Pe­ter Ray Blood

South Africa High Com­mis­sion­er Mau­reen Modis­elle was one of the dis­tin­guished guests in at­ten­dance at last week­end's Gourmet Evening Com­pe­ti­tion, staged by Li­ons Club of Port-of-Spain Cen­tral.

Billed as Dine Around the World II, the event was staged at Li­ons Cul­tur­al Cen­tre, on Fitzblack­man Dri­ve, Wood­brook, and fea­tured 41 par­tic­i­pat­ing teams of­fer­ing cuisines of var­i­ous con­ti­nents, in­clud­ing North Amer­i­ca, Eu­rope, In­dia, Asia and Africa. Al­so in at­ten­dance was South Africa High Com­mis­sion coun­sel­lor Thomas Nudau.

Aside from the de­lec­table cui­sine, the evening was graced with a var­ied and very en­ter­tain­ing pro­gramme of per­for­mances.

There were au­then­tic African dance and drum­ming by the Wasa Foli Per­form­ing Troupe; Latin dance by Car­ol Boissierre and Kirt Charles; Ara­bi­an bel­ly­danc­ing by Raean­na Ramd­hanie; and a in­stru­men­tal set by Patrick Gou­veia & Friends. DJ mu­sic was by Wayne Rochard and Lar­ry Govia.

All of this was co-or­di­nat­ed by Li­ons of­fi­cials Wendy Imamshah and Cathy Shep­herd and a very hard-work­ing com­mit­tee.

Judges Deb­o­rah John, Karen Thomp­son and yours tru­ly had the oner­ous chal­lenge of de­cid­ing win­ners in var­i­ous cat­e­gories, in­clud­ing Best Meat, Poul­try, Seafood and Veg­e­tar­i­an Dish, Best Pre­sen­ta­tion and Most Orig­i­nal Ti­tle.

It was a unan­i­mous de­ci­sion to se­lect Paul Brath­waite's Jack Shi­itake as the win­ner of the lat­ter award. Stiff com­pe­ti­tion came from Oh My Cod, Ah Re­sign Geera Pork in Jack Sauce and Joao Have-ah-Lamb.

Among the par­tic­i­pants were alum­ni teams from QRC, CIC, Belex, Fa­ti­ma Col­lege and St Fran­cois Girls' Col­lege and pop­u­lar restau­rants in­clud­ing An­ge­lo's, Mar­tin's on Wood­ford and Tan­doori's Hut as well as mem­bers of Li­ons.

The South Africa High Com­mis­sion was al­so in the fray, its en­try be­ing an in­dige­nous fare called Bobotie, a con­coc­tion of lamb and melt­ed cheese.

At the end of the tast­ing, the judg­ing pan­el chose the fol­low­ing win­ners:

�2 Best Pre­sen­ta­tion: Jack is Back (Ter­ry In­niss) and Spicy Grilled Wings with Glazed Maple Sauce (Sigler Jack)

�2 Best Veg­e­tar­i­an Dish: Jack Shi­itake (Paul Brath­waite)

�2 Best Poul­try Dish: Chick­en En­quiry Sent to DPP (Belex�Wayne Leza­ma)

�2 Best Seafood Dish: O My Cod (CIC�Rober­to Ramirez)

�2 Best Meat Dish: Suk­ling Pig (Fa­ti­ma Col­lege�Mal­colm Hildip/Sing Kwok/Lai King)

Hap­py Moth­er's Day

Sun­day is Moth­er's Day and spe­cial fun events have been planned to ho­n­our and cel­e­brate these spe­cial women in our lives.

One such event is A Trib­ute To Moth­ers be­ing staged by Ju­nior Sam­my Group of Com­pa­nies Skif­fle Steel Or­ches­tra at its Cof­fee Street pan the­atre in San Fer­nan­do, at 6 pm on Sun­day.

This is the 14th year of this pro­duc­tion and Skif­fle is go­ing all out to make it a mem­o­rable one by pre­sent­ing the Na­tion­al Panora­ma cham­pi­ons of 2013. The head­line acts are cham­pi­on Petrotrin Phase II Pan Groove and run­ner-up bpTT Rene­gades.

Skif­fle di­rec­tor Ju­nia Re­grel­lo said this week: "Phase II Pan Groove has al­ways been gen­er­ous in giv­ing their time to wor­thy caus­es.

"Rene­gades has not played in the south­ern re­gion for ap­prox­i­mate­ly ten years and we wel­come them back to the hos­pi­tal­i­ty of the south. They have many fans among us.

"Moth­ers have sup­port­ed the pan fra­ter­ni­ty through­out the years, send­ing their young chil­dren to learn and mas­ter our beloved in­stru­ment. In a num­ber of in­stances sev­er­al of them make them­selves avail­able when­ev­er ex­tra hands are need­ed to per­form var­i­ous tasks as­so­ci­at­ed with the func­tion­ing of a band.

"It is be­fit­ting that we recog­nise their con­tri­bu­tions and ho­n­our their pres­ence on this day."

The evening's pro­gramme al­so in­cludes a fash­ion show, fea­tur­ing mod­els from The House of Jacqui, head­ed by Jacqui Koon How, long con­sid­ered the "moth­er" to many of the coun­try's top mod­els and beau­ty queens.

Re­grel­lo said, "The House of Jacqui has been a sta­ple of south­ern­ers for an ex­treme­ly long time and has al­ways pre­sent­ed an ex­cit­ing and dy­nam­ic mod­el­ing show for our moth­ers."

Ad­mis­sion to Sun­day's show is free.