Chef Erika Dupree Cline

Pastry Chef Erika Dupree Cline is the proud owner of Bleu Chocolàt. Her motto – a day is never good without chocolate. 

Erika is known across the USA for creating the most scrumptious desserts and chocolates, and her 30(+) year career as a pastry chef and chocolatier started in Michigan under the country’s first certified Master Chef, Milos Cihelka. From there, her passion for the culinary arts has spanned the US and Caribbean, including creating experiences and desserts at The Peabody Hotel in Memphis Tennessee, Ponte Vedra Country Club in Jacksonville Florida, the creation of the chocolate program for Graycliff Chocolatier at the five-star Graycliff Hotel & Restaurant in Nassau, Bahamas, and serving as an ambassador for Barry Callebaut’s gourmet chocolate brands Callebaut, Cacao Barry and Van Leer.

As a devotee of the pastry arts, Chef Erika created a non-profit organization entitled Culinary Wonders USA in 2008. Culinary Wonders USA’s mission is to introduce, share, and cultivate the culinary arts to minorities. As president of CWUSA, Chef Erika believes that mentoring, scholarships, and volunteerism are great avenues for providing direction in the culinary world. While living the life of pastries across the country and Caribbean, she has supported various charity events such as The Kidney Foundation (Memphis Tennessee), Sulzbacher Center & Rhoda L. Martin Cultural Heritage Center (Jacksonville, Florida), Food as Art, the United Negro College Fund (Seattle Washington) where she has raised over $36,000 over 5 years by auctioning her desserts for the beloved charity, The Service Board (Seattle Washington) and Minority Chef Summit 2014 (Nassau Bahamas) (Port au Prince, Haiti 2015) and (Tortola BVI 2017) are other charities she has given her heart too.

In 2012, Erika became one of a select few celebrity chefs to spokesperson “Sunday Dinner Chefs” for Publix Supermarkets showcasing holiday entrees and desserts for the holiday season. She has also made numerous television cooking appearances including being one of the original 2010 'cheftestants' on Bravo’s ‘Top Chef Just Desserts,’ and later as a judge for the Food Network’s Rock N Roll Pastry Challenge.

Erika is a James Beard alumna and was a featured chef at the James Beard House All-Women Chef Dinner for the West Indies Dinner in 2017 and 2018. In May 2018, Chef Erika was again a featured chef at the James Beard Awards gala in Chicago, Illinois.

Erika has showcased her culinary talents as one of the main attractions at Black EXPO located in several cities across the southeast United States and Epcot Food and Wine in Orlando, Florida. She has also been featured in the Huffington Post, the Pastry Arts Magazine, Afar Travel Magazine, Black Enterprise’s book, Toques in Black: A Celebration of Black Chefs, and in Black Desserts, a Black Food Folks podcast series focusing on the life and work of black pastry chefs.

Her latest venture, Bleu Chocolàt, started in 2016 as a boutique chocolate atelier in Tortola, British Virgin Islands. In the fall of 2017, Hurricane Irma destroyed her home and business, and Chef Erika rebuilt her chocolate brand in Jacksonville Florida as Bleu Chocolàt Cafe. The Cafe operated in Jacksonville, FL for three years, reaching Jacksonville’s Top 50 restaurants in 2019. Erika closed Bleu Chocolàt Café in 2020 after the pandemic hit, and became General Manager and Corporate Chef to the black-owned Crazy Beans Coffee store in Jacksonville, FL — expanding their location to thrive in Jacksonville’s public transportation station. She also launched her online chocolate company, Simply Erika, in 2020 as a bean-to-bar chocolate company.

In 2023, Erika opened Bleu Chocolàt Workshop on the beautiful island of St. Croix, using locally grown cacao to make her mark on the US Virgin Islands.