Michelle Loubon

Mel­ba Dedi­er, Per­ma­nent Sec­re­tary in the Min­istry of Tourism, says food trav­ellers spend about US$1,200 on cui­sine dur­ing a trip. Vis­i­tors to T&T's shores have a choice of mouth-wa­ter­ing dish­es in­clud­ing roti, pastelles, corn soup, dou­bles, bake and shark and pelau. Dedi­er made the com­ment while de­liv­er­ing the fea­ture ad­dress at the Food and Bev­er­age Com­pe­ti­tion Awards Cer­e­mo­ny at Hy­att Re­gency Ho­tel, Port-of-Spain Ball­room, Wright­son Road, Port-of-Spain, yes­ter­day. It was al­so an oc­ca­sion to an­nounce the com­peti­tors on the Na­tion­al Culi­nary Team who are gear­ing up for the Taste of the Caribbean Culi­nary com­pe­ti­tion in Puer­to Ri­co. Among them are chef Sab­ri­na Ros­ales from Sab­ri­na's Ex­ec­u­tive Cater­ers and Lennox Scott from Bot­ti­cel­li's Restau­rant.

Dedi­er said, "Food trav­ellers spend about US$1,2000 per trip, with over one third of their bud­get go­ing to­wards food-re­lat­ed ac­tiv­i­ties. Ac­cord­ing to the pub­li­ca­tion USA To­day, 27 mil­lion Amer­i­cans have made culi­nary trav­els part of their trav­els with­in the last three years. In the Unit­ed King­dom food tourism is es­ti­mat­ed to be worth near­ly US$8 bil­lion each year." There are plans to po­si­tion T&T as a pre­mier food des­ti­na­tion. "This com­pe­ti­tion would serve to lift the stan­dard of pro­fes­sion­al­ism in the sec­tor, and pro­vide a show­case for in­di­vid­ual skills, tech­niques and styles of culi­nary prac­ti­tion­ers," added Dedi­er.