Brent Pin­heiro

brent.pin­heiro@guardian.co.tt

It is no se­cret that Trin­bag­o­ni­ans love two things—to eat and get a dis­count. T&T Restau­rant Week (TTRW) ticks both of those box­es, al­low­ing pa­trons to try new restau­rants and off-menu items at heav­i­ly dis­count­ed prices.

Now in its 12th year, the ten-day fes­ti­val has grown from just 15 restau­rants in 2013 to 100 restau­rants all over the coun­try serv­ing up every­thing from cap­rese crepes to plan­tain-crust­ed snap­per and drag­on fruit de­con­struct­ed cheese­cake, just to name a few.

With all eyes on the chefs for TTRW, it’s an op­por­tu­ni­ty for them to of­fer some­thing dif­fer­ent to food lovers and to show off their culi­nary skills and art. Many of the items pre­sent­ed dur­ing restau­rant week be­come part of the restau­rant’s reg­u­lar menu, de­pend­ing on cus­tomer feed­back.

For the cus­tomers, well, they get a three-course meal that can be dis­count­ed by up to 40 per cent!

TTRW founder Shi­ra Mo­hammed likened it to a trea­sure hunt, telling Guardian Me­dia that din­ers would of­ten go out of their way to find new menus to sam­ple. She said dur­ing TTRW, din­ers go to restau­rants to try them out for the first time and then make a “tack back” to their old favourites.

All the while look­ing for new and ex­cit­ing dish­es. Za­ak Mustapha, the food­ie be­hind the pop­u­lar so­cial me­dia ac­count Food­ie Tales with Za­ak, calls the fes­ti­val a “fan­tas­tic gas­tro­nom­ic op­por­tu­ni­ty to ex­pose your palette to new dish­es and ex­pe­ri­ence restau­rants that you’ve nev­er been to be­fore.”

Mustapha vis­it­ed over ten restau­rants this year, many of them new to him, look­ing for the un­ex­pect­ed. His favourite? Za­zou Kitchen’s Provençal lamb navarin, com­plete with mar­ket veg­eta­bles and basil-whipped pota­toes.

Ac­cord­ing to Mo­hammed, this year’s fes­ti­val has been by far the largest, and plan­ning has al­ready start­ed for next year’s edi­tion, which is sched­uled for the end of Sep­tem­ber.