A BRAZILIAN foodie from south Warwickshire is giving back to the community she now calls home with a new TV show.
Bia’s Kitchen Show promises to highlight some of the best of the area’s foodie scene when it is streamed to audiences twice monthly on YouTube, Spotify, Instagram and Facebook.
The passion project is the creation of self-taught chef and entrepreneur Bianca Perry from Leamington who wants to support the town she now calls home – 15 years after emigrating from her native Brazil – in the best way she knows how.
The show is an extension to her successful Bia’s Kitchen brand, and will feature local independent chefs and restaurateurs cooking signature dishes as well as her own top tips and recipes.
It marks the latest chapter on a journey of reinvention for the now 43-year-old mum-of-three, who walked away from a high-flying career in marketing in Rio de Janeiro – after falling in love with a Leamington man who was holidaying with friends.
Growing up on a farm, Bianca’s love for cooking started in her childhood and continued to be a big feature in her life and work.
After a short spell at boarding school, her ambitions led her to Rio where she worked in a mobile phone shop while studying for a degree. She soon realised her ambitions by partnering in a successful marketing company, securing major clients including what was at the time South America’s biggest water park. Drawn back to her foodie roots, she also established and ran a restaurant on the site.
Seven years later Bianca moved on again to Miami where she took the opportunity to work on her English while helping her cousin run his restaurant.
But it was in 2009, after resettling in the UK as the new Mrs David Perry, that signalled the start of a difficult period for newly-expectant Bianca who spent much of her pregnancy in hospital with crippling sickness.
Her daughter Lauren later faced her own serious health issues which resulted in surgery to remove of one of her lungs at the age of just four. Since then Bianca and husband David have been keen to give back through fundraising and free professional support to Ronald McDonalds House which took the couple in through Lauren’s two-month treatment and recovery at Birmingham Children’s Hospital.
And it wasn’t until their youngest child, William, was two that they learned he had been born deaf. Today he has managed to recover some of his hearing with the help of hearing aids.
Throughout all of this, Bianca continued to fall back on her lifeline of cooking – and is again ready to step out of the shadows of her busy Cubbington kitchen into the limelight – this time to share her passion with the adopted community she has come to love.
She said: “I am excited about combining my knowledge of food and international flavours, and marketing and production in a way that also involves my community. I have a passion for telling people’s stories. It’s about creating a buzz around the local foodie scene.”
