so, 1 day before the big taste t&t international culinary festival, we start to get the questions: “so when de iron chef comin?” “de iron chef reach yet?” “yuh know if de iron chef comin still?” yuh know trinbagonians. we have to see it to believe it… myself included. so we went up to the airport to see it for ourselves and to reassure everybody that iron chef jose garces will really be at the event judging the cooking competition and doing some demonstrations live.
we weren’t disappointed. the seemingly omni-present chef debra sardinha-metivier did the formal welcoming in the TDC booth at piarco (quite a snazzy spot actually), while we looked on thinking “aye look the dude from tv right here.”
chef debra didn’t come with her hands swinging either. as part of the greeting, the iron chef received a “trini to the bone” bag, along with an explanation of the anthem that made the phrase a national i.d.
he also got a cool chef’s jacket with the event logo on it. i looked around to see if there was another one that i could beg for, but no such luck or jacket was to be found.
talking on camera to ann-marie ganness of cnc3, the ecuadorian-born chef said that he was looking forward to working with the local produce and giving lots of what seems to be the patented jose garces bear hug (sounds like he’s famous for it or something). he seemed intrigued by ann-marie’s suggestion of the top 2 must have local foods, roti and bake and shark. for the first time it dawned on me how awesome it must make us sound when we tell visitors “yo… we eat SHARKS down here. it’s our thing!”
anyway, fear not. the iron chef is here in the flesh and would be at the taste t&t international culinary festival saturday 29th october and sunday 30th october. we’re not planning to miss this one… we think you shouldn’t either.
check him out in motion:
'Trini to d bone' bag? ahhahahah LOL. He must've loved that! Yeah, whenever I try to explain to my non-Trini friends about bake and shark..they're all like, "You eat shark? Seriously?! What is that like!!" I wonder what they'll say when I tell them that Trini's also eat armadillo. lol.
"the seemingly omni-present chef debra sardinha-metivier"
haha ah like that!