CHARLES KONG SOO

charles.kong­soo@guardian.co.tt

Lo­cal chef Fin­bar “Bar­ry” Bartholomew showed Nic­ki Mi­naj his "sweet hand" for Car­ni­val.

Dur­ing the Tri­ni-born rap­per's time in the coun­try for Car­ni­val, Mi­naj was so im­pressed with Bartholomew's mouth-wa­ter­ing lo­cal dish­es that he catered for her and her en­tourage that she post­ed her rave re­view on­line on Sat­ur­day.

Mi­naj post­ed "@cheffin­bar

The best chef in Tri­ni. Lmk if you wan­na come to the states for a bit. (Con­tent­ed/pleased emo­ji) I have a per­ma­nent job for you." (Dark sun­glass­es smil­ing emo­ji)

In re­sponse, Bartholomew post­ed on his Face­book post:

"Short sto­ry: So my Car­ni­val week sud­den­ly be­came way more ac­tive than I had planned (as­ton­ished emo­ji)

Got a call Mon­day morn­ing ask­ing if I could pull off pro­vid­ing food for Nic­ki Mi­naj & full en­tourage–start­ing with lunch on said day and end­ing with din­ner on Ash Wednes­day.

I hes­i­tat­ed at first, know­ing most sup­ply shops were closed but when they said "she would re­al­ly like 100% lo­cal cui­sine" ...I thought (mis­chie­vous smile smirk emo­ji) “LETS DO IT!”

Here are some of the dish­es whipped up…

@nickim­i­naj

Ps–Feed­back was (blast emo­ji !! (Wink­ing emo­ji)"

Mi­naj and her en­tourage were treat­ed to cur­ry co­conut jum­bo shrimp, cur­ry chick­en, cur­ry beef, split pea dhal, Bas­mati rice, pak­choy sal­ad and his sig­na­ture Co­copine pep­per sauce and Co­copine pi­men­to sauce.

About Chef Bar­ry

Bartholomew is a clas­si­cal­ly trained chef from the fa­mous New York’s In­sti­tute of Culi­nary Ed­u­ca­tion (ICE).

Af­ter culi­nary school at ICE, he did his in­tern­ship at the pop­u­lar In­di­an/French fu­sion restau­rant Tabla on Madi­son Park, Man­hat­tan.

Bartholomew then went on to the icon­ic soul food/Ja­maican restau­rants “Mo-Bay” in Brook­lyn & Harlem where he spent the next six years and be­came the head chef at both branch­es.

He left Mo-Bay and start­ed work­ing at an­oth­er soul food restau­rant, Ