The Barbados Food & Wine and Rum Festival is for Barbadians too, says marketing executive with the Barbados Tourism Authority, Averil Byer.
The four-day event, organized by the Barbados Tourism Authority (BTA), opens officially today at the Limegrove Lifestyle Centre. Byer told the Weekend Nation that while the festival targeted gourmet tourism, it was also intended that Barbadians should share the experience.
She said there were affordable activities designed for Barbadian participation such as Sunday’s Bajan Fiesta being hosted at Lion Castle Polo Estate, featuring Barbadian chef Paul Yellin. In addition, the Barbados Tourism Authority has given away tickets as prizes in radio promotions “so that the average Barbadian would have access to the festival”.
Byer disclosed six places were also being provided as prizes to the exclusive dinner at the top-priced restaurant, The Cliff, where acclaimed international chef Tom Colicchio would be featured, while Sunday’s Bajan Fiesta at Lion Castle Polo Estate had been billed as a family-styled lunch featuring Bajan dishes prepared by some of the island’s leading award-winning chefs.
This is the second year for the festival and Byer said she was “very pleased” with overseas sales to date, reporting a 20 per cent increase in overseas bookings over last year when about 1 500 people came to Barbados for the festival.Tom Brodi and Mark McEwan, Britain’s Bruno Loubet and Brazil’s Victor Gomes will join last year’s participating international chefs Marcus Samuelsson, Ming Tsai, Paul Yellin and Tom Colliccio for dining events and cooking demonstrations at various dining venues around the island over the four days.
Wine experts Anthony Giglio and Ray Isle and Food and Wine editor Nilou Motamed are also featuring in the event.Some concern has however been expressed about the apparent lack of greater involvement by Barbadian chefs.
In response, Byer said, “This festival is only a success if we are able to deliver bodies in Barbados and the overseas attraction is with celebrity chefs.
You can only attract the numbers that you want from an overseas perspective if you have celebrity chefs as your headliners because that is really what drives the business.”
She added: “If we are going to attract the overseas markets who are foodies who follow these chefs around, we need the celebrity status which drives the business.
“Once we get the business here, then we have the opportunity to showcase our local talent and that exposure adds to their [local chefs’] progress, and there is the forum for good exchange of ideas between the two, since they can each see what the other is doing.”
Byer said the festival also offered opportunities for wider exposure for the many food vendors around Barbados as she suggested they may be considered for next year’s event.
“I believe that given the fact that we have a wide range of cuisine in Barbados, part of the plan next year may be to incorporate a number of those vendors in a way that we can have one inexpensive event that would be accessible to the average person.
“. . . It is a way of showcasing what we have and the quality of the cuisine that people can get from the chef at the bottom of Holders Hill, to Cuz at Pebbles Beach and many other authentic food vendors who are obviously delivering some very good quality cuisine.
“That will be the idea in moving forward as we expand the festival to incorporate all examples of our food,” Byer said. (GC)
