Serena’s regional head of cuisines: ‘A chef doesn’t have to be huge’

Serena hotels, Lodges and Resorts Regional Group Chef Roy Kinyua during the interview at Serena hotel, Nairobi on December 11, 2025. 

Photo credit: Lucy Wanjiru | Nation Media Group

The way Roy Kinyua, the Regional Group Chef of Serena Hotels speaks about turkeys, one would be forgiven to think he grew up farming them. Forgiven but wrong.

“The first time I had turkey,” he says, “was back in college.” This is not why he became a chef, but it’s also not why he didn't; that was due to a serendipitous encounter with a coconut cupcake. Not a romantic story, but, given his situation, perhaps a consequential one.

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