Chef Adrianne Calvo Brings Love and Joy to St. Jude with Her Cuban-Style Holiday Feast

St. Jude Children's Research Hospital has touched thousands of families' lives since it opened its doors in 1962, including Chef Adrianne Calvo's. After Chef Adrianne's younger sister, Jenny, passed away from cancer when she was 19, the Miami-based chef made it her mission to help families struggling with the disease.

Chef Adrianne began her career competing in and winning cooking competitions — including the Australian competition "Taste Down Under," which led her to become the youngest chef to cook for the United Nations dinner at just 19 years old. From there, she has continued to receive many awards and honors. Most notably, she published her first cookbook Maximum Flavor when she was only 20 years old, her flagship restaurant Chef Adrianne's has been voted best restaurant in Miami many times, and she competed on and was the runner-up of Food Network's Chopped.

Today she has six cookbooks, three Miami-based restaurants, and a YouTube food and travel show called Searching for Maximum Flavor. But despite her busy schedule, every year since 2008 Chef Adrianne has volunteered her time at St. Jude for her annual Cuban-style holiday feast.

Every December for the past 14 years, except during the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020, Chef Adrianne and her team — including her mom, Magaly Calvo, and her aunt and uncle — cook a holiday feast for the patients, families, and doctors at St. Jude. What started as an event with 100 people has turned into a tradition that Chef Adrianne looks forward to every year.

"This feast for them [is] to make them feel like home, like you're still celebrating the holidays. It's brought so much joy and purpose," says Chef Adrianne. "People asked me, from the first year to the second year, 'oh, are you going to come back?' I was walking down one of their hallways and behind me was this mom and her child who was a patient there, and I was overhearing a conversation. She goes, 'it smells like grandma's house.' When I heard that sentence, I promised myself I would always go back to recreate this holiday feast."

Chef Adrianne's Cuban-style feast includes traditional foods like a hog roast, rice, beans, plantains, yucca, flan, and bread pudding. And while sharing her gift and love of cooking is an important part of the day, Chef Adrianne loves to interact with the kids and families.

"I had one of the patients, I think he was a teenager, he proposed to me. It was the cutest. I blushed, I was happy, I was overwhelmed, it was all the things," she says.

Most importantly, Chef Adrianne returns to St. Jude to continue her sister's mission to "make it count." Jenny wanted to help young people who were on a similar journey and to inspire those who are healthy to help those who are not. When Jenny passed away, Chef Adrianne adopted her mission and connected with the team at St. Jude.

"Having lived that first person, I know how important it is to be surrounded by joy and happiness. And if you ever walk the halls of St. Jude, as I have, you realize that it's this happy place. It's not sad. Everybody walks around with a smile on their face, and it's just this place of 'it's going to be okay,'" she says. "When you see that these parents are there fighting for the lives of their children, you just can't help but want to be part of that fight."

Allrecipes is thrilled to be teaming up with St. Jude Children's Research Hospital in support of its lifesaving mission: Finding cures. Saving children. We hope you will join Allrecipes and Chef Adrianne Calvo in support of the St. Jude Thanks and Giving campaign to help kids like Dakota and Avery Ella. Read their inspiring stories and then give what you can by simply clicking the donate button.