The flavours that made us: Barbados is on the menu

A s 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…