Dining Out on Providenciales
Where When How Turks & Caicos Islands January / February 2009
Culinary Trans – Fusion
They are known as ‘The Great Chefs of Provo’, renowned and celebrated culinary masters from around the globe, each contributing their own very singularly unique and individual personalities, experiences, styles and techniques, ingenerating what has become the crème de la crème of the Providenciales dining scene, a cross-pollination of intercontinental fusion cuisine.
Chef Martin Davies, Caicos Lobster Tail at Anacaona
It has been my genuine privilege and sincere pleasure to go ‘behind the toque’ with many of our esteemed craftsmen to discover just what makes ‘The Great Chefs of Provo’ tick. Each chef speaks freely and candidly bringing to light the motivation, inspiration and common drive amongst this somewhat surreptitious culinary society. Always with a great sense of humour, they have allowed me brief and unrestricted passage not only into their lives, but also even sometimes into their clandestine culinary sanctuary — their kitchen. Yet I have only scratched the surface...
Few countries can rival the acceleration and pace of new development that has been Providenciales’ good fortune for the past few decades. It is indeed an arduous task to recollect a time when Grace Bay Beach was not a development mecca; and a stroll along Grace Bay Beach today and well beyond its iridescent shores reveals a metamorphosis of exponential proportions. Together with virtually each new condominium construction project, resort development and retail shopping village, an accompanying dining establishment is added to our ever-growing ‘carte du jour’ of fabulous restaurants. Collectively, the island’s continued and evolving growth has proliferated a nonpareil cache of outstanding and incomparable dining experiences, compliments of its equally nonpareil cache of outstanding and incomparable chefs – effectuating a ‘flavourful’ melting pot of cultures and cuisines.
Beachfront Sunset View Dining at Bay Bistro
To understand how the ‘flavours’ of this melting pot of original and provocative cuisine came about, we must first discover the fundamental and rudimentary ingredients that went into its composition.
‘The Great Chefs of Provo’ are a cosmopolitan and ecumenical coterie with roots, training and experiences that span the globe producing a paradigmatic and characteristic degree of culinary creativity and sophistication distinctive to the Turks and Caicos Islands alone.
Chef Stuart Gray of Coco Bistro
A veritable consortium of these culinary craftsmen hail from the UK proffering a Caribbean twist on classical and conventional dishes. Grace Bay Club’s Executive Chef Martin Davies has had the distinct privilege of honing his skills alongside some of the great masters of the profession including Gordon Ramsey and Alain Ducasse citing “the first thing these masters teach you is discipline, then you learn the trade the hard way with no short-cuts.” Training and development is key to Davies where this strict and exacting level of discipline continues in Grace Bay Club’s in-house Hotel School. Davies admits, “We train our local talent to international five star standards, teaching them skills in the kitchen they would only learn by working in top hotels and restaurants in locations like Europe and New York”. As a chef he further recognizes that your cooking and management style has to adapt here, confessing his biggest challenge is sourcing food, although even that has come a long way since he arrived three years ago. Davies acknowledges his greatest satisfaction is this; “Finely turning out a product that you would be happy with anywhere in the world is very rewarding to watch the staff create.”
Dining at Nikki Café Restaurant in Leeward
Also from ‘over the pond’ Chef Clive Whent of Aqua Bar & Terrace and The Kissing Fish Catering Company incorporates his classic English training where produce was abundant and relationships with local vendors were essential. Here, the unexpected and often times extraordinary demands of being a Chef in the Caribbean make necessity the mother of invention... often having to resort to making most everything from scratch including ice-cream and bread. With a preference for home-grown produce whenever possible, Whent sports an admirable green thumb of his own growing many of his own herbs including basil and lemongrass enhanced by his flourishing affiliation with our local hydroponics farm. Fresh, local fish is also key to Whent, where his relationship with several local fishermen secures the freshest seafood.
