CASTRIES, St. Lucia – The second annual Food and Rum Festival, which was held from November 1 to 4 in St. Lucia’s Rodney Bay Village, was a major hit among scores of visitors and the regional and international media who spent the weekend savouring some of the Caribbean’s finest rum-based beverages and cuisine.
Organisers of the St. Lucia Tourist Board-produced festival described it as “more successful than they had hoped for” with events, hosted by a group of internationally renowned celebrity chefs at a rum pavilion and at some of the island’s finest restaurants, fully patronized. The event was held against the backdrop of a village party which featured a number of local and Caribbean bands.
“We are satisfied that celebrity chefs Art Smith, John Conrad St. Marthe, Doran Payne, Eoghain O’Neil, Robert Oliver, along with the local chefs stood with us and helped market the Caribbean as a premier gastronomic destination, as well as highlighted the importance of rum in today’s food and beverage industry,” said co-producer of the Festival, Neysha Soodeen.
The rum companies from across the Caribbean also enjoyed their measure of success, with three sourcing new distributors in the United Kingdom with the help of the UK, USA, Canada and Caribbean trade media attending the festival, while the more established producers successfully marketed themselves to a larger Caribbean and international audience.
“The cooking demonstrations and dinners were all sold out, to the point that we ran out of standing and seating space, as patrons were able to sample the dishes, see how they are prepared, and talk to the chefs in person,” Soodeen said.
The St. Lucia Tourist Board, who Soodeen credits for the success of a much bigger Festival, says the event is here to stay and planning will begin almost immediately to ensure that a third festival will be even more successful with larger participants and audiences.
Director of the St. Lucia Tourist Board Maria Fowell said that they had paid careful attention to the ingredients that would ensure a successful event such as increasing the number of rum companies and international chefs in attendance and exposing the event to wider regional and international media.
“We were able to successfully combine our production and marketing resources with those of Toute Bagai, producers of the MACO Caribbean and MACO Destination publications, to attract the rum companies, international chefs and media fraternity,” Fowell said.
There was however one disappointment for the organisers, who thought that local hotels missed out on an opportunity to get their chefs and bartenders to take full advantage of an opportunity to improve their trade.
Soodeen said that while the participating hotels did set up booths at the rum pavilion where they were able to market their chefs to visitors, that was the full extent of their participation.
“The Food and Rum Festival is designed for us to expose our chefs and bartenders to the international trade. There was an opportunity for them to see international chefs and mixologists at work, who would encourage the local fraternity to become more creative, inspiring and take the trade to another level, but that did not happen.” Soodeen said, who added that this presents an exciting opportunity for next year.
