Evette Quoibia has always loved cooking. At age eight, she was cooking with little cups while her peers were playing with toys. As she grew up, she helped prepare meals for her family and loved to share her food with others.
Today, Quoibia is a chef who also owns a restaurant that is doing very well. She has also been certified as a Guinness World Record breaker for her longest cooking marathon hour (individual) —140 hr, 11 minutes, 11 sec. She broke Ireland’s Alan Fisher’s record time — 119 hr 57minutesn 16 seconds.
For six days, the Liberian-Australian chef shared the flavors of her native Liberia with her community, inviting all and sundry in her community in Melbourne, Australia to come and try her delicious cuisines of West Africa.
“I was born during the war, and we moved a lot. My parents fled to the Ivory Coast, then Ghana, then I came to Australia,” said Quoibia to Guinness World Records (GWR).
“I always dreamed of being great, or doing something out of the ordinary. I’m very ambitious, I dream big. But due to the life I had, I feel like I didn’t have the opportunity to do things that permit me to be the person I wanted to be,” she continued. “Until I found out about the Guinness World Records’ longest cooking marathon.”
She was excited about attempting the record because it was within her skills.
“So this is a good opportunity to achieve something big, or to do something different,” said Quoibia.
She used two months to prepare for the competition, speaking to an assistant chef and an event planner, her church, and her team of kitchen volunteers.
She also started a GoFundMe to help pay for the items she would need in the kitchen. To get everyone attracted to her meals, she cooked international-friendly Liberian food for the event, including jollof rice (Liberian-style), cassava leaves, and a variety of soups and stews like pepper, okra, and cabbage, which could be served with white rice, according to GWR.
Other meals were inspired by Nigerian, Asian, and Australian cooking.
Quoibia started strong, but along the way, she became weak because she had been standing and cooking for days in heated conditions.
During day four or five, she began struggling: “I relied on my team a lot because I was very weak mentally. I wasn’t there. I also found myself very slow, I would say. I couldn’t process things properly, because not sleeping for that long is an extreme thing to do.”
“But thank God for my team, who helped me during my process, and helped me stay on track.”
Her family, her community, and her church were also present to cheer her on, and that gave her immense energy to continue with her attempt. Before she knew it, she had broken the record.
“Honestly, I was not in the mental state to know where I was [time-wise]. I just kept going until someone from my church made an announcement and drew my attention to the time and said, ‘Evette, we are reaching the time of your record-breaking moment, and we need to celebrate… You have broken your record!” she said. “And I was extremely excited, and very happy.”
The Liberian-Australian chef now hopes that her feat will inspire others to never give up on their dreams.
“I wanted to encourage women, single moms, young women, and everyone else, that whatever you’re doing right now, if you have a dream to do it big, there’s hope for you. There’s a chance for everyone.”
