Growing up, Pettifleur Berenger says her life was vastly different to the privileged way she exists now. Having worked from a very early age in her native Sri Lanka, she says she learnt the value of a dollar – and the need to pull her weight in the household – far younger than her peers.
“When the other kids were out playing, I was chopping up vegetables, doing the dinner preparation, things like that,” she recalls of her early years.
“I got a good knack for seasoning and for cooking but I told myself that when I had the opportunity to stop cooking, I would take it because hey – I started early so I can retire early too!”
Hiring a chef for her family was one of the first things the mother of three did when she could afford to do so, a no brainer when she realized cooking for kids was what she – and many other mums – call “a thankless job”. But in hanging up her apron, she admits she lost her passion for something she’d once prided herself on – bringing beautiful meals to the table for her sons.
And then Hell’s Kitchen came calling and she knew she needed to take part.
“I thought it would be a way to cook with a lot of love and heart and to make my boys proud,” she says.
While Marco Pierre White was a tough teacher on the show, behind the scenes she says the unlikely duo formed quite a bond over their similar humble starts in life.
“We would compare notes with our hard lifestyles and starting young, doing it tough,” she says.
“He was being so nice to me that it didn’t feel right. I had to say to him, ‘Please go back to being an A-hole because I can’t take it! I can’t handle you being nice to me!’”
