Hospitality is the name of the game for 17-year-old Kayla Williams — and literally, since she came out of the Miss Bermuda Pageant without the crown but as Miss Hospitality instead.

Now, courtesy of the MEF group of restaurants, Kayla is in her element: the steamy and hectic kitchens of Mickey’s Beach Bar and Bistro where, as a summer intern, she continues on the path to becoming a chef.

“I’ve always loved food,” she said. “I love eating it, I love making it, I love sharing it. Culinary arts is an applied science but it’s also art put on a plate — an expression of yourself. It allows me to share a piece of who I am.”

A student of culinary arts at the Bermuda College, Kayla shared her dreams as Miss Paget to the Miss Bermuda audience earlier this month.

Asked at the pageant about her career goals, she answered at once: “Definitely to become a chef and open my own restaurant in Bermuda.”

Unfazed at falling short of victory that night and still calling the pageant experience “incredible”, Miss Hospitality elaborated on what she had in mind for the Island.

“Actually, I’m interested in vegans, people who are diabetic or coeliac,” Kayla said. “The restaurant experience should be available to everyone, not limited, and it’s really restricted here in Bermuda.”

Excellent cuisine abounds in Bermuda — but anyone who has hosted vegetarian visitors would have to agree with her.

After completing her degree next year, Kayla has her sights set on the International Culinary Institute in Switzerland. The emphasis on quality ingredients and care appeals to her meticulous side.

A keen student, she was home schooled but still gave the valedictorian address at the close of the GED programme.

Internships like the job at Mickey’s are a Bermuda College requirement, but she knew Chef Serge from the “plates of passion” initiative, run by the Bermuda Hospitality Institute, that links chefs around the Island with culinary students.

A real kitchen is not for the faint-hearted. With the summer crowds, Mickey’s can host 300 people for lunch on a day when the cruise ships come in — up to 400 for dinner.

Temperatures rise in the restaurant’s relatively small five-station kitchen.

Even confined to the cooler tasks like desserts and salads, Kayla gets the work done through a kind of Zen.

“When they say ‘pick up, pick up’, that’s all you think about. You forget everything, even the heat — almost.”

As the only female chef in the three restaurants at Elbow Beach, and one of the few Bermudians in the establishment, Kayla said she is “honoured” to represent both in the workplace.

No kitchen job is complete without battle scars; for Miss Hospitality, an early slip with the knife while slicing through slippery calamari resulted in a trip to the emergency room. She takes it in her stride.

Putting her best face forward, as someone who must go to local schools to talk about hospitality as well as blogging of her personal experiences, Kayla also looks forward to completing the tourism ambassador programme.

But the topic always comes back to food, including the personal specialities she is developing — such as a six-cheese pizza with two types of mushroom and a sauce including pineapple and mango salsa, jalapeño, red onion and lime.

Her mother Azuree started her off cooking by teaching her how to make spaghetti, and her secret-recipe sugar cookies are so good that her father Kali likens them to a drug.

Sometimes her brothers Kalin, Kelin and Kyan cook — “Or they look to me to make something,” Kayla said.

Asked for the best way to start in the tough world of chefs, Kayla replied: “You have to want it; you have to be hungry for it.

“Say ‘Yes, chef’ to anything, whatever kitchen you work in and whatever chef you’re working under. That’s how you build your way up. Meeting every need, every expectation — that’s what chefs are supposed to do. As you slowly get promoted you get more flexibility and you’re allowed to express yourself more. That’s also the advice from my teacher at the college, and it’s proven to be true. Just go for it. Do everything that’s asked of you, to the best of your ability.”