Kenyan-born chef Bernice Kariuki has shared some of the indigenous Kenyan dishes she has prepared for the Arsenal squad during her tenure with the Premier League giants.
Kariuki recently made global headlines after becoming the first Kenyan chef ever to prepare a pre-race meal for seven-time world champion Sir Lewis Hamilton at the 2025 British Grand Prix at the Silverstone Circuit in Northamptonshire, England.
She worked alongside the Scuderia Ferrari nutrition team to craft a performance-focused vegan dish—tailored to Hamilton’s strict plant-based diet.
Her Silverstone milestone came on the back of another major achievement, a remarkable rise from Nairobi’s Jericho Estate to becoming a trusted chef for Arsenal’s senior squad.
At Arsenal, she has been involved in cooking exclusively for the first-team players, the management team, and the technical bench under Executive Chef Darren Taylor.
Kariuki has also managed the daily well-being and nutrition of the team, both before and after matches, including curating menus for them while traveling.
Chef Kariuki speaks on cooking for the Arsenal team
In an interview with The Star, the chef revealed that one of her proudest contributions at Arsenal was introducing the players to traditional Kenyan staples.
“One Kenyan food that I introduced is ugali and sukumawiki — our way,” she said. When asked why, she said, “You need to learn the nutrition of the food, and then you balance. In Western Africa, they call it fufu. We call it ugali, but there is a different way that we make it. I do the super soft Luhya ugali because it has fewer carbs.”
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Raised in the slums of Jericho Estate, Kariuki also shared her modest beginnings and the sacrifices her family made.
She left Kenya after high school and traveled to Sweden, then to the United Kingdom, where she initially pursued a career in psychology.
She worked as a career psychologist for 13 years, but a difficult marriage and the emotional toll of counselling pushed her to reconsider her path.
“I did very well, and I qualified to be a psychologist counseling people for 13 years. But somewhere along the line in my life, my marriage was so bad. These guys are coming in telling me their problems, and I’m going through the same problems. I was like no. One day, I decided to quit. I quit my marriage, and I left my career, and then I decided to do what I love most, and that was cooking,” she said.
Kariuki retrained at the prestigious Westminster College, known for producing high-level international chefs, where she earned a diploma in international culinary, specialising in canapés and precision dishes.
After working in top hotels, including the Waldorf Astoria, Hilton, for three years, she moved to the ultra-exclusive Dorchester Hotel. Her breakthrough came unexpectedly while working at the hotel owned by the Sultan of Brunei, a venue frequented by celebrities and athletes.
Aubameyang tastes her biryani
While at the hotel, former Arsenal striker Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang visited and was served biryani and jollof-style rice prepared by Kariuki.
That introduction opened the door to one of the most celebrated periods of her career as the Gabon forward was impressed and hired her as a personal chef.
“This is where all the celebrities come. Guess who comes to eat one day? Aubameyang! And I made my rice. I bet you have tried the jollof rice? So that’s what we cook for them. I did biryani, which is like pilau, but they cook it differently,” she disclosed.
“This day, Aubameyang was very happy. He asked who cooked because apparently the mother cooked the same, and I was hired from then on. I became his personal chef, then he introduced me to Arsenal, and that’s where I got a platform to cook for Arsenal players.”
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Her culinary and nutrition training made her a natural fit in an environment shaped by former manager Arsène Wenger’s emphasis on healthy, high-performance meals. Every component of a player’s meal was carefully weighed, she said, to maintain strict nutritional balance.
Working with Formula 1 teams
In 2025, Kariuki earned another career-defining moment when she was tapped to help prepare meals for Ferrari’s Formula 1 team at the 2025 British Grand Prix in July.
She designed and prepared Hamilton’s bespoke pre-race meal, working with Ferrari’s nutrition experts. The menu emphasized sustained energy release, rapid recovery, high flavor, and nutritional balance.
Asked what she would name a meal that she has made inspired by Lewis Hamilton, she affirmed, “he’s a vegan. And I don’t like vegan people, but you have to make very good vegan food that tastes like meat. So, you bring all the nutrition.”
Kariuki described Formula One kitchens as high-pressure environments where everything is prepared fresh from dawn, and nothing is stored overnight to avoid contamination and ensure peak quality.
Despite her global success, Kariuki’s long-term ambition is to return home and establish a culinary and nutrition training centre for young people from underprivileged backgrounds.
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