A ‘Scottish influence’ on a traditional Provo recipe favourite can be found at the skilled hands of Head Chef, Craig McNeil of Bay Bistro. His steaming ‘stick to your ribs’ bowl of decadently thick, rich Smoked Conch Chowder is abundant with big chunks of tender, local conch with leeks, potato and smoked bacon, inspired by his Scottish roots where Cullen Skink is a soup specialty, named after the wee town of Cullen where traditionally, it is made with smoked haddock.
Risotto Caprese Parmesan Tuile by Chef Lauren Callighen
UK born and Canadian bred, Coco Bistro’s Executive Chef Stuart Gray employs his classical training to enhance his Caribbean/International menu. A chef after my own heart, Gray advocates, “I do like to see a good size portion,” further admitting of his own resolve that the pretentiousness of the ‘froufrou’ chef is not his style. By integrating many local and Caribbean products like local fish, conch, mangoes, passion fruit, plantains, bananas and hot peppers into his cooking, all without the need for glitz and ostentation, Gray continuously and consistently delivers an absolutely appealing menu and an always memorable dining experience to his appreciative audience, happy to return again and again for an encore performance.
Markets touting an inexhaustible cornucopia of readily available fresh foods are a common indulgence for many European chefs, and Executive Chef Mario Larese of Nikki Beach took full advantage of shopping as often as possible at his local farmer’s market in his homeland of Austria. Here on the island of Providenciales Chef Larese admits, “My market is the fishermen who come by almost every day with fresh fish and seafood and in addition, our own IGA,” always picking the freshest produce he can find each morning which gets prepared for lunch and dinner. Educated by Austrian chefs, Larese emphasises his training is all about ‘to order’ and short cooking times with the exception of stews and braised dishes. “When the guest orders, we start cooking. The fresher the food, the better the end result will be.” Adds Larese, “It is always worth waiting a little bit longer!”
Creative Cuisine by Chef Torsten Rumprecht
O’Soleil’s Executive Chef Lauren Callighen hails from The Great White North... a.k.a. Canada and enthusiastically brings Maple Syrup to her culinary creations. Lauren explains, “Most Canadians worship this golden liquid. Every winter, we wait in anticipation for the fresh snow to fall and the trees to produce their sugary sap. We head to the ‘sugar shacks’ and after the syrup master has heated the sap to the right temperature, and the syrup is a beautiful amber colour, we pour it on the fresh fallen snow and roll it up with a popsicle stick to enjoy as a lollipop! Now, as a chef, I use the ingredient often in my cooking. I find it is one of the most diverse flavours and it can accompany almost anything, from scallops to salmon to duck, to venison, soups and vinaigrettes. On my dinner menu, I use maple syrup in my pumpkin and tamarind soup. It gives the soup a little something special and helps balance the sourness of the tamarind paste. At home, I pour it over ice-cream to remind me of those cold winter mornings as a child!” Chef Lauren was happy to share one of her favourite maple syrup recipes that also includes another Northern treasure, Atlantic salmon.
Executive Chef Torsten Rumprecht of Parallel23 credits considerable influence in his kitchen today not only to his German heritage, but in particular, to his grandfather, where Torsten’s culinary education first began ‘growing up’ in the kitchen of his small German-style restaurant/guest house. Torsten acknowledges, “My grandfather was my personal hero and mentor, and some of his dishes are reflected in my cuisine wherever I am in the world and will go in the future. It is the root of my culinary upbringing and the tradition of my family. Some of the cooking techniques I learned from him I still use in the kitchen today and teach them to my staff. His discipline and attention to detail he has taught to me shape the culinary success I have today. He always emphasized to me to respect the food you work with. Only then you will be able to put your heart and soul into the dish.” Rumprecht’s experience has eclipsed four continents including faraway destinations like Russia, Rio de Janeiro and Hong Kong all influencing and contributing to his cooking styles today. “Every country or continent has its own cultural structure, different food ingredients, cooking techniques and preparation methods. The culture, people and environment always played a big part in my cooking style and I use this knowledge I have gained from all over the world today including how the food should be prepared and presented as well.”
Desserts Baked Daily at Caicos Café
Summers in the south of France bring to mind romantic open-air bistros, the air redolent with the mouth-watering aromas of French cuisine always accompanied by a glass of wine, a veritable insignia of a country celebrated for its legendary gastronomy. Chef Pierrik Marziou of Caicos Café recognizes that the climate here in the Turks & Caicos (with a little added humidity) is very similar to that of southern France summers where the ‘French way’ is the essence of simplicity. The French “feel what people want” favouring most foods simply grilled with olive oil and thyme. Chef Pierrik continues to serve that essence of simplicity here, maintaining, “It does not have to be fancy,” proposing that salads and light foods with “a good glass of rose,” is very Mediterranean.
Bella Luna Ristorante Chef Cosimo Tripodi
While some of these global influences, ingredients and techniques are of a more subtle nature; there is a significant fraction that falls into the category of being exceptionally and blatantly obvious. Case in point... my foremost response from Bella Luna Chef Cosimo Tripodi who replied in jest but with great gusto, “I’m Italian for god sake!” Hence, one of the unambiguous ‘obvious’! His wife, Kathleen, went on to educate me in the fundamentals of growing up in an Italian household, surrounded by cooking and surrounded by women! Kathleen divulges, “The first thing in the morning an Italian family thinks about is what they are going to cook for lunch. Then, when you are barely finished and stuffed from lunch, there is a major discussion as to what is going to be cooked for dinner. Italians lives revolve around food, it is of the most important things in their culture. Cosimo grew up around women who loved to cook and it was a major focus of their lives. He in turn, adapted the same view. What predominates in the food is the intense flavours of the herbs, dry oregano being more intense than fresh, for example. The bottom line is that when he cooks, he tastes the food and it has to agree with him. His grandmother baked bread in a brick oven with olive branches, in the house you would always smell the food because the sauce would be started early in the morning and the house would be perfumed with the aromas of cooking. You would never go into his house and smell potpourri!” I have to admit, after hearing Kathleen’s narrative, if there is an after-life through reincarnation... I would like to return as an Italian!
Chef Yoshi Ono from Tokyo Japan
Another unmistakable ‘obvious’ when it comes to influences, ingredients and techniques is Chef Yoshi Ono of Yoshi’s Sushi Bar and Yoshi’s Japanese Restaurant. While in most forms of cuisine, the actual act of eating is by and large the main event; with Chef Yoshi it is indeed a two-act show, preceded by the visually entertaining pleasure of observing his tremendous skill and imagination as he creates his beautiful sushi masterpieces and Japanese cuisine. His passion to entice his customer’s palates is unceasing, he confesses, always determined to exceed their expectations. Taking conventional ingredients and giving them a lift disguised as some of the most memorable flavours one can experience has attributed to his undeniable success. His reputation has become legendary, with an ardent and habitual following of residents and visitors who are quick to applaud Chef Yoshi’s irrefutable talents, often arguing that the Japanese cuisine they experience here on the island of Providenciales, surpasses even those experienced in major cities worldwide.
Constantly ‘raising the bar’, our dining establishments are garnering praise and acclamation not only from guests that have dined here from around the world, but also from those propitiously privileged to call this tantalizing island paradise home.
On a recent evening dining out, while espousing and advocating the attributes of many of my favourite dining establishments to one of my fellow dining companions, he remarked, “What are you, some kind of food critic?” To which I facetiously replied, “As a matter of fact, I am!” But let me explain... clearly not in the sense of the likes of ‘Anton Ego’, the formidable and fearsome food critic character in the animated family film, Ratatouille, who has every chef trembling in terror and quivering under his toque at the very thought of his imminent visit. A critic more in the sense of a critique – I take great pleasure in food, I adore wine, and I delight in the entire dining experience... always willing and excited to experiment with cuisine. Then, I write about the experience. I suppose that makes me more of a ‘Foodie’ than a critic, and living on the island of Providenciales is indeed a fabulous place to be if you are a ‘Foodie’.
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