A professional chef with years of experience in the hospitality industry has been unable to return home after more than 30 years overseas — because he cannot get a job on the island.

George Daniels believes that he has been overlooked for senior positions in the culinary world because he is Bermudian — and that on-island restaurateurs prefer to hire foreigners on less pay.

But that claim has been dismissed by one restaurant manager who insisted that the industry was desperate to hire Bermudians, and was forced to bring in foreign staff because locals are not interested in working in hospitality.

Mr Daniels, 59, made the claim after he and his wife made plans to return to his island home last year — only to find that restaurants here were reluctant to hire him.

Mr Daniels moved to the United States in 1991 when he was in his mid-twenties, having worked as a bartender on the island in his formative years.

After settling in Rhode Island, he attended culinary school at Johnson and Wales University.

Talent and hard work — often involving 70-hour weeks — propelled Mr Daniels up the kitchen hierarchy, and he eventually became the executive chef of a shoreside bistro in Portsmouth, Rhode island.

Last year, Mr Daniels decided it was time to bring his family home — only to find his career ambitions thwarted, he said, by hoteliers reluctant to hire him.

Mr Daniels said: “We wanted to come home, and in October 2023, after months of answering ads and interviewing over the phone and internet, we flew down, hopefully to be offered a job. We already had a real-estate agent ready to list our house.”

Mr Daniels said that he attended one interview with a hotel general manager who he claimed was dismissive from the start.

He said: “It did not go well. I got the distinct impression the general manager spent the 20 minutes I had to wait for the interview leafing through my resume and looking up my current place of employment.

“‘Looks casual’, he noted. ‘We don’t do bistro here’.”

Mr Daniels said that after receiving a rejection letter, he contacted the hotel to ask why his application had been unsuccessful.

He said: “His reply was that since I had never worked in a hotel kitchen, he didn’t think I could do the job.

“Boom. That was the tell. That was not in their ad or even discussed previously, but he dropped it like a trump card.

“I am a Bermudian chef who had ticked all their boxes and even exceeded their requirement for experience as an executive chef, but I wasn’t given serious consideration for a job well within my capabilities. A cursory interview was all I got.

“I felt he was checking a box, showing that he had tried to hire a Bermudian, but just couldn’t find one who could do the job.”

Mr Daniels observed that neither the general manager nor the head chef he hoped to replace were Bermudian.

He said: “His kitchen, just like about every single one on the island today, is staffed by non-Bermudians.

“I don’t blame any of the kitchen workers for this situation. They are nothing more than the predictable and desired result of the current system.

“They are pawns — cheap labour to be exploited.

“The system is built on a fallacy that Bermudians are first when it comes to employment, and if there is a qualified Bermudian, he or she would be first in line for the job.”

Mr Daniels said that, according to government statistics, more than 10 per cent of young Bermudians were unemployed, while foreigners made up almost one quarter of the working population.

He said: “Now factor in that a large amount of the foreign workers are kitchen staff, the majority earning less than the median of $65,725.

“What we are left with is an even smaller group of foreigners earning substantially more than the average Bermudian, who is, in most cases, denied access to these higher-paying jobs.

“The whole system is a blatant lie. I have been told what I now regard as a fable my entire life — that foreign workers were on the island to do the jobs they couldn’t find Bermudians to do — but if there was ever a qualified Bermudian, he or she would get the job.”

The Royal Gazette was unable to contact the restaurant division of the Chamber of Commerce before press time last night.

However, one hospitality worker did respond to Mr Daniels’s comments.

The senior manager of a Front Street restaurant, who asked not to be named, said: “I feel for Mr Daniels but I don’t think he’s right.

“The fact is that every bar and restaurant is crying out for Bermudians to get into the industry.

“We want to give our customers — particularly our tourists — that unique Bermudian experience, and a big part of that is having Bermudian staff.

“It’s a concern that we all share. I know that the Government has launched initiatives to train people up. I’ve been in touch with the Bermuda College to talk about training programmes.

“We really are doing all we can to get Bermudians into what used to be the first pillar of our economy.

“It’s a shame, because it’s a great industry to get into. But it seems that most people today are more interested in becoming lawyers or accountants.”