Car­ol Quash

Dri­ven by a pas­sion for pre­serv­ing To­ba­go’s culi­nary her­itage, Danielle Stew­art opened a restau­rant in Black Rock in 2019 with a busi­ness part­ner, ded­i­cat­ed to serv­ing tra­di­tion­al To­bag­on­ian dish­es.

“What I ob­served is that a lot of food busi­ness­es would have been try­ing to mim­ic oth­er cul­tures. But I do be­lieve in try­ing to pre­serve the cul­ture of To­ba­go, so we try to en­sure that we car­ry the cul­ture by do­ing foods that are au­then­tic to To­ba­go,” Stew­art said. She ex­plained that the break­fast menu in­cludes items such as co­conut bake, To­ba­go choco­late tea and salt­fish buljol.

Stew­art told Guardian Me­dia that the es­tab­lish­ment’s dai­ly lunch menu in­cludes dish­es com­mon­ly as­so­ci­at­ed with To­ba­go cui­sine, in­clud­ing stewed pork, stewed chick­en, coocoo, callaloo, stewed dasheen bush with pig tail, and crab and dumpling.

“So things that are au­then­ti­cal­ly To­ba­go, we do that week­ly on the menu,” she said. “How­ev­er, we some­times do oth­er dish­es, like in­ter­na­tion­al gourmet dish­es. But main­ly, we try to main­tain To­ba­go’s cul­ture.”

They of­fer break­fast and lunch ser­vices and al­so pro­vide pri­vate cater­ing for events.

Stew­art holds an As­so­ciate De­gree in Culi­nary Arts from the To­ba­go Hos­pi­tal­i­ty and Tourism In­sti­tute. She said her in­ter­est in cook­ing be­gan at an ear­ly age.

“In my home my grand­moth­er felt it was manda­to­ry that every young woman had to learn to cook. And for­tu­nate­ly for me, I start­ed at the age of nine, with my first dish be­ing stewed lentil peas with pig tail and dumplings.”

She said her grand­moth­er al­so taught her how to pre­pare tra­di­tion­al del­i­ca­cies such as sweet pota­to pone, sweet bread and home­made ice cream, which are still made at the restau­rant.

“And if we have pri­vate cater­ing, we won’t pur­chase ice cream, we make it,” Stew­art said.

In ad­di­tion to op­er­at­ing the restau­rant, Stew­art is em­ployed with the Di­vi­sion of Tourism, Trans­porta­tion, Cul­ture and An­tiq­ui­ties. She said food has con­sis­tent­ly been her pri­ma­ry in­ter­est.

“And it kind of ties in with my re­la­tion­ship with my grand­moth­er, be­cause she would have been the one who taught me cook­ing, and she was al­so one of the main cooks in the vil­lage of Black Rock.”

Stew­art said con­tin­u­ing this lega­cy was im­por­tant to her, and she has used the restau­rant as a plat­form to share tra­di­tion­al cook­ing meth­ods with younger gen­er­a­tions.

“I launched some­thing called the To­ba­go Fire­side Ex­pe­ri­ence, where­by we do live demos on tra­di­tion­al cook­ing. For in­stance, we do the ‘fire on top fire be­low’ roast bake, or we do live demos of the ice cream the way it was done long time.”

She said tra­di­tion­al dish­es are some­times adapt­ed with vari­a­tions, such as adding lime to mau­by.

“So we have some­thing called the mau­by mi­mosa.”

Stew­art said she would like to see the To­ba­go Fire­side Ex­pe­ri­ence in­clud­ed among ac­tiv­i­ties of­fered to vis­i­tors to the is­land, while al­so be­ing ac­ces­si­ble to the lo­cal pop­u­la­tion.

“I want to see it both at the lo­cal lev­el, and that peo­ple can know that when they come to To­ba­go, this is some­thing they can ex­pe­ri­ence here.”

Out­side of her culi­nary work, Stew­art is in­volved with the St Philomene Spir­i­tu­al Bap­tist Church in Mo­ri­ah, con­tin­u­ing a fam­i­ly tra­di­tion of par­tic­i­pa­tion.

“The world is chang­ing, but there are some things that re­main sa­cred to me, and I will do all I can to pre­serve them.”