Takiya Dryden Brings Jamaican Heritage to MasterChef Global Gauntlet

Twenty-three-year-old Takiya Dryden is placing Jamaican heritage at the heart of her campaign on MasterChef season 16: The Global Gauntlet, the long-running culinary series now staged as a worldwide competition.

Raised in Jamaica, Queens, Dryden said she took to cooking early, rising each morning through high school with what she called her mother's hustler mindset. Her grandmother taught her to cook and bake, and her Jamaican mother held firm standards at home. "If this not taste good, nobody else can't eat it," she recalled her mother saying — a rule Dryden likened to having her own Gordon Ramsay under the same roof.

Dryden graduated from the Culinary Institute of America, where tuition was costly but her parents covered the bill. A teacher once urged her to train among the best, yet she insisted doors opened because of who she is and what she can do, not her alma mater alone. Before the show, she ran a home-based pastry business supplying wedding and birthday cakes and had recently taken a new job. She put that work on hold, quit the role, and paused a master's programme to compete.

On Global Gauntlet, cooks are grouped by region and Dryden represents the Americas. Each territory produces one top dish for the evening, and that winner can save an entire team. She has not yet rescued a teammate, but said none of her plates have landed in the bottom. Though she is primarily a pastry chef, she questioned whether she could handle full savoury menus before trusting her instincts and pressing on.

A French instructor once challenged her ambition to elevate Caribbean cuisine, asking who she was to do so and whether others would accept her first. Dryden said returning to that memory on television was emotional, because judges now praise her for staying authentic rather than drifting from her culture.

With the series on a five-week break, Dryden travelled to Jamaica — money she had saved — to go deeper into the island's food and culture and to ask where familiar dishes come from and why they taste the way they do. Asked for a World Cup-style menu, she described a non-traditional soccer-ball-shaped beef patty with cheddar mornay and barbecue sauces, and demonstrated garlic butter lobster with jerk beurre blanc, pumpkin purée, and mushrooms.

She put personal income on hold for the competition and leaned on her parents to help with bills, but said the exposure has already opened doors regardless of how far she goes. MasterChef: The Global Gauntlet is set to resume in July.