Tremaine So­ca Warn­er

Eat­ing out is con­sid­ered one of the na­tion­al pas­times in Sin­ga­pore and lo­cals can choose from a wide va­ri­ety of cuisines, in­clud­ing Chi­nese, In­di­an, Ko­re­an, Viet­namese, Mon­go­lian and Malay.

Mas­ter Trinida­di­an chef Hasan De Four is set to stir things there by adding Caribbean cui­sine to the mix.

Next month, the 36-year-old De Four and his busi­ness part­ners will launch the first-ever Caribbean restau­rant in Sin­ga­pore, called Lime House, where he will be the con­sul­tant chef. He vis­it­ed Sin­ga­pore last month and on a re­cent vis­it to T&T, he sat down for an in­ter­view with the T&T Guardian.

Al­though he has been based in the UK for al­most 18 years, De Four was born in Five Rivers, Arou­ca. He said he dis­cov­ered his in­ter­est for cook­ing at the age of 11, when he was at­tend­ing St George's Col­lege in Barataria.

At the time, he was one of the few boys who chose to study home eco­nom­ics rather than wood­work and the de­ci­sion was met with scep­ti­cism and heck­ling from oth­er boys.

De Four wasn't dis­cour­aged.

"Cook­ing was some­thing that I had a love for," he said. "And by the time we got to Form Three the oth­er boys saw the ben­e­fits of it. I was the one who was mak­ing mac­a­roni pie for all the limes."

Near the end of his years at sec­ondary school, De Four con­sid­ered be­com­ing a mem­ber of the Coast Guard or at­tend­ing the T&T Hos­pi­tal­i­ty and Tourism In­sti­tute. He de­cid­ed against those two op­tions in the hope of gath­er­ing in­ter­na­tion­al ex­pe­ri­ence that would set him apart from oth­ers in the lo­cal culi­nary field.

In 1995, at 17, he left for Lon­don, where his moth­er was born. There he did his NVQs (Na­tion­al Vo­ca­tion­al Qual­i­fi­ca­tions) in cater­ing and hos­pi­tal­i­ty at the Waltham For­est Col­lege in North-East Lon­don, where he re­ceived ba­sic train­ing in cook­ing, knife skills and butch­ery.

Soon af­ter, he got a job at the Queen Mary and West­field Col­lege, where he got to learn the ropes of a large kitchen which catered for over 2,000 peo­ple a day, in­clud­ing pro­fes­sors and stu­dents.

"I ba­si­cal­ly stayed in the veg­etable sec­tion for nine months. I would come in and there would be 75 ki­los of car­rots and 30 ki­los of pota­toes for me to slice, dice, mince, shred.

"That kind of train­ing sharp­ened up my knife skills and I got faster in do­ing the prepa­ra­tion for that sec­tion. Then I could run across to the pas­try sec­tion or the main cook­ing area and ob­serve what they were do­ing."

In al­most a year and half he was able to di­rect that same kitchen.

In 2002, he be­gan study­ing Eu­ro­pean cui­sine and restau­rant man­age­ment at West­min­ster Kingsway Col­lege in Lon­don. He con­sid­ers him­self for­tu­nate in that he was able to pur­sue his dream job from the start of his adult life.

"I am re­al­ly lucky, in that what I love is what I got to do from the very be­gin­ning. It's over 18 years now that I'm do­ing this cook­ing thing."

Through­out his ca­reer, De Four has done in-house cater­ing for the West Ham Unit­ed Foot­ball Club at pre­mier league match­es and he and his team have catered count­less all-in­clu­sive fetes and re­gion­al con­certs.

Hasan De Four Cater­ing al­so does work for events host­ed by the high com­mis­sions of T&T, Ja­maica and St Kitts-Nevis.

In 2009, he beat 10,000 oth­er par­tic­i­pants in the Caribbean to ac­com­pa­ny Miche­lin-starred chef Gary Rhodes on a tele­vi­sion se­ries ti­tled Rhodes Across the Caribbean.

