The Incomparable Agnes
written by Donna Hecker & photography by Talitha Schroeder
To meet Agnes Teresa Marrero Rosa is to be pulled into an embrace of endearments — mamacita, amigo, mami, papi. Some are blessed with the names of saints; others receive a fond diminutive; but all bask in the warmth of her welcome.
She was born in Puerto Rico. “I love my color and my salsa and my music and I know how to dance — to congas, not to banjos.” But Chef Agnes is Kentucky Proud to the bone. “The bounty of our state is something amazing and something to be proud of. I would be a Kentuckian just for that.”
Her journey from San Juan to Smithtown Seafood is one of coincidence, culinary adventure, and strong women.
The most amazing story of destiny, she calls it. Chef Agnes’s cousin was a doctor in Somerset, Ky., when she began working with Chef Ouita Michel at Emmett’s. She invited him to dinner one night; Ouita’s father Ray Papka happened to be there, too. While Ouita and Agnes were making introductions, Dr. Nazario looked at Dr. Papka and said “you were my teacher at medical school in Puerto Rico.”
And Ouita looked at Agnes and said, “I lived in San Juan for a year.” On the same street that Agnes later lived on, just a block away. The way Agnes puts it, Ouita was “a Wyoming girl that moved to Kentucky and then to Puerto Rico and we had lived on the same street. An immediate chemistry. We were meant to meet and be friends.”
The chemistry may have been immediate but their meeting wasn’t. Agnes first visited Lexington in 1997. A walk through downtown took her past a la Lucie, where a picture of John and Yoko caught her eye. She went back the next day and slipped a resumé under the door. Chef Jonathan Lundy called a month later and Agnes was hired, dividing her time between Lucie and Roy Meyer’s other two restaurants, Pacific Pearl and Roy & Nadines.
When the Meyers broke up, their three restaurants split up too, and Agnes was back on the move. Chef Jonathan sent her to meet Chef Ouita who’d recently opened Emmett’s with her husband Chris. Chef Agnes had faced challenges as a female chef in Puerto Rico so seeing the kitchen at Emmett’s was love at first sight.
“It was a beautiful experience. I thought I was in heaven. Five females (were) in charge at Emmett’s and one was the executive chef. I wouldn’t have it any other way.” Chef Agnes and Chef Ouita eventually went separate ways but reunited in 2013 when Ouita opened Smithtown Seafood.
“Chef Ouita never closed the door for me. She won’t let me say it but I owe her a lot. With her support, I’ve been able to do what I wanted to do back home — to showcase my cuisine.”
LIke the time she decided to prepare lechon asado, Puerto Rican-style. For the uninitiated, that involves an entire pig — which Chef Agnes and Chef Jon Sanning cooked on the sidewalk outside Smithtown Seafood. Chef Ouita says “it was really something to see them roasting that pig right on the curb with so many of Agne’s Puerto Rican friends and family gathered around. And it was absolutely delicious.”
Or when she teamed up with Jamilka Borges, a sister chef from Puerto Rico, to raise money after Hurricanes Irma and Maria. They organized La Fonda, a pop-up Puerto Rican bistro at FoodChain, and donated the proceeds to El Departamento de la Comida, a Puerto Rican nonprofit with a multi-tiered approach to tackling food system problems.
Chef Agnes says that through the years, “I’ve learned about farm to table, and to respect the produce and the proteins that are close to us. My brain is always working about how I'm going to incorporate my Puerto Rican flavors with sweet potatoes, country ham — all the beautiful food.”
FoodChain tilapia with black beans and rice and local sweet potato fries; seafood coconut curry with shrimp, mussels, fried scallops and local eggplant; seared snapper with adobo-spiced local butternut squash and radish fennel slaw. Beautiful food, indeed.
Chef Agnes never saw a tomato plant until she moved to Kentucky. She’s still amazed by our diverse agriculture. “It’s so exciting to receive a bushel of tomatoes every June. I cry. I don’t take it for granted. It’s a privilege to get a tomato from less than a few miles away.”
Canned and frozen vegetables were all she had known back in Puerto Rico, where manufacturing had long since overtaken Puerto Rico’s farm economy. She and Chef Ouita joke that the quintessential Puerto Rican ingredient is a bag of frozen vegetable medley.
The two chefs also share a love of family, art, and education. Chef Ouita’s late mother, Pam Sexton, was an artist and poet; Chef Agnes’s late mother taught art at a public school. Both were active in their communities and raised their daughters to believe they could do anything.
Chef Agnes says, “I was lucky to grow up with a mother who was very forward looking, hard-working, professional and tender. She told me that not only could I do anything, I could do everything.”
She continues, “Women have been going up, up, up the last thirty years.This is a day by day fight. We’re always being questioned but that’s life. We just have to keep on going… and prepare our young ladies to manage encounters with people who think you are less. It’s on us to keep teaching by example.
Chef Agnes is as generous with her time as she is with her food. She shares her knowledge and skills by mentoring young people in the Smithtown work family and through collaboration with our FoodChain partners. Agnes says her mother taught her that if she worked hard, everything would be fine. “And she was right. I was always working to show my truth and my truth was on the plate. So people would taste my food and they would know me.”
To get to know Chef Agnes through her food is to be a castaway on your very own treasure island. One that serves up the best Kentucky ingredients with all the flavors of the tropics. One illuminated by the perpetual sunshine of her smile. Mami, papi, amigo, amiga — no matter what Agnes calls you, she always says it with love. And the promise of a delicious meal.
© 2022, Holly Hill Inn/Ilex Summit, LLC and its affiliates, All Rights Reserved
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