Leroy George

When­ev­er do­mes­tic or in­ter­na­tion­al tourists ask the writer of this ar­ti­cle where the best-tast­ing food in To­ba­go can be en­joyed, No Man’s Land is al­ways the in­stinc­tive an­swer.

No Man’s Land is a nar­row penin­su­la that lies be­tween Ny­lon Pool and the greater Buc­co Reef area on one side, and the Bon Ac­cord La­goon on the oth­er side. The food there is al­ways a near-per­fect blend of the spicy taste that do­mes­tic tourists gen­er­al­ly tend to love, made with the skil­ful tech­niques and at­ten­tion to de­tail that is more of­ten ap­pre­ci­at­ed by in­ter­na­tion­al guests. In this sense, there is uni­for­mi­ty in stan­dard, even though the sev­er­al cater­ers work com­plete­ly in­de­pen­dent of each oth­er.

The beach be­tween these two nat­ur­al won­ders of Ny­lon Pool and the Bon Ac­cord La­goon used to be un­der­ex­plored un­til the lat­er half of the last decade, when the cap­tains of the glass bot­tom boats “Cool Run­nings” and Frankie Tour’s “Is­land Vibes” sub­con­scious­ly de­cid­ed to take their clients to the area as a con­stant part of the glass bot­tom boat tours, in con­trast to just oc­ca­sion­al­ly. The small­er glass bot­tom boats in the in­dus­try fol­lowed the two afore­men­tioned ves­sels and soon, No Man’s Land was buzzing with life every day of the year.

Dwayne Skeete vis­it­ed No Man’s Land around the time that it was be­com­ing as pop­u­lar as it is to­day, when he tast­ed some food that gave him an en­tre­pre­neur­ial epiphany. At that time, very few per­sons sold food at No Man’s Land. The idea of mak­ing the en­deav­our an every­day thing was still young.

The food that Skeete ate that day catered to the stereo­typ­i­cal Eu­ro­pean tourist. Dwayne knew ex­act­ly how to cook in a man­ner that would cater to both Caribbean and Eu­ro­pean taste buds at the same time; he had done it suc­cess­ful­ly be­fore at an es­tab­lished ho­tel, and de­cid­ed to bring the skill to this new rapid­ly grow­ing eco­nom­i­cal habi­tat strate­gi­cal­ly lo­cat­ed in par­adise.

Mr Skeete’s in­tro­duc­tion to the world of tourism was that of an ac­coun­tant for 15 years at Co­co Reef ho­tel (one of the pre­miere ho­tels on the is­lands). Be­ing an ac­coun­tant paid well but it did not of­ten enough feed his de­sire to work more di­rect­ly with peo­ple from all walks of life, so he did a course to be­come a ho­tel man­ag­er. In prepa­ra­tion for his as­sumed new ca­reer, he had to in­tern in each sec­tor of the ho­tel busi­ness, which in­clud­ed the kitchen.

Whilst in­tern­ing, Mr Skeete ex­per­i­ment­ed with adding lo­cal flavour­ing to in­ter­na­tion­al cui­sine. Every­one was im­pressed with Dwayne’s cook­ing and he recog­nised that tak­ing his skill to No Man’s Land would af­ford him to be up close and per­son­al with his cus­tomers in the way he would best ap­pre­ci­ate.

He start­ed work­ing along with his friend Bob­by and the two did ex­treme­ly well to­geth­er, but even­tu­al­ly he re­alised that he would have even more au­ton­o­my to cre­ate if he branched out on his own. The writer of this ar­ti­cle is not a picky eater but one of my mem­o­rable ex­pe­ri­ences in­volv­ing food was on a rainy day at No Man’s Land a few years ago, when Mr Skeete had pre­pared more food than was ap­pro­pri­ate for a slow, rainy day and gave this writer some very gen­er­ous amounts of serv­ings of his bar­beque pork. It was a taste of heav­en.

