NEW YORK–There has been a con­stant stream of vis­i­tors to the T&T Pavil­ion at the 60th Sum­mer Fan­cy Food Show at the Ja­cob Jav­its Cen­tre in New York.They are sam­pling a range of lo­cal treats, in­clud­ing aloo pie with condi­ments, sug­ar cake, Carib, Mack­e­son, Shandy, tamarind and pep­per sauces with pholourie, as well as roti and a dip­ping sauce and oth­er food items.

These are be­ing dis­played by the 13 T&T com­pa­nies par­tic­i­pat­ing–Carib Brew­ery, KC Con­fec­tionery Ltd, Na­tion­al Can­ners Ltd, As­so­ci­at­ed Brands In­dus­tries Ltd, Vem­co Ltd, Smaks Lux­u­ry Group Ltd, RHS Mar­ket­ing Ltd, Chatak Food Prod­ucts Ltd, The Roti Fac­to­ry, As­ma's Roti, Flavour Me Rite, Jus Rite Cre­ations and To­ba­go's Gourmet Gra­nola.

Trade Min­is­ter Vas­ant Bharath, who is part of the T&T del­e­ga­tion, said he was pleased to see "the stun­ning pre­sen­ta­tion of our coun­try's man­u­fac­tur­ers on the world stage."Al­so in at­ten­dance are Joel Jack, Sec­re­tary for Fi­nance and En­ter­prise De­vel­op­ment in the To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly, Robert Tang Yuk, chair­man of ex­porTT Lim­it­ed and Dr Ro­hanie Ma­haraj, chair­man (ag), Food and Bev­er­age In­dus­try De­vel­op­ment Com­mit­tee. Tang Yuk said the show "rep­re­sents a crit­i­cal mass of po­ten­tial for our lo­cal man­u­fac­tur­ers."The Sum­mer Fan­cy Food Show, which ends to­day, is North Amer­i­ca's largest spe­cial­ty food and bev­er­age event. It brings in more than 40,000 at­ten­dees from more than 80 coun­tries with more than 260,000 in­no­v­a­tive spe­cial­ty food prod­ucts on dis­play.

Yes­ter­day, Bharath, Neil Parsan, Am­bas­sador to Wash­ing­ton, and Rudrawa­tee Nan Ram­goolam, T&T's Con­sul Gen­er­al to New York, dis­trib­uted sam­ples and shared de­tails on the lo­cal prod­ucts dis­played.Bharath al­so met with a po­ten­tial in­vestor from Palm Ven­tures LLC. The T&T Pavil­ion fea­tures over­head pic­to­r­i­al dis­plays of bright, vivid scenes of the coun­try's trea­sures, in­clud­ing its food, na­tion­al build­ings, beach­es, fes­ti­vals, mu­si­cal in­stru­ments, and cul­ture. There are dis­plays of pro­fes­sion­al­ly pack­aged prod­ucts; with brand­ed coun­ter­tops.Ex­hibitors were able to cre­ate busi­ness link­ages.