Lashaun Pryce is cooking up a storm as a private chef for top footballers including Kalvin Phillips, Izzy Brown and Tyler Roberts.
Jamaican-born Lashaun, 32, learned his trade at Huddersfield town centre restaurant Discovery Bay and is now making a name for himself in the local dining scene.
Lashaun was a partner in the Huddersfield healthy meals delivery business pREP but is now striking out on his own again with his latest venture Private Dining Club.
The Huddersfield dad-of-one goes into the homes of footballers and cooks for them. He cooks for former Huddersfield Town loan star Izzy Brown Monday to Friday and regularly prepares meals for Leeds United and Wales international Tyler Roberts.
Word has spread among the ranks of professional footballers and England’s Euros hero and Leeds United ace Kalvin Phillips is now a customer too.
“It’s just been amazing and all really came about by chance,” said Lashaun. “I used to work with Huddersfield Town and one of the players, Philip Billing, once asked me if I’d show him how to cook something. I remember thinking at the time I could make a career out of this.”
It was only last year when he got a message that Izzy Brown wanted to meet him. The result was he started to travel to Izzy’s home in Sheffield to cook for him.
“Izzy posted about it on social media and word started to get round and it snowballed from there,” said Lashaun.
Matty Crooks, of Rotherham United, introduced him to Tyler Roberts who, in turn, passed his number to another friend who turned out to be Kalvin Phillips.
The following day Kalvin was following all Lashaun’s social media platforms, and he ended up delivering food to his home.
Lashaun describes his cooking style as “fusion.” His flavours are very much from the Caribbean but he mixes his styles with Italian and Spanish food both among his favourites.
He might cook Italian meatballs with a jerk flavour or it could be jerk chicken pizza or maybe a spicy seafood curry.
He gives his clients a menu to choose from, either two or three courses, and the players are pretty easy going.
“They are the easiest, calmest people to deal with,” said Lashaun. “You might expect them to be fussy but they are not at all.”
Kalvin even helped clear up and brought trays back out to Lashaun’s car, showing the down-to-earth side which has endeared him to Leeds and England fans alike.
Lashaun came to the UK when he was 12 and studied catering at Huddersfield Technical College. He started out washing up at Discovery Bay, the Caribbean restaurant run by Barrington Douglas, and worked his way up as a chef. He was there for the best part of 10 years.
Lashaun is now working on a meal box home delivery package where meals are delivered for people to cook at home and he’s hoping that will have a wide appeal and take off.
A Manchester United fan he’s also glued to England games and he has his sights on two new customers – Jack Grealish and Raheem Sterling, who is also Jamaican-born. His ultimate client would be Sir David Beckham.
Once the Euros are over and footballers are back Lashaun is planning a series of video podcasts with some of his famous clientele.
He’s got the numbers for around 30 footballers and he hopes most will want to join him on the podcast. The idea is he will cook for them as he chats to them about their careers. Hopefully most will want to help with the cooking too.
Lashaun is a man in demand, too, as he’s been approached about various restaurant ventures.
“I just take things as they come,” said Lashaun. “Nothing is set in stone and I just let things play out.”