Jen­nifer Sher­wood had been mak­ing chow from every type of fruit for so long that she does not even re­mem­ber when she start­ed or who taught her. Her now, gen­er­al­ly as­sumed, de­ceased com­mon-law hus­band, known as To­ba­go’s Jack Spar­row due to his ap­pear­ance, charis­ma, and even boat­ing skills be­ing in­cred­i­bly sim­i­lar to the fic­tion­al Pi­rates of the Caribbean hero, was prob­a­bly the first per­son to trans­port ven­dors to No Man’s Land from the Bon Ac­cord La­goon jet­ty via a shut­tle boat on a dai­ly ba­sis.

At first, Ms Sher­wood on­ly sold her chow but as the cus­tomers in­creased in num­ber, and sub­se­quent­ly the re­quest for va­ri­ety of food items, she be­gan mak­ing bake and shark. As To­ba­go ma­tri­archs go, she has a very strong but hum­ble dis­po­si­tion. She would lis­ten in great de­tail to the in­tri­cate re­quest of lo­cal and in­ter­na­tion­al cus­tomers alike to de­ter­mine the ex­act style of fry cook­ing she need­ed to de­vel­op to ap­pease her di­verse clien­tele.

Sell­ing food at No Man’s Land de­mands the abil­i­ty to find bal­ance. Even­tu­al­ly, she no­ticed that ad­vice on how she could make her food more per­fect came few­er and with much more time in be­tween. Like Mr Skeete, she had mas­tered her craft. To­day, she runs her op­er­a­tions on the beach with her five chil­dren, rang­ing in age from 13 to 26.

Jack Spar­row’s daugh­ter al­so sells at this lo­ca­tion with her hus­band and their com­pa­ny is called Caribbean Fam­i­ly. Caribbean Fam­i­ly takes both cash and card and their so­cial me­dia plat­forms are very im­pres­sive.

Not every­one in No Man’s Land sells food. Fred “Fred­die” Potts has been sell­ing at No Man’s Land long be­fore any of the reg­u­lars there to­day. He has been sell­ing craft and sou­venirs for over 20 years. De­spite work­ing for the To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly for 40 years, en­abling him to be able to ap­ply for loans etc, Mr Potts at­trib­ut­es his en­tre­pre­neur­ial en­deav­ours in the tourism sales to en­abling him to now be the own­er of a very im­pres­sive home right on the west­ern end of the is­land, where he grew up from child­hood. Fred­die is as much a pa­tri­arch as Ms Sher­wood is a ma­tri­arch in their place of busi­ness.

Ty­ron Melville used to as­sist Mr Fred with trans­porta­tion to and from the Bon Ac­cord La­goon. Mr Melville can best be de­scribed as the life of the par­ty. It was on­ly a mat­ter of time with all that great food on the beach that he would bring the drinks. He re­cent­ly got mar­ried to his new­ly mint­ed wife in the Do­mini­can Re­pub­lic and to­geth­er they now man­age the Blue La­goon, where pa­trons can not on­ly get a drink but al­so a beach chair to make their ex­pe­ri­ence even more heav­en­ly.

Lav­er­na Roach­ford was one of the first bar­tenders on the Frankie Tours boats. At heart, she is a true artist in the craft de­part­ment and en­tre­pre­neur. She even­tu­al­ly left the boat and joined the mer­ry group of busi­nessper­sons on No Man’s Land.

To­day, she is work­ing on di­ver­si­fy­ing her ap­proach to sales by not just sell­ing on the beach but al­so on­line us­ing sev­er­al so­cial me­dia plat­forms. Her craft is so beau­ti­ful that she should not have too much is­sues be­ing iden­ti­fied by the al­go­rithms as a le­git­i­mate con­tent cre­ator as she steps in­to the next phase of her op­er­a­tions.

Leroy George is the PRO of the To­ba­go Writer’s Guild, which can be con­tact­ed by phone at +1(868)6205799 or via email at to­bagowrit­ers­guild123@gmail.com