EAF with Chef Finbar

To say that we’ve been trying to get Barry Finbar Bartholomew aka Chef Finbar to chat with us on camera for a while would be a bit of an understatement. Naturally, he is much more comfortable in the kitchen creating one of his delicious #finbarsfavorites than he is being in front of a camera talking about his passion for food but we finally got him to agree to do it 🙂

After culinary school at ICE (Institute of Culinary Education) Chef Finbar chose to do his internship at the very popular Indian/French fusion restaurant Tabla on Madison Park, Manhattan, headed by renowned Indian Chef, Floyd Cardoz.  He then went on to further his culinary career at popular Soul Food/ Jamaican Restaurants “Mo-Bay” in Brooklyn & Harlem where he spent the next 6 years and became the head chef at both branches. He left Mo-Bay and started working at another soul fool restaurant, Baton Rouge which specialized in New Orleans’ cuisine where he was chef for the next couple years. His love for spicy Asian food led him to start “Trailing” for a few weeks in a Szechuan & Thai restaurant but he eventually would leave the restaurant scene to pursue personal chef gigs in New York.

We met Barry last year at the Tongs On Fire BBQ Competition where our Ban Dania’s team won Best Chicken as well as the People’s Choice award for our Tandoori BBQ chicken.  They say self praise is no praise, but we would like to think that our tandoori bbq piqued Chef Finbar’s interest as he himself is a connoisseur of all things curry 🙂 The rest as they say is history.

Since then we’ve come to the basic understanding that anything Chef Finbar prepares is going to be delicious and that is no exaggeration, the man is a boss. We stopped by yesterday with David from Market Movers to collect a couple bottles of his Cocopine Pepper Sauce and jumped at the opportunity to interview him as well.

Check out a few clips from that interview below: