchen built that morning under a tent. The generator failed between the second and third courses. We finished the jollof on charcoal, which is how it should have been cooked in the first place.

    Outcome. All sixty served within eleven minutes of each course call. Three bookings from guests at the table before the cake was cut.

    Used: Event planning, Leading a brigade, Food safety, Level 3, Plating

  • A hand with tongs serving jollof and a chicken leg into a takeaway box

    Launch2026

    Launching the Wednesday special

    Founder and campaign lead · 2 weeks, 2 channels, 1 pot

    A dish is a secret until somebody tells it. I planned the content around one image a day from the kitchen, cooked and shot by me, wrote every caption, and sent the first Wednesday's boxes to twelve people who would talk about them.

    Outcome. Reach in launch week went from fifty to three hundred and thirty. Twelve reposts and mentions. Boxes more than tripled in the month that followed.

    Used: Press and PR, Social content, Copywriting, Food photography, Brand partnerships

  • A still from the campaign, red palm oil poured over a bowl of rice

    Campaign2024

    Six Sundays, a palm oil campaign

    Recipe developer and face of the campaign · 6 recipes, 12 posts, 1 month

    A Ghanaian palm oil brand wanted to reach younger home cooks who had stopped using it. I developed six Sunday recipes, one a week, that treated palm oil as an ingredient with a flavour rather than a fat you hide. I cooked, shot and fronted every one of them.

    Outcome. Two hundred and forty thousand views across the run, a sell-out of the one-litre bottle in two Accra supermarkets, and a second campaign commissioned before the first had ended.

    Used: Brand partnerships, Social content, Copywriting, Recipe development, Food photography

11Skills

What's in the pantry.

Two shelves. Tap anything to see the work it went into.

Kitchen

Studio

12Experience and credentials

Every service, on the record.

From a commis station to the head of the pass, with a detour through a marketing desk that turned out not to be a detour at all.

Roles

  1. 2026–Now

    Founder and head chef, Dzidzɔ Ze, Kumasi

    My own food brand: the menu, the pot, the boxes, the delivery, and every caption that goes out with them.

Education

  1. 2022–2024

    BSc Public Relations with Marketing, UniMAC

    Taught me that a story is only finished when the right person hears it. Same as a plate.

  2. 2020–2022

    Diploma in Public Relations, Accra Technical University

    The first time anyone taught me to write for the person reading, not the person writing.

Certificates

13Play

Want to cook?

Two things to do before you go. A ninety-second pot to manage, and six ingredients hidden around this page.

The jollof timer

Ninety seconds, one pot. Add each ingredient at the right moment, keep the heat in the band, and decide when to lift the lid.

  1. Add in order: oil, onions, pepper base, stock, rice, then cover.
  2. Keep the heat in the band shown. Too hot for too long and it burns. Too timid and it stays pale.
  3. After the lid goes on, a short spell of high heat gives you the smoky bottom. Push it too far and you lose everything.
  4. Lift the lid when you think it is ready, or let the clock run out.

Turn on JavaScript to play.

Mehetabel's jollof

Six ingredients are hidden on this page: inside a grain, behind a photo, in the fire, in a skill, in a project and in the footer. Find all six and the recipe is yours to print.

Turn on JavaScript to hunt for the ingredients.

0 of 6 found

  1. 500 g long-grain parboiled rice, washed until the water runs clear Look inside the first grain.
  2. 6 ripe plum tomatoes, 2 tbsp tomato paste Turn over the jollof plate.
  3. 2 red bell peppers, 1 scotch bonnet, seeds in if you are brave Hold the heat high in the fire.
  4. 2 onions, one blended and one sliced thin One skill on the pantry shelf has it.
  5. 600 ml chicken stock, 1 bay leaf, a few sprigs of thyme Open the right project.
  6. 100 ml vegetable oil, 1 tsp curry powder, a pinch of white pepper Read to the very end.

14Contact

Come to the table.

I am open to head chef and senior sous roles in Accra and beyond, private dinners and events of any size, and brand or menu collaborations where the food has something to say.

  • Head chef and senior sous roles
  • Private dinners and events
  • Brand, menu and recipe work

Dzidzɔ Ze, my food brand Instagram @chefmehetabel LinkedIn Download my CV

Send an enquiry

This form opens your email app with the message filled in. Nothing you type is sent anywhere else.