The flavours that made us: Barbados is on the menu

As Barbados approaches 60 years of Independence, its Food and Rum Festival invites us to discover the island through the flavours of home.

Ask chef Damian Leach what takes him home and the answer comes before the first mouthful. It is the smell of saltfish boiling.

Roast breadfruit belongs in that memory too. Its soft flesh alongside saltfish is a familiar pleasure that has stayed with him as his cooking has developed. His first lessons in flavour came from his mother and grandmother.
“You gotta learn flavours from home first,” he says, joking about how much a cook’s education depends on eating well while growing up. Experience has since widened his palate. “Flavours are something I think you learn when you explore more.

Home is the starting point for this year’s Barbados Food and Rum Festival. From November 5 to 8, Barbados is on the menu, with an invitation to taste the island as it celebrates 60 years of Independence and five years as a Republic.

“This year is especially meaningful as we celebrate 60 and five. Food allows us to share who we are in a way people can experience for themselves.” says festival lead Carol Roberts Reifer.

For an island celebrated as the culinary capital of the Caribbean, pleasure can be as immediate as fresh marlin lifted from the grill in Oistins, or the first bite of a hot fishcake.

The festival invites us to explore what its chefs are doing with those familiar flavours now.

The event began in 2010 as the Barbados Food and Wine and Rum Festival. Early editions brought international names including Marcus Samuelsson and Anne Burrell to the island. In 2016, during Barbados’s 50th anniversary of Independence, it adopted its current name as Barbadian chefs took a more prominent role. A decade later, local talent remains central to the programme.

Rise & Rum, themed Bridgetown, Early Saturday Morning, is one of the festival’s signature events, celebrating where we came from. Leach’s memories bring a familiar warmth to the experience, rooted in the people who nurtured him and the flavours he first discovered at home.

And then there is rum—Barbados’ gift to the world. Recognised as the birthplace of rum, the island’s distilling tradition dates back to the seventeenth century, with Mount Gay tracing its heritage to 1703.
For mixologist Ashley Morgan, a drink’s sense of place also comes from what grows around her. Asked what makes a cocktail distinctly Bajan beyond the rum, she says “most of everything that you can find local on the island”.

She talks about local fruit and vegetables, including grapefruit and its unique taste. She is keeping most of her festival plans to herself, offering one intriguing hint. Meringue will make an appearance in her drink. The details can wait until November.

The theme for Liquid Gold Feast — These Fields and Hills— brings the story back to the land with “This is what sustains us”. It recognises the farmers and producers whose work begins long before a chef starts cooking celebrating the journey from farm to table. The weeks ahead will bring some of those growers and their work into view.

The festival launches at Haymans on October 10. Oistins Under the Stars opens the November celebrations on Thursday, November 5 from 6 p.m., with free admission.

Here, fish on the grill and music in the air are already part of a familiar evening out.

Friday, November 6, brings international chef demonstrations to Speightstown Esplanade, Hastings Rocks and Pile Bay.

Later, Rum Route starts at 6 p.m., giving the island’s signature spirit an evening of its own.

Saturday asks for an earlier start. Rise and Rum begins at 4 a.m., on November 7 at Copacabana on Bay Street, with Morgan among the mixologists. Breakfast and cocktails will accompany the return of daylight to Carlisle Bay.

The entertainment includes Alison Hinds, Rupee and Lil Rick, bringing familiar voices to a festival about the pleasures of being Bajan.

On Sunday, November 8, Liquid Gold Feast at CARIFESTA House in Waterford takes up the theme These Fields and Hills.

Leach joins local chefs including Javon Cummins and pastry chef Esther James, alongside visiting names such as Fatmata Binta and Jason Howard.

“We want Barbadians to recognise something of themselves here, and visitors to get to know the people behind the food,” Roberts Reifer says. “The farmers, fishermen, the mixologists, the culinary artists and the families who kept these traditions alive all have a place in this celebration.”

A celebration of 60 and five deserves a generous table. This November, there is room for familiar favourites and the pleasure of discovering something new. Barbados is on the menu. Come hungry.

Tickets are priced in Barbados dollars at $200 for Rum Route, $250 for Rise and Rum and $350 for Liquid Gold Feast.

A $500 combination ticket covers Rise and Rum and Liquid Gold Feast. Visit ticketnation.bb for ticket information. (PR)