Zahra Gor­don

At the re­cent Taste of the Caribbean com­pe­ti­tion in Mi­a­mi, T&T's chefs and bar­tenders picked up a host of gold medals and the Team Gold Medal. To­day, the T&T Guardian fea­tures two chefs who were part of this team, ex­pe­ri­enced ban­quet chef Adri­an Cum­ber­batch and up and com­ing pas­try chef Jenelle Oliv­er­rie.

Adri­an Cum­ber­batch is Bar­ba­di­an born and raised, but Trinidad based and trained. He loves the Caribbean sea and this is why the 28-year-old chef, who just took on the po­si­tion of head ban­quet chef at the Hy­att Re­gency, Port-of-Spain, wants to make Caribbean cui­sine world renowned.

In an in­ter­view at the Hy­att, Cum­ber­batch said he was look­ing for­ward to adding lo­cal in­gre­di­ents to the Hy­att's ban­quet menu. Trinida­di­an cui­sine has been par­tic­u­lar­ly in­spir­ing to the award-win­ning chef. "I like to cook Caribbean cui­sine par­tic­u­lar­ly Trin­bag­on­ian cui­sine where you have the dif­fer­ent flavours of var­i­ous eth­nic groups com­ing to­geth­er. My favourite food I like to cook is sea food and lo­cal fish like snap­per or carite from the lo­cal wa­ters," he said. "I like to take the usu­al sus­pects and take the re­gion­al stuff and mix it with the clas­si­cal French cook­ing."

Al­though Bar­ba­di­an and Trinida­di­an food are sim­i­lar be­cause of their Caribbean his­to­ries, Cum­ber­batch finds more room to ex­per­i­ment in Trinida­di­an cui­sine. "Ba­jan food has more of an Eng­lish palette so it's more sub­tle.

Trin­bag­on­ian food is a more flavour­ful and de­light­ful cui­sine where you get all the dif­fer­ent spices, whether its an­char masala or the dif­fer­ent cur­ries. And dif­fer­ent cul­tures bring dif­fer­ent tech­niques as well," he said.

Cum­ber­batch added that there is much to learn from do­mes­tic chefs. "I do a lot of ex­plor­ing. I go to To­co and Grande Riv­iere, all over the coun­try­side and look at the tanties in the vil­lage and see what they're do­ing dif­fer­ent­ly with lo­cal in­gre­di­ents. Then I bring those in­gre­di­ents back to the kitchen and work on it and add the French, clas­si­cal touch to it."

Learn­ing from women gives Cum­ber­batch no qualms. He ad­mits that pro­fes­sion­al cook­ing is a male dom­i­nat­ed in­dus­try, but says that his has been men­tored and worked with nu­mer­ous top fe­male chefs in­clud­ing for­mer Hilton ex­ec­u­tive chef De­bra Sardinha-Metivi­er. He added that while grow­ing he loved bak­ing, but has nev­er been teased for be­ing a boy in the kitchen. "I ac­tu­al­ly used to get teased be­cause I didn't have enough to go around," he said.

In June, Cum­ber­batch was a mem­ber of T&T Na­tion­al Culi­nary Team that earned gold at the Caribbean Ho­tel and Tourism As­so­ci­a­tions's (CHTA) an­nu­al Taste of the Caribbean com­pe­ti­tion in Mi­a­mi. Cum­ber­batch al­so won an in­di­vid­ual sil­ver medal at CHTA in the Beef Com­pe­ti­tion.

These are just two awards of many Cum­ber­batch has re­ceived. Com­pe­ti­tions are main dri­ver for his con­tin­ued pas­sion for cook­ing. "I'm try­ing to make Caribbean cui­sine num­ber one. The same way you hear peo­ple speak high­ly about French cui­sine or Mediter­ranean cui­sine or the Scan­di­na­vian cui­sine so we need to get the Caribbean up there and known around the world." He added that win­ning af­fords a great deal of sat­is­fac­tion. "There's a great sense of achieve­ment be­cause a lot of hard work goes in­to what I do."

More about Cum­ber­batch:

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Adri­an Cum­ber­batch won the T&T Chef of the Year in 2010 and 2011. He is a grad­u­ate of the T&T Hos­pi­tal­i­ty & Tourism In­sti­tute and has al­so trained at through­out the US, Cana­da. In Bar­ba­dos, Cum­ber­batch has won nu­mer­ous awards at the Na­tion­al In­de­pen­dence Fes­ti­val of the Cre­ative Arts and the Bar­ba­dos Culi­nary Awards.