Today we’d like to introduce you to Tara-Peri Chicken.
on your story and how you got to where you are today.
The concept of Tara-Peri Chicken began when Tara Jones, a genealogist and member of lineage societies, discovered that she directly descended from King Afonso I Henriques, Father of Portugal, via several bloodlines. Tara began fervently exploring Portuguese food and wowed her family with a peri-peri chicken recipe that she tried. She continued making it, each time better than the last, until she achieved perfection.
Due to the pandemic, Tara was subsequently laid off of her job as Chef and Culinary Expert at a Williams-Sonoma store in the Pittsburgh suburbs, where she taught popular cooking classes. Tara then had plenty of time to explore recipes and refine her culinary style into a signature, which she achieved.
Tara’s mother, Stacey Harris, is the author of The Diabetic Pastry Chef™, a reduced-sugar and sugar-free cookbook and online bakery. She had suggested they begin selling pastries and desserts at farmers’ markets throughout Pittsburgh—which they did with great success. Tara’s husband, John, facilitates the operation by driving, setting up and handling sales at the markets.
Although her mother has her own website and online community, Tara decided to combine her love of cooking multicultural cuisines with her mother’s baking and launched a visually stunning portfolio website and web store to deliver all kinds of savory and sweet comfort foods to customers locally throughout Pittsburgh via their commercial kitchen, with John delivering the fresh food to customers.
The concept took off and garnered them a reel and the title “Best Comfort Food in Pittsburgh” by a top Pittsburgh foodie influencer (@FoodisMySavior_Pgh on Instagram). Around the same time, Tara-Peri Chicken was awarded a Certificate of Excellence by Restaurant Guru, and a post by an enthusiastic customer was trending on the Nextdoor app singing Tara-Peri Chicken’s praises, generating even more orders. Another customer who had recently returned from Portugal insisted in her Google review that she and her brother agreed that Tara’s handmade pastéis de nata (Portuguese custard tartlets) are better than the ones they had in Portugal! Demand for these handmade Portuguese pastries has thus increased, including by Portuguese and Brazilian expats.
What many customers especially appreciate is that all of Tara-Peri Chicken’s desserts are available made traditionally with sugar or sugar-free. They absolutely love the peri-peri chicken, paella, peach cobbler and Mom’s homestyle mac and cheese and artisanal pastries delivered fresh to their door anywhere in Pittsburgh and surrounding areas.
Would you say it’s been a smooth road, and if not, what are some of the biggest challenges you’ve faced along the way?There were many stops and starts besides what was fated with Williams-Sonoma.
Convincing the public that reduced-sugar and sugar-free desserts can be amazing was challenging, as most people find lower-sugar and sugar-free sweets abysmal. Finding the right commercial kitchen was the biggest hurdle, as they are few and far between in Pittsburgh. We are fortunate to have found the best commercial kitchen for our business needs.
Everything eventually came together at the ideal time to make Tara-Peri Chicken the success that it is today.
Alright, so let’s switch gears a bit and talk business. What should we know?
Tara-Peri Chicken is a subsidiary of The Diabetic Pastry Chef.
What sets us apart from any food business in Pittsburgh is that the range of specialties we offer are ethnicities which comprise our family’s multiethnic lineage.
This extraordinary food prepared by Chef Tara Jones and her mother, Stacey Harris, is garnering attention and making fans throughout Pittsburgh and clearly beyond!
COMFORT FOOD DELIVERED TO YOU
Tara-Peri Chicken delivers authentic peri-peri chicken (aka piri-piri chicken), paella, Portuguese specialties, comfort food favorites, pastries and desserts to you anywhere in Pittsburgh — wings, our popular whole chicken dinners, mac and cheese, cookies, cakes, sweet potato pie, peach cobbler, pastéis de nata and more. Perfect portions for families, groups and events!
Like Nando’s, our peri-peri chicken is made with authentic, organic, non-GMO African bird’s eye chilis that are grown on sustainable farms and hand-harvested.
BREAKFAST & BRUNCH DELIVERY, TOO
We also offer a stellar breakfast and brunch menu for delivery—cinnamon rolls, muffins, doughnuts, omelettes, French toast, pancakes, waffles, smoothies, mimosa mocktails and other favorites.
DINNER PARTIES AT YOUR DOOR!
Our trending cultural dinner party packages are preset in three tiers and priced per person, with a six-person minimum. We take care of the hard part, while all you have to do is gather your group, break out your favorite dinnerware and enjoy!
MARKETS
Our family’s popular desserts are sold at markets throughout Pittsburgh in traditional sugar-added as well as sugar-free varieties.
Thursdays – Market Square Farmers’ Market downtown from 10am-2pm all summer
Sundays – Trader Jack’s market in Bridgeville from 8am-1pm; our lot location is F7 with a huge “COOKIES” flag (you can’t miss us!) spring through fall
Let’s talk about your city – what do you love? What do you not love?
What we like best about Pittsburgh is that it is family-oriented.
What we like least about it is the lack of true diversity, as the city tends to rehash and praise the same five cuisines over and over again, overlooking most cuisines of the world.
Contact Info:
- Website: www.TaraPeriChicken.com
- Shop: Tara-Peri-Chicken.square.site
- Instagram: TaraPeriChicken
- Facebook: DiabeticPastryChef
- Twitter: DiabeticPasChef
