Patrons sampling the roasted breadfruit with toppings from Ron Maynard (left), a Chef at the Sea Breeze Hotel, recently at the Barbados Food and Rum Festival at the Blackwoods Screw Docks.
From left: Executive Chef at the Ocean Hotel, Michael Harrison; Sous Chef at Ocean 2, Shari Tull; and Chef at the Sea Breeze Hotel, Ron Maynard, prepare samples for patrons to the Barbados Food and Rum Festival at the Blackwoods Screw Docks recently.
Sealy: Local chefs now taking the charge at festival
Tue, 09/27/2016 - 12:00am
By:
Patricia Thangaraj
THE Barbados Food and Rum Festival, formerly known as the Barbados Food and Wine and Rum Festival, is now dominated by Barbadian chefs cooking local foods and this signals a coming of age of this event and something that all Barbadians can be proud of, especially in the year of our Golden Jubilee.
This was one of the messages that Minister of Tourism and International Transport, Richard Sealy, delivered loud and clear as he spoke at the Barbados Food and Rum Festival 2016 at the Blackwoods Screw Dock last Tuesday night.
“I want to speak about those early days because obviously in the traditional format of the Food Festival, we brought in a number of celebrity chefs and indeed the local component was, should I say, minimised. However, we have come of age now to the point where in our 50th year of nationhood, the local chefs are now taking the charge and are in fact doing the heavy lifting for the Food Festival.”
On this note, he praised some of the well-known local chefs who were present at the event.
“And so I want to salute all of them. It is a real pleasure to see some of the stalwarts – if I can call them that – people like Creig Greenidge and Michael Harrison, Michael Hinds, John Hazzard; they are all part of the regional culinary team that we had. Henderson Butcher, I think, was a part of those days too and they are here.”
Sealy also complimented those up-and-coming chefs such as Jason Howard, who has three eateries in England where he cooks and thereby promotes traditional Bajan cuisine.
“But then we have Damien Leach of course coming on very strong and I want to specially mention Jason Howard for a simple reason. Jason is as Bajan as you can get and that is a fact. He has cou cou and salt fish... and you can’t get more Bajan than that. But he lives in the UK and in essence though, I think that it is a good thing when sons and daughters of the soil journey to foreign lands, but are yet still determined to take with them what they have learnt here and hone the craft, so that they can become the very top of their profession.”
The Minister of Tourism stated that this chef should serve as an example for other local chefs to cook indigenous meals, so that they too can be a part of this festival next year.
“He is doing Bajan things in England, pushing the blue, yellow and black and I want to salute him and through him, I want to issue a challenge to all of those persons of Barbadian extraction (that) you can come back and be a part of this celebration as well.”