Keith DeShields was at Cambridge Beaches through restaurant pop-ups, kitchen renovations and a change in ownership.

Last month he said goodbye to the resort he had given 13 years of his life to and headed off to Germany where he had worked earlier in his career.

Waiting were two daughters and the opportunity to manage restaurants in three hotels on the Timmendorfer Strand, a town near Niendorf, on the Baltic Sea coast of Schleswig-Holstein.

“The hotels are all owned by one family,” Mr DeShields said. “There is one major hotel, Grand Hotel Seeschlösschen Sea Retreat and Spa, and then the others, the Seehuus Lifestyle Grand Hotel and the Miramar das Strandhotelare, are close beside it.”

He found Germany “dramatically” changed by the pandemic.

“There is an interesting dynamic in the workforce, altogether, especially in hospitality,” said Mr DeShields, a trained executive chef. “The majority of the folks who were in hospitality started to do different jobs over the two years of the pandemic.”

Hotels that could expand did what they could to keep customers coming to their location. His employers used the downtime to do a major renovation of the Grand Hotel Seeschlösschen’s kitchen.

“They survived,” he said. “I am finding now that a lot of places are closing for two days in the week to make them more appealing to potential staff.”

Unhappy with the breakfast buffet when the hotel reopened in June, he wrote a menu but quickly realised his staff needed more training to pull it off.

“I was quite taken aback,” the Bermudian chef said. “I was thinking, I am in Germany, I should be able to lash out, but I had to pull back and start training.

“When I see they are ready for the next step I will adjust accordingly.”

Seehuus’ restaurant has been put on hold while Mr DeShields prepares the staff as the owner is eager to maintain “the hotels’ high reputation”.

The harbour and the nearby beach are the main attractions. There are lots of big vacation homes and fancy cars are driven around.

“It’s a very expensive area and only the rich and the very rich vacation here. It’s a wellness destination.”

Despite that, he said, the costs are tame compared to Bermuda.

Mr DeShields was born in Jamaica to a Jamaican mother and Bermudian father. They moved to Bermuda when he was a child.

At Cambridge Beaches, his style of cooking was heavily influenced by his Caribbean heritage: callaloo pasta, warm pressed oxtail terrine and lobster tail wrapped in pork belly.

“It is different, only in that I am using European ingredients,” he said. “The guests are curious about where I am from, so I do incorporate some local or Caribbean type food items on the menu, such as Johnny bread.

“For the most part this hotel has so many repeat guests from years back. I have to make sure I keep them in mind when I do the menu. I cannot have too many dramatic changes.”

The plan is to eventually use one of the restaurant rooms at Grand Hotel Seeschlösschen to introduce himself and his Caribbean techniques more.

But for the most part he has to use ingredients from the region. “Otherwise, people get very territorial,” Mr DeShields said.

He trained as a chef at the Culinary Institute of America in Hyde Park, New York, before moving to Kempinski Grand Hotel Heiligendamm, a five-star resort in Bad Doberan where he worked alongside top chef Ronny Stewart and became fluent in German.

“I never really lost my German because my daughters and I speak a combination of German and English. We start in one language, wander over to the other, then wander back.”

However Niendorf has a slightly different German dialect than he is used to. “At first I was not as confident in that, but now I am used to it,” he said.

The Timmendorfer Strand is about an hour-and-a-half west of Bad Doberan, but he is still running into old friends.

“I recently celebrated my birthday,” he said. “I went to lunch with the family.”

At the restaurant he noticed a man who looked familiar.

“He kept talking to staff and pointing in my direction,” Mr DeShields said. “I was not sure what was going on.”

Eventually the man introduced himself. It turned out he was one of Mr DeShields’s first bosses in Germany.

“I had a working interview with him and he told his staff that I had made the best lobster he had ever eaten in his life. He still remembered that and that was over 20 years ago.

“His was one of the restaurants that got me back into cooking because for a time, I left the industry and was doing personal training and coaching.”

Although enjoying his new role, he definitely misses Bermuda and the coworkers he had.

“Myself and my team at Cambridge Beaches went through a whole lot of learning and growing together,” he said.

• For more information on Grand Hotel Seeschlösschen Sea Retreat and Spa visit www.seeschloesschen.de