ABOUT US
Kamini Kurvink, a native of Trinidad, learned to cook at a tender age of 10 years. She cooked for her parents and eight (8) siblings. Her love for cooking and baking has gained her the experience and knowledge to invent and re-invent her homeland dishes, making it more personalized.
At the age of 26 years, she relocated to Aruba, where she worked for the fast food chain “Burger King”, starting out as a regular worker and working her way up to Manager.
After leaving Burger King, she opened a breakfast and lunch snackette, it was opened 6 days a week, at Pastoor Hendrikstraat # 9 for 10 months, with the help of her daughter (Vandana), after school hours. She was forced to close her small snackette due to the landlord failure in not meeting with the mandatory requirements of maintaining a safe and hygienic place for serving food to the public of Aruba.
There is no comparison to what she is accustomed to do while in her hometown, eventually she did what she normally does best by adapting to her old known method of cooking and over the last 10 years have operated from her home to a small one man business catering for the personnel of the refinery, banks and other persons by word of mouth.
Her dream as a child was to open her own restaurant, and with the help of her husband, Pieter Kurvink, who has helped in making her dream a reality. Together with her husband and two daughters, she opened at Costa Riba Restaurant.
In the three years (2 years & nine months) that she ran Costa Riba Restaurant, it was a great experience for her and her guest, both local and foreign, the guest was entertained by her wit, humour, tenacity, innovativeness and stories of her life. Kamini fused the traditions of her homeland, Trinidad, with Aruba, every year she celebrates Trinidad Independence, Queen’s Day now King’s Day, Flag Day, Ole and New Years, entertains the customers, both local and foreign, with live Steel Pan, Ricon Boyz, etc. She has, also, hosted Christmas Parties for local companies and groups, Friends for Life dinners, hosted charity events, feed the local orphanage, Casa Cuna,
After running Costa Riba for almost 3 years, all of my customers keep asking me, when am I re-opening? What’s our new location? Etc.
She was awarded a Certificate of Excellence by www.tripadvisor.com for outstanding food and service for 2013 and 2014, ranked number 1 best restaurant in San Nicholas; reviews were from locals and tourist. And I would like to continue working with both the locals and tourist, making their food personalized, i.e. gluten free, or persons with allergies.
At the beginning, Kamini’s Place will be run with my husband, my two daughters and myself. I will be providing jobs for locals once the restaurant is on a level footing.
