chef
NIA MORA
INTERNATIONAL AWARD WINNING CULINARY ARTIST
About
Chef Nia Mora
Chef Nia Mora’s cooking is rooted in her Mexican and African American heritage. Her earliest understanding of food began at home, where her mother’s Southern Black comfort food shared the table with the traditional Mexican cooking of her father’s roots in Mexico City. Growing up with modest means shaped a philosophy that still guides her today: extraordinary food does not require excess. Simple ingredients, approached with creativity and care, can nourish a family, preserve culture, and create belonging...
After earning a degree in fine art and photography from the School of Visual Arts in New York City, Mora spent several years sailing the spans of the South Pacific, eventually arriving on Waiheke Island, New Zealand, where working at a vineyard introduced her to food and wine pairing and inspired her to pursue the culinary arts. In cooking, she discovered a new medium for the visual language she had developed as an artist—composition, color, texture, and storytelling expanded to include aroma, flavor, memory, and location. Her career took her through the professional kitchens of Australia and the Caribbean, from Japanese and internationally influenced cuisine to award-winning charter yachting and high-end private dining. Her culinary expertise is complemented by several years of sommelier training, bringing a deeper understanding of wine and pairing to her approach to dining. Cooking for private estates and some of the Caribbean’s most exclusive destinations further refined her technique, broadened her international perspective, and established the foundation of the chef she is today.
Mora now brings those experiences home through a cuisine that is refined yet soulful, culturally expressive, and deeply nourishing. Her work explores the intersection of Mexican and Black American foodways while drawing upon a lifetime of travel and international technique. Through elevated comfort food, vibrant ingredients, and unexpected flavors, she creates meals intended to leave people satisfied, curious, and cared for. Her evolving Blaxican book project carries that philosophy forward—using food to celebrate cultural identity, connect people to what nourishes them, and create meaningful experiences around the table.
Supper Club
Mora’s supper club is an intimate, ever-evolving test kitchen at her home on the northwest coast of Tortola—a place for friends, colleagues, and fellow food lovers to gather, experiment, and share in the creative process. At the heart of the table is her developing personal cuisine, where the Mexican and Black American foodways of her heritage meet refined technique, unexpected ingredients, and influences gathered throughout her travels and professional kitchens. Some dishes are new explorations, others are familiar recipes being rediscovered and refined, but the spirit remains the same: relaxed, curious, and never too precious—a gathering around good food and the excitement of creating something new.
Supper Club gatherings are offered by invitation, with a suggested contribution.
"My cooking begins with memory. I come from Mexican and African American roots, and some of my earliest memories of food live at the intersection of those two worlds."
- Chef Nia Mora
BLAXICAN
Blaxican is Mora’s evolving book project exploring the shared histories, ingredients, and culinary traditions that connect Mexican and Black American foodways. Drawing from historic Mexican and African American cookbooks, the project looks deeper into the Indigenous and Black contributions that have helped shape the foods of the Americas—stories often carried forward through generations at the family table. Through history, personal narrative, and approachable contemporary recipes, Mora reimagines these traditions through her own culinary perspective, celebrating where these cultures have been, where they intersect, and the new cuisine that can emerge between them.
"Composition became plating; color and texture became ingredients; storytelling expanded into aroma, flavor, memory, and the experience of gathering around a table."
- Chef Nia Mora