Life & Work with Sharilyn Metellus of Atlanta

Today we’d like to introduce you to Sharilyn Metellus.

Sharilyn, we appreciate you taking the time to share your story with us today. Where does your story begin?
My culinary passion began at age four, cooking alongside my grandmother in her kitchen. That experience, combined with growing up watching my mother’s incredible cooking, set me on the path I’m still on today. By elementary school, I was already cooking for friends, bringing treats to school, and planning menus for family gatherings like Mother’s Day. Even then, it was clear my interests leaned toward gourmet food — intricate pastry design, elegant flavors, decadent desserts.

That passion carried through adolescence: I earned a culinary certificate in 2006 while in high school, dual-enrolled at a local community college in my hometown of Tallahassee, Florida. While in college in South Florida, I cooked for my roommates whenever the dining hall fell short, and by then I knew hospitality was the career for me, so I majored in hospitality management and took a restaurant job to match. One shift was all it took to realize restaurant management wasn’t for me, and I switched to elementary education, a natural fit given my family of educators. I went on to earn a bachelor’s and a master’s degree in education, but food remained my love language-the thing that brought the people I loved most together in one room.

It took time to find my place in the food world, but writing was always something I enjoyed. In 2018, I started a faceless Instagram page called Handy Chef, showing only my hands at work. A year later, after building my blog website by hand, it became Beloved Plate, built around the idea of pouring my heart into every creation. The blog began as a mix of local Atlanta food, travel finds, and original recipes, but during the pandemic, I narrowed my focus to just my own recipes, teaching myself video editing (for YouTube) and food photography along the way. All of the photos from Beloved Plate were shot on my phone. Over nearly six years, I built a following through recipes, vlogs, grocery hauls, an annual marshmallow tasting, and Trader Joe’s copycat creations to name a few.

The most popular recipe on my blog for a long time was a copycat for Trader Joe’s Chili Onion Crunch. My version, “All Purpose Crunchy Chili Oil,” is a garlic-and-spice chili crisp that doubles as a cooking oil. Readers loved making it themselves, and in 2023 I launched Beloved Gourmet as an extension of the blog, now offering that seasoning alongside a line of sustainable serveware.

Throughout this journey, I stayed committed to my second passion: education. I spent 20 years working with children, including over 15 years teaching in public schools in underserved communities, before taking a leap of faith into full-time entrepreneurship in 2025. Today, Beloved Gourmet is a mission-driven business offering gourmet goods and sustainable, ethically sourced serveware handcrafted by skilled artisans — with our All-Purpose Crunchy Chili Oil as the flagship best-seller. The goal is to give back 7% of proceeds to support students facing food insecurity, and I continue volunteering with local youth organizations.

I’m sure it wasn’t obstacle-free, but would you say the journey has been fairly smooth so far?
The road hasn’t been smooth. The challenges have been numerous, but I’ll highlight just a few here. An initial challenge was deciding to pursue a career in education instead of my number one passion. At the time, nothing in the culinary world seemed to fit me. I was fully aware of the rigor and demands of cooking in someone else’s restaurant, yet I had no desire to manage one of my own—and I didn’t want to cook for a living, either. It just didn’t fit my personality, nor did it leave room for me to exercise creative control on my own terms. So I went through college with a burning desire to do something else, but settled into my comfort zone for many years instead. People loved my food. They’d compliment me and tell me I should open a restaurant, but I always knew that wasn’t my calling.
Blogging itself was extremely challenging. Some of that may have been self-imposed — as a lifelong learner, I wanted to understand the inner workings of each function, so I took on most of the technical side myself. That meant picking up an entirely new skill set in a world I knew nothing about: editing videos (with a little help from a tech-savvy family member), building code to turn a basic website into one that could host a blog, SEO (the bane of my existence), keyword research, metadata, and more. Most of this had to be done manually back then, unless you hired a professional. If I’m honest, I never fully mastered SEO, but I gave it my all.

A defining challenge before pursuing entrepreneurship full-time was blending multiple lives into one. For two years, I woke up at 4 a.m. daily to work on my business. Then I’d start my career, which required a 7 a.m. on-location start time, and give 200 percent to educating, mentoring, and empowering our youth all day. After that, I’d close out the evening as a single mom once school let out. The mental load was taxing, and by the end of those two years, I had no capacity left. That exhaustion is a huge part of what finally led me to leap. The discipline and routines I built during that stretch were the only thing that let me grow a business while managing a full-time career and life as a single mom.

Alright, so let’s switch gears a bit and talk business. What should we know about your work?
I specialize in creating restaurant-quality meals using fresh ingredients and bold, unexpected flavors; photographing those recipes with a distinct creative style; curating collections of kitchenware designed for charcuterie, hosting, and entertaining; and celebrating farm-to-table cuisine.

One of the things I am most proud of is the liquid seasoning I created, my All-Purpose Crunchy Chili Oil. It was initially inspired by authentic chili oil and later influenced by a popular version from Trader Joe’s. What started as an inspiration became a product that brings me immense joy. Reading the comments on my original blog post makes me smile, but nothing compares to watching a customer taste my chili oil for the first time and seeing their reaction. I absolutely love inspiring people to cook for their families and friends.

I am known for my unique flavor combinations and the creative style, composition, and staging reflected in my food photography. I have received countless questions about who takes my photographs, and I am especially proud to say, “I took all of them.”

What sets me apart is my lifelong study of food, formal culinary expertise, creativity, and willingness to become an expert in the unknown. I am constantly learning, experimenting, and finding new ways to make food, gathering, and hospitality more exciting and meaningful.

What would you say have been one of the most important lessons you’ve learned?
The most important lesson I’ve learned is to tenaciously follow your heart (without excluding basic logic). The small moments may not make sense at the time, but they all add up. I believe everything happens for a reason — spending decades in education gave me expertise I didn’t realize I’d need as a business owner. Practicing public speaking, learning to be data-driven, observing small nuances, honing organizational skills, and keeping meticulous records all inadvertently prepared me for where I am today.

Don’t compare yourself to others. It’s easier said than done, but we’re all charting our individual pathway.

Pricing:

• All-Purpose Crunchy Chili Oil- $11.99
• https://tinyurl.com/All-Purpose-Crunchy-Chili-Oil

Contact Info:

• Website: https://belovedgourmet.com/
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/belovedgourmet/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=61567059954023