It’s in Her Roots: Chef, Mixologist Aims to Take Your Culinary Experience to the Next Level
Article by John Pacenti
Photography by Elizabeth Palace
Nicole Roberts, aka Chef Nik Eats, is a personal chef and master mixologist. Her
love for food is derived from growing up in a home where meals were celebrated.
Nicole Roberts’ mother is Colombian and loves to cook. Her dad is Jewish and is from Long Island. He loves to eat. In other words, their daughter was almost preordained to be a chef.
The 27-year-old Roberts now aims to set the world on fire in the crowded field of social media chefs and mixologists by providing a healthy, curated experience whether it be for a cocktail party or your everyday meal.
When she comes to your home or event to provide mixology, Roberts packs her homemade syrups. She also offers a meal plan service, making ready-to-eat entrees. And she advertises it all on her Instagram page, Chefnikeats.
“All the ingredients that I use are freshly sourced. I actually have a garden at my mom’s house, and so a lot of the herbs that I use for my beverages come from my personal garden,” she said during a reprieve in her busy holiday schedule.
Roberts’ parents would send her and her sister, Hillary, to Colombia every summer when they were kids. There she learned the importance of fresh foods.
“There’s no additives, there’s no extracts, there’s no preservatives. It’s just natural. I mean, my grandma’s literally in the tree, grabbing the mango, going into the kitchen and juicing it.” Roberts said.
Roberts grew up in Jupiter, graduating from Dwyer High School. Her home was always filled with the aroma if food. Her mother went to culinary school.
“I grew up in a household where every day there was new food in the kitchen,” she recalled.
Eventually, mom pointed her daughter toward the stove and said if she was hungry, then cook. Soon Roberts was baking and asking for recipe books as gifts.
Still, Roberts thought her path might be through criminal justice when she landed a lacrosse scholarship to Point University on the border of Georgia and Alabama. She saw her future as a criminal defense attorney.
Roberts eventually ended up in Atlanta where she applied to the police department.
“I realized then that I had a passion for hospitality, and I have a passion for cooking and feeding people and making drinks for people,” she said.
And so in 2018, Roberts started her brand Chef Nik Eats, at first as a hobby and then as a profession. She enrolled in Auguste Escoffier School of Culinary Arts and migrated back home.
She learned the art of the craft cocktail as a mixologist at the fivestar Four Seasons Resort Palm Beach before striking out on her own. She advertises her business as Christian faith-based.
You don’t hire Nicole Roberts to sling 7-and-7s. “It’s an elite experience. It’s a luxurious experience. It’s not a typical bar experience,” she explained. “It’s definitely elevated and taken to a different level.”
Maren McRoberts, an event planner, said she hires Roberts regularly. She explained what Roberts brought to a Christmas party to benefit the women’s shelter Hannah’s Home of South Florida.
“She made a jingle bell martini and she used an ornament and she fi lled it up with edible glitter and vodka and a spiced cranberry apple syrup,” McRoberts said.
“The mixed drink was inside the ornament and you poured the ornament into the martini glass with a sprig of rosemary garnish.”
It’s an elite experience. It’s a luxurious experience. It’s not a
typical bar experience,’ Roberts says of her mixology.
Another of the four signature cocktails for the event involved Roberts melting cookies with boiled cinnamon sticks for a Biscoff espresso martini.
“She’s just good at what she does,” McRoberts said. “She just puts so much heart and love into her drinks. And it shows.
”Roberts also provides an array of mocktails, as well. These days she is branching out into meal plans, showing off what she can bring literally to your table on her Instagram page. One post shows mouth-watering garlic steak and roasted broccoli.
“People sometimes think that they’re only paying for food, or they think that they’re only paying for a drink. If people hear that my mixology rate starts at $100 an hour, they ask, ‘Does that include the alcohol?’” she explains. “No, that includes me.”
To contact Nicole Roberts for cocktail bar, mixology and private chef service, email her at:
chefnikeats@gmail.com
call (561) 248-8633
Instagram @chefnikeats.
