In the hot Tucson desert, Alejandre Phillips-Richards thrives to cultivate a robust community of followers and a garden.
She is known by her community as just Chef Alex.
“Everybody knows Chef Alex," she said. "You know, as a matter of fact you don’t even have to say Alex. You can say Chef and they’ll finish it."
Beyond being in the culinary scene, Chef Alex was a marketer, entrepreneur and vet in the U.S. Military Air Force. She is currently on a soccer team and is a vocal activist. Like the onions she uses to cook, Chef Alex has a lot of layers.
In 2019 she created The Tie Kitchen, her private chef and catering business.
“I always used to wear a tie every single day for work,” Chef Alex explained. “When I walked in the room, the girl with the tie was the person that you needed to talk to.”
Chef Alex was born in New York as a daughter of immigrants from Barbados and came to Tucson in 2009. After working in marketing for 26 years, she switched gears and focused on food.
Sheila Chonis is the former owner of Tino’s Pizza. She met Chef Alex back in her marketing days.
“Well, you know, I think her marketing background is what inspired her cookbooks,” Chonis said. “But they're fantastic books. Beautiful graphics [and] easy recipes to follow. So, I know that is [what] kind of led her on her path.”
For the past seven years, Chef Alex has showcased her cookbook series at the Tucson Festival of Books.
AZPM spoke with the private chef a month before the 2026 Tucson Festival of Books, and she was excited. Her book series has titles about community like Cooking with Friends and Summertime with Friends.
But she has a specific way of knowing which friends are in her circle and who she wants to cook for.
“I'm the type of person -- I want to feel your aura. I want to get to know you. If I don't like what I'm feeling, I don't want to cook for you. I really don't. And so our service is very, very personal,” Chef Alex said.
The Tie Kitchen does not have a website. It flourishes from word-of-mouth praise and a Facebook community of over 1,300 followers.
“I am very rooted in my community. So, pretty much anything that I do, I have a group of people who just follow me along,” she said.
However, just two weeks after AZPM spoke with chef Alex, she was diagnosed with breast cancer for the second time.
A month and a half later, AZPM checked in with her after the diagnosis. She was in her backyard community garden in South Tucson wearing a dandelion bucket hat as she poured soil into a flower pot.
“We have every herb you can possibly think of. We have carrots, we have sweet potatoes, we have regular potatoes,” she said walking around her garden.
“Well, life has been lifin’,” she said, sighing. “So I was diagnosed six weeks ago with breast cancer again after being free for about 21 years… but I will handle this like I handle everything else, like a champ.”
Chef Alex and her wife, who she met in Tucson, did not expect a rediagnosis to happen.
In early February, Chef Alex still had plans to go to the Tucson Festival of Books and taste the food at the Iron Chef Tucson Culinary Experience. Those were put on hold as she recovered.
Her friend Sheila Chonis has keys to her home and visits the Tie Community Garden frequently. She knows that Chef Alex will continue to fight the recent diagnosis.
“She was out buying seeds and stuff for the garden because it's time to turn it over and she's like, ‘I got work to do,’’” Chonis said laughing.
A friend of Chef Alex’s created a GoFundme to help with medical expenses, without chef Alex’s request, and her community gave back $3,000 as of March 26.
“It's my heart. You know what I mean? It's my heart. People are inherently good. It’s like I said - you are good to people and people will be good to you,” she said.
By early March she was feeling better and attended the Tucson Festival of Books with her wife. She has two doctor’s appointments coming up in April but is working hard to keep her garden and community as strong as ever.
“My people says who I am, which also translates into my food,” she said.