The show, which was broad­cast on UK­TV­Food, fol­lowed Rhodes as he trav­elled to Ja­maica, Cu­ra­cao, T&T, Bar­ba­dos, St Lu­cia, Grena­da and An­tigua to learn about the dif­fer­ent culi­nary styles. De Four be­lieves his au­di­tion tape for the show helped to set him apart from oth­er com­peti­tors.

In the video, he pre­pared spiced plan­tain frit­ters with salt­fish and root veg­eta­bles. Add a dash of un­de­ni­able pas­sion for food and a sprin­kle of his charm­ing Trinida­di­an ac­cent and De Four had all the in­gre­di­ents to be­come Rhodes' sous-chef.

"The high­light of the show was com­ing back home with this in­ter­na­tion­al cov­er­age of our is­land. I'm a son of the soil. I'm a son of Trinidad.

"In the UK, this is a show that was watched by peo­ple of all gen­er­a­tions so I was ex­cit­ed to come back to Trinidad and to show­case what we have. It was great and when we left T&T, none of the oth­er is­lands were as hype."

The show fea­tured every­thing from side­walk dou­bles to fine din­ing at high-end restau­rants, and De Four said it helped to raise his pro­file, while ex­pos­ing him to the flavours and culi­nary styles of oth­er is­lands.

In 2010, he opened his own restau­rant in Moor­gate, Lon­don, called Mustik. He de­scribed it as a "trop­i­cal oa­sis in the heart of the con­crete jun­gle," adding that with­in the first six months of open­ing, the 90-seat restau­rant was al­ready mak­ing a prof­it. It al­so got pos­i­tive re­views from the Dai­ly Mail and the Times.

Mustik was lat­er forced to close af­ter the block was pur­chased by de­vel­op­ers and con­vert­ed in­to of­fices, but this gave De Four time to ded­i­cate him­self ful­ly to his pri­vate cater­ing busi­ness.

He cur­rent­ly works with Grace Foods in the UK as its Caribbean cui­sine rep­re­sen­ta­tive and his tele­vi­sion se­ries Coun­try Cook­ing (filmed in 2011) is broad­cast on the Tem­po Net­works.

In April this year, De Four made an ap­pear­ance on BBC Two's cook­ery show Hairy Bik­ers. Al­so in the works is a new cook­book which he hopes will be com­plet­ed by the end of this year.

"My hap­pi­est part of be­ing in this in­dus­try is still cook­ing and do­ing what I start­ed off do­ing.

"This oth­er side came along the way. I didn't know I could have been a pre­sen­ter or have my own TV show. But I de­vel­oped those qual­i­ties along the way."

Now, much of his ex­cite­ment and time is in­vest­ed in­to Lime House which will open in Sin­ga­pore in ear­ly June. He has been in ne­go­ti­a­tions for over a year and, as the con­sul­tant chef, will be fre­quent­ly trav­el­ling be­tween the UK and Sin­ga­pore.

Asked more about this lat­est ven­ture, he said: "I'm very ex­cit­ed about it. What we're try­ing to do is bring Caribbean cul­ture to that side of the world.

"The in­ten­tion is to have an­oth­er Lime House in Hong Kong, Japan, Lon­don. Peo­ple like Caribbean foods and they haven't re­al­ly had the chance to sam­ple it out there.

"I did a tast­ing ses­sion when I was over there last week and the re­sponse was crazy. Peo­ple want­ed to know if we were go­ing to open the next day."

With al­most two decades in the culi­nary field and many note­wor­thy achieve­ments un­der his belt, De Four said he is not about to be­come com­pla­cent. He will not be sat­is­fied un­til Caribbean cui­sine be­comes the top op­tion for those in the UK wish­ing to dine out.

He al­so wants to show for­eign­ers that Caribbean food is not lim­it­ed to jerk chick­en, rice and peas.

When asked about his fu­ture plans, De Four said he wants to re­tire young, buy a boat and sail around the Caribbean film­ing a tele­vi­sion show about the dis­tinct culi­nary and cul­tur­al style of each is­land. Un­til then, he's set to con­tin­ue as a Caribbean cul­tur­al am­bas­sador with culi­nary flair and a keen busi­ness sense.

For more in­for­ma­tion on De Four, search for him on Face­book: Caribbean Chef Hasan De Four or check his Web site: www.hasande­four.com.