BRIDGETOWN, Barbados — The foodie culture is rife in this Caribbean island as locals and visitors alike turned out in droves for the 2019 staging of the Barbados Food and Rum Festival.

In its 10th year, the festival showcased the best that the island has to offer – food and rum.

This was hard to miss in the capital of Bridgetown, where local delights ranging from the traditional Bajan pudding and souse, boiled pig parts served with pickled cucumber in vinegar sauce, to the local specialty dishes of Cou-cou and salt fish, served at the local eateries and food trucks, now a common sight throughout the town.

To kick off the extravaganza, locals and visitors to the island headed to the south coast for a night out in Oistins, a popular hip strip for night life entertainment and fresh seafood. Festival pop-ups were also strategically placed in communities across Barbados to showcase the wide array of culinary offerings.

Organisers with the Barbados Tourism Marketing Incorporation (BTMI) told the Jamaica Observer that the festival has seen a steady growth in visitors since its inception in 2009.

“We have definitely seen an increase in visitors who come specifically for the festival,” BTMI Marketing Manager Tanisha Holder, said in an interview. “We also see local rum producers being given a platform to display their best rums,” said Holder.

Fittingly, the festival was launched under the theme, ‘The Story of Rum, from then to now’, signaling the island’s proud distinction as the birthplace of rum, including its trademark Mount Gay Rum, established on the island in 1703.

The Sunday Observer spoke with patrons who shared that they had travelled to Barbados specifically for the Food and Rum experience. A family of five visiting from Trinidad & Tobago came to celebrate a special birthday.

“My dad was turning 70 and my sister and I decided to try and do something special and that’s why we decided to bring him to the Food and Rum. I have also come to Food and Rum about two or three times,” Kylie Jacobs told the Sunday Observer.

“The reason why we chose here too is that our parents had their honeymoon here and they haven’t been back since,” Jacob said. Her father, Dr Francis Jacob was especially happy with the food.

“Everything has been fabulous. We went to Oistins and the food was just delicious,” said Dr Jacob. His wife, Rosamund Jacob chimed in, “They really have captured the island experience with this festival.” The couple was also celebrating their first time back in Barbados after having their first honeymoon on the island.

The second night of festivities featured the Gourmet Safari dinner series, which saw several stand-alone as well as hotel restaurants opening their doors to the public for an evening of fine dining. Guests at the Tapestry restaurant at the Treasure Beach Hotel, for example, were treated to gourmet dishes made especially for the festival.

BTMI Chairman, Sunil Chaterani told the Sunday Observer that the festival has helped to improve the quality of culinary talent on the island.

“The objective over the years as the festival has evolved is we want to showcase our local chefs. We have had less celebrity chefs down over the last few years. We are now getting more local chefs with talent that we can utilise on the island.

“What we do is we send them overseas to interact with some of these Michelin star chefs and they come back with the experience. We don’t have any Michelin star restaurants on the island, but we think that we can produce some Michelin star local dishes and many of our chefs are overseas and doing fine cuisine with Barbadian ingredients,” Chaterani said.

“We think that Food and Rum is [a] fantastic event for Barbados and it is here to stay,” he added.

Barbados has also seen a growth is local chefs and mixologists who were also featured at this year’s staging. These included Barbados’ winning culinary team who recently won first place in the 2019 Taste of the Caribbean competition in Miami.

The team included two senior chefs, one junior chef, a pastry chef and a bartender who were among the headliners of this year’s event. They were joined by international and world-renowned chefs, Tom Aikens a Michelin star chef from the United Kingdom, and chef Craig Harding out of Canada.

This year’s festival was especially unique with the addition of the family-oriented Food Truck Mash Up held at the Pelican Craft Centre in Bridgetown. The evening’s festivities saw a total of nine food trucks offering street food all in one location.

“Food truck culture has really grown over the past number of years, so this event was really recognition of the growing trend in Barbados. We have nine food trucks, including desert as well. You also see pop ups of other food vendors, persons doing breadfruit and tacos and pork. So there is a variety of food and rum and the Food Truck Mash Up,” Holder told the Sunday Observer.

“The turnout this year has been tremendous. We invited all of Barbados and all the visitors to the island to come and experience the best [of] our local cuisine on wheels,” she added.

Winsome Frater, a Jamaican living in Barbados for the past five years, shared with the Sunday Observer that she had been serving up Caribbean fusion street food in her Jamaica Grill Kitchen food truck.

“We serve jerk pork, jerk chicken, grilled fish and we do it in a certain way that you crave it and you have to come back to the truck for it. We also had a Caribbean fusion going on where we had chana peas and potato as one of the sides, as well as the original Jamaican rice and peas with the coconut milk and then we have something called coconut breadfruit Cou-cou,” said Frater.

Her husband, Mark who is Barbadian, boasted that they had one of the best food trucks in Barbados. “It is the number one place in Barbados to get jerk anything.”

Street food pop-ups will continue into November as a teaser leading up to the 2020 roll out of Food and Rum events in support of the Government’s ‘We Gatherin’ initiative, which will see thousands of Barbadians returning home to partake in the festivities.

“We are trying to bring home every Bajan for 2020 Food and Rum festival,” BTMI Marketing Manager told the Sunday Observer. “Next year we are definitely looking for growth. The turnout was tremendous and it can only get better from here,” said Holder.