Making Meals, Moving Forward, and Giving Back

“Hey, do you need a plate?” 

It’s a question Northampton Community College (NCC) culinary alum Janaja “Jay Jay” Harris has found herself asking at multiple points in her cooking career. It began when she founded her catering company, Fires Kitchen, in 2020, with the goal of getting food out to those who needed it during the pandemic. 

Most recently, during the government shutdown last fall, she found herself calling out to people on the streets of Allentown from her grandmother’s front porch, offering free food to anyone who was hungry.  

“Whatever profit I was making, I decided to just say, ‘Let’s get food out to the homeless’,” Harris says.  

That generosity, decisiveness, and commitment to pushing through tough times is what got Harris to where she is today – a busy local caterer and business owner who was recognized by The Morning Call as one of the Lehigh Valley’s Most Influential People this past February.  

But even amid her recent success, Harris is not one to forget her roots. She is quick to recall what led her to start her own business and to enroll in NCC’s culinary program. 

After a layoff from her job working for a local restaurant, Harris knew she wanted to keep cooking. She had already earned a degree from the McCann School of Business and decided to combine her work and education experiences to give selling her own food a try.  

“I took my last check, and I flipped it,” she recalls. “I said, ‘let’s sell some plates and see how this goes.’ That weekend, I sold out from Friday to Sunday – everything was just going – and I realized this is it. I’ve found my niche.”  

Harris hosted her first catering gig for a cousin not long after, churning out meals for 120 people at a local park. She remembers getting compliments from guest after guest about how much they enjoyed her food. With that encouragement, she decided to make things official.  

“I decided to take Fires Kitchen as something serious. I decided to say, ‘let’s go to culinary school’.”  

Harris did her research and was drawn to NCC’s culinary program and its involvement in the community. She read about past cooking competitions and how the program had hosted famous chefs, including Emeril Lagasse, and felt like it was where she was meant to be.  

“It was golden. The program was amazing,” she says of her early days as an NCC student.  

But life wasn’t done throwing challenges Harris’ way. She found that a lot of personal hardships were getting in the way of her schooling and her business. In the midst of her time at NCC, Harris realized she needed a change.  

Northampton helped her find that next step, too. On a Zoom call for students featuring NCC Culinary alumni, Harris heard one alum talk about the Disney culinary program, and something just clicked.  

“When she said that, I’m like, that’s it. That’s my escape.” 

Harris pivoted. She stepped away from her culinary classes and enrolled in the Disney program, spending six months cooking as part of the theme park’s Star Wars Galactic Cruiser team. It was a personal refresh that she desperately needed, but she didn’t want to miss out on completing her degree. She went to Director of Culinary Arts at NCC, Chef Domenico Lombardo.  

Lombardo encouraged Harris to commit to finishing her NCC credits, and ultimately helped her complete the program, which she officially graduated from in Winter 2026.  

“Chef Dom was fighting for me,” Harris says. “He said: ‘Jay Jay, if you give me 100%, I’ll give you mine. You’re not in it alone.’ And for so long, I was doing it alone – just fighting and being in survival mode.” 

That felt completely full circle for Harris. She was proud to find herself back in the NCC kitchen earlier this year, cooking food and doing a photoshoot with The Morning Call for her recent "Most Influential People” recognition.  

She is deeply grateful to Lombardo and the culinary professors of the NCC program for helping her get to this point, and their mentorship has inspired her to want to educate local youth herself in the future.  

“I want to be the culinary Miss Frizzle,” she says, describing her desire to teach middle school students about life through culinary skills.  

Harris continues her culinary work both locally here in the Lehigh Valley (look for Fires Kitchen at the Juneteenth festival at Cedar Beach Park in June) and in Florida as a continued member of the Disney team. She also released an e-cookbook called Taste of Comfort, which includes the 10 southern recipes that launched Fires Kitchen (plus a secret bonus recipe) that is available to purchase online.  

Learn more about Harris and Fires Kitchen on Instagram.