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Wednesday, July 16, 2025

A gateway to fine food at The Port

by

20140827

One Wood­brook Place is be­com­ing quite an in­ter­est­ing place for lovers of great food. Not long ago, the row of failed shops on the huge plaza of Port-of-Spain's most ex­clu­sive ad­dress, looked and felt like an ill-con­ceived re­tail waste­land.

But sev­er­al new restau­rants have opened re­cent­ly and on most nights, there's a buzz as din­ers take the op­por­tu­ni­ty to en­joy al fres­co din­ing.

One of the new places that's qui­et­ly mak­ing a name for it­self is The Port, a fine din­ing restau­rant led by busi­ness­man Chris­t­ian Es­pinet and his ex­ec­u­tive chef Akins Glas­gow.

The Port is mod­ern, com­fort­able and un­pre­ten­tious with good ser­vice. This is ex­act­ly what own­er Es­pinet want­ed when he de­cid­ed he want­ed his own restau­rant.

The 29-year-old isn't just a busi­ness­man who feels a restau­rant is a good mon­ey-mak­ing op­por­tu­ni­ty. He is a prop­er food­ie who reads cook­books like nov­els and finds joy in ear­ly-morn­ing trips to the Cen­tral Mar­ket to en­sure his kitchen has on­ly the fresh­est pro­duce. Es­pinet lived in the US for ten years, and worked at sev­er­al po­si­tions in the restau­rant in­dus­try there. As a re­sult, he has a very clear vi­sion of what he want­ed his es­tab­lish­ment to be like.

"I'm aim­ing for a cul­ture of ex­cel­lence here," Es­pinet said. "In our team we want peo­ple to think and con­stant­ly in­no­vate."

Es­pinet is aim­ing for sus­tain­abil­i­ty and bal­ance, and at The Port, he wants to use as much lo­cal pro­duce as pos­si­ble.

"Our lo­cal pork is top and our tu­na is top. We want to find a mid­dle ground that's healthy, re­flects T&T's flavours and is al­so cre­ative."

For that cre­ativ­i­ty, Es­pinet turned to Glas­gow, a prot�g� of Khalid Mo­hammed, the high­ly-re­gard­ed chef be­hind Chaud and Chaud Cafe.

Glas­gow is one of the "new guard" of rel­a­tive­ly young chefs like Cris­t­ian Gri­ni at Bu­zo and John Aboud at Aioli who are at the fore­front of lo­cal fine din­ing.

Short­ly af­ter leav­ing the T&T Hos­pi­tal­i­ty In­sti­tute, Glas­gow joined Mo­hammed at Bat­ti­mam­selle as a sous chef. "Khalid made a heavy in­vest­ment in my ca­reer and for this I'm re­al­ly grate­ful. I gained some in­valu­able ex­pe­ri­ence work­ing with him."

He worked with Mo­hammed at Chaud and was head chef when he left in 2013 to do his own cater­ing and per­son­al cheff­ing.

"Ini­tial­ly I blanked Chris­t­ian," he said with a cheeky laugh. "I was en­joy­ing do­ing my own thing."

But Es­pinet was de­ter­mined and Glas­gow said he was even­tu­al­ly won over by Es­pinet's pas­sion and clear vi­sion of what he want­ed.

An­oth­er thing that prob­a­bly con­vinced Glas­gow of Es­pinet's se­ri­ous­ness was his choice of Ital­ian Miche­lin star chef Gi­an­fran­co Chiari­ni as con­sul­tant chef for The Port.

The Ital­ian, known for his flair and in­no­va­tion, was here for a few weeks to ad­vise the team at The Port on all as­pects of the op­er­a­tion. Im­pressed by T&T's var­i­ous eth­nic in­flu­ences and the wealth of pro­duce avail­able, Chiari­ni urged Glas­gow and his team to use the lo­cal flavours to their ad­van­tage.

And the re­sult is an ad­ven­tur­ous menu that suc­ceeds be­cause of ac­com­plished cook­ing, bold flavours and great flair.

In­spired by chef Chiari­ni, Glas­gow's cre­ativ­i­ty comes through as he puts a twist on some of our ac­cus­tomed flavours and del­i­ca­cies. So, you can have his take on pholourie, served with basil gel, tamarind, prawn and cilantro. Cur­ry crab and dumpling is the in­flu­ence for a pas­ta dish of tagli­atelle with crab and co­conut cur­ry.

Most peo­ple are cu­ri­ous about the use of sapodil­la in the pork bel­ly with sapodil­la bar­be­cue sauce served with sweet pota­to fries. The sweet tangi­ness of the sapodil­la sauce works as a foil to the fat­ti­ness of the pork bel­ly.

The Port al­so boasts an ex­ten­sive sushi menu, in­clud­ing sig­na­ture rolls like the Vol­cano Roll (spicy tu­na, salmon skin, sriracha, tem­pu­ra flakes and eel sauce) and Danc­ing Eel (cu­cum­ber, kanika­ma, sriracha, un­a­gi and to­biko).

One of the at­trac­tions at The Port is the Fri­day spe­cial. The spe­cial is a dish that fo­cus­es on one in­gre­di­ent. This week, lamb that has been whole roast­ed in the restau­rant's roast­ing and smok­ing clos­et is the spe­cial in­gre­di­ent. The lamb is served with a se­lec­tion of sides and sauces along with san­gria, spritzer or beer for $100.

"I'm try­ing to make Fri­day a culi­nary show­man­ship day," Es­pinet said. "You come in and get a well-ex­e­cut­ed, mar­velous­ly-tast­ing in­gre­di­ent."

Es­pinet, Glas­gow and the young, dy­nam­ic team are on to some­thing good. The Port is cer­tain­ly help­ing to liv­en up the scene at One Wood­brook Place.

More in­fo

The Port, Unit No 5,

One Wood­brook Plaza,

Port-of-Spain.

Open­ing hours: 11 am�11 pm.

Con­tact: 628-4089

Reser­va­tions are rec­om­mend­ed?


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