Reminiscing about some of his first memories in the kitchen he gets a little mushy talking about “Ma” and “Nana,” his grandmothers who are the inspiration behind his popular honey vanilla cornbread.

Take a bite of the Passa Passa Pasta and you will find out Ken James loves spices, and the coconut cream sauce and jerk shrimp are nods to his Caribbean roots in Bermuda. If you have the opportunity to converse with the affable and ambitious entrepreneur at a pop-up food event he might share with you that his love for pasta came from his mom, who would go out for lunch at Italian restaurants near the family’s Flushing, NY home—and often bring home leftovers for him
to savor.

“Google” his business and you’ll likely come across clips of him and his fiancé, Ziomara Taveras, on Season 17 of the Food Network show “The Great Food Truck Race.” While serving up crabcakes and deep fried lobster tail the couple can be seen experiencing the thrill of victory, navigating the challenges of 15 hour days with production crews following their every move and coping with a “spilled milk” moment that made for good Internet fodder.

Plates on Deck is a catering and private chef service that began in 2019 and has been a member of Catapult since 2023. Ken and Ziomara have had a banner year serving up their self-proclaimed eclectic soul food, and they are ecstatic about the opportunity to create unforgettable food memories for
more people.

A keen observer could have guessed Ken’s pickup line of choice would be “What’s your favorite meal?” when the two met for the first time in Queens, NY in 2018, but their lives as a whole have been quite unpredictable.

“When we got into the Dixieland Night Market it was a game changer because we found another niche of people here in Lakeland who were a little younger, and a little hungrier, you know?”
– Chef Ken James

“We ran it just like a basketball team,” he recalls. “You had to have the grades…and we were very active with parent engagement and school engagement. We developed a strong sense of brotherhood and then also [taught] them something they could be marketable with.”

Ziomara is well versed in leading the marketing and outreach efforts for Plates on Deck, and a variety of experiences have amply prepared her for those roles.

Her older sister moved to Florida in the early 2000s and Ziomara fell in love with Florida Southern College when she went for a visit. Soon she was living on the campus set along picturesque Lake Hollingsworth, working toward a bachelor’s degree in sociology.

After college, she moved between states and jobs periodically, doing everything from serving as a child protective investigator for the Florida Department of Children and Families to developing websites.

Plates on Deck officially launched in the Empire State in 2019, with seafood boils and custom catering as the company’s forte, but the pandemic had the couple rethinking its New York state of mind.

Ken’s father, a retired NYPD detective, lived in Central Florida, as did many of his cousins and other family members, so he and Ziomara relocated.

In 2023 they expanded from their Orlando commissary kitchen by becoming members of Catapult in Lakeland.

“This commissary kitchen was unlike anything we had ever seen,” Ken said recently while prepping food in the entrepreneurial hub.

And Ziomara noted that Catapult offers sound business advice as well as partners committed to helping startups like theirs grow.

“We learned that our crab cakes are a hit, no matter where we are…and one thing [host] Tyler [Florence] did say is, ‘Stick with the classics.’”

“When we got into the Dixieland Night Market it was a game changer because we found another niche of people here in Lakeland who were a little younger, and a little hungrier, you know?” he says with a grin. “And the Night Market is a visual representation of eclectic soul foods because you’ve got people from all walks of life with different beliefs and cultural backgrounds…together having a great time, not to mention all of the great businesses there.”

While growing their local influence has involved a steady growth plan, a chance for national exposure came swooping in unexpectedly when a producer from Food Network dropped a DM into one of the Plates on Deck social media accounts.

“The Great Food Truck Race” features an impassioned competition of teams trying to cook up the best food and business plan to outduel the competition from the tight confines of a food truck to win a grand prize of $50,000—even though many of the teams in the competition, like Plates on Deck, are either catering services or brick and mortar restaurants that don’t operate food trucks.

That meant on the fly, Ken and Ziomara had to learn how to utilize the equipment inside a food truck, which does not include a standard oven, leaving their uber cheesy mac and cheese and beloved honey vanilla cornbread off the menu.

Sometimes it went swimmingly, such as on the first episode of the season, where the Plates on Deck team—which included Ken’s younger cousin, Samuel Jenkins—won the Houston, Tex. leg of the competition by wooing the crowd with its Passa Passa Pasta with jerk shrimp egg rolls.

“A standout moment for me was when I put that gold medal around your neck,” Ken says, directing a gleeful gaze at Ziomara.

“Yeah, I was crying,” Ziomara responds. “I mean it was at the end of a long day and you felt just like it was the Olympics of food prep.”

Other times, the adventure was a bit more rocky, but made for intriguing reality television.

In episode three, teams were given the opportunity to go into an opposing food truck and remove any one food item. If that wasn’t enough to cause anxiety, Ken and his team found spilled milk on some of their seafood when they returned to their truck.

On national television James’ emotions got the best of him and the Plates on Deck team was disqualified from the challenge due to a rules violation they committed in the heat of the moment.

James said that could have torn the team apart and had a significant impact on he and Ziomara’s relationship, but he took ownership of the situation and the couple was able to use it as a learning experience.

“I learn things quickly. You’ve got to, especially when you grow up in New York because sometimes you don’t get a second chance,” he says.

Ziomara said it was wild watching the show—which was filmed starting in January—with their children this summer. The couple has a blended family of six children, from a toddler to several college students. She said when her kids were seeing her real life experience play back they didn’t hold back.

“They would be like, ‘What, why did you say that? Mom, why are you crying so much,’” she says.

Ken also had a near teary eyed moment off-camera in Lake Charles, La., where episode three was filmed. When he bit into a tea cake at local establishment Mama Reta’s Kitchen he said it was like the perfect combination of his Nana’s biscuits and Ma’s cornbread.

“Both of them have passed, so it was really touching for me and really special that I was able to have that moment completely unexpected. It almost broke me to tears.”

Plates on Deck survived episode three, before gracefully bowing out in episode four. They might not have won $50,000 but they won over countless new fans, including Polk County Sheriff Grady Judd who sent the couple a note of encouragement.

“[Our experience on the show] gave us confidence to know we can be capable in a mobile food space and it also reiterated that the catering space is right for us,” Ken says. “We learned that our crab cakes are a hit, no matter where we are…and one thing [host] Tyler [Florence] did say is, ‘Stick with the classics.’”

For Ziomara, it was a revelation to her that she could play a great sous chef to Ken in the kitchen, and she feels more confident in their future than ever.

“We added on wedding catering at the end of 2023 and are adjusting well to that, and really we just keep finding joy in all the little things,” Ken says. “And we can’t wait to have our own brick and mortar kitchen to work out of at some point.”