A Bermudian chef has been recognised by the Obama Administration for his outstanding culinary services during the Hurricane Sandy relief effort.Former Pembroke resident John Sousa, 60, has been awarded the United States Merchant Marine Medal for Outstanding Achievement for preparing thousands of meals for federal relief workers in trying conditions following the second costliest hurricane to hit US soil.He was presented the award for demonstrating “extraordinary compassion and devotion to others” by representatives of the Department of Transportation Maritime Administration on behalf of the US Government during a moving ceremony in New York.The event took place on board the State University of New York Maritime College’s (SUNY) training ship, SS Empire State, where Mr Sousa rode out the hurricane that claimed nearly 300 lives and caused an estimated $65 billion in damage in the US alone.“I’ve cooked for many celebrities in the world but it was very humbling to get this award because it really meant something,” Mr Sousa told The Royal Gazette.The former Friswells Hill resident said working under such conditions was “very challenging and a lot of pressure”.“We prepared 70,000 meals in 51 days with no days off and as it turned out the food was of the same quality of what you would get downtown in the finer restaurants which was the crunch to it all,” he added. “But I was focused and kept things going basically.”As well as catering to relief workers Mr Sousa had to prepare meals for students housed on campus at SUNY, where he is employed as executive chef.“We were preparing 2,000 meals three times a day and at the same time the first responders were arriving and we had to start feeding them as well,” he explained. “We had a few hundred of those the first day and we made a decision that if we continue with this volume then we would have to open the ship and start feeding there. In a matter of two days I had tractors trailing food to stock the ship and start dealing with feeding FEMA (Federal Emergency Management Agency) relief workers in three or four different locations.”Classified as a category three storm, Hurricane Sandy inflicted severe damage in New York and New Jersey and struck the region just weeks after Mr Sousa took up his new post at SUNY.“It had been less than a month I had taken over and we had 2,000 students that lived there that couldn’t go off campus when the hurricane was approaching,” he recalled. “I was quite cavalier about it and was thinking why is everybody freaked out. But I didn’t know what was coming and I had to stay there (SUNY) the night of the hurricane because all the kids needed to be fed.“I spent the night on the ship and that’s when it [the hurricane] really hit and then I had to get off the next day when all the first responders arrived. They had to stay there and be fed there because the ship is owned by the federal government.”Mr Sousa moved the New York in 1982 and worked at some of the finest establishments in Manhattan, including Helmsley Palace and the Friars Club.During a 26-year working stint as executive chef at the Friars Club he prepared meals for former US Secretary of State Henry Kissenger, boxing legend Joe Frazier and King of Pop Michael Jackson.“Michael was there once and one of the things was that nobody would bother him,” he recalled. “He was there when he did the ‘Thriller’ album and I remember us making a cake for him that was the ‘Thriller’ album and it was kept very low key that he was there. That was the clientele there on a daily basis.“I started at the bottom at the Helmsley and within a two-year period I went from the bottom as an chef’s assistant right up to being a chef. And then from there I jumped into the Friars Club executive position. That was challenging not having a lot of background experience but I had to live up to it.“I’ve been at the top of the game here for the last 32 years. It’s been an interesting career and I’ve been lucky in a lot of ways to be exposed to all of these great chefs right in the midst of it.”Mr Sousa completed a cooking course at the former Stonington Beach Hotel before furthering his studies in upstate New York at the Culinary Institute of America.Although cooking is a part of Mr Sousa’s DNA, he only decided to make a career out of it in his mid-20s.“I always cooked at home with my grandmother [Mary] and all that,” he recalled. “And with a Portuguese background food and culture is very important plus I was influenced by all of the West Indians that lived up in that area [Friswells Hill].“I’ve had to cook every kind of food that is imagined and those cultural differences and being among the black West Indians in Bermuda has worked to my advantage.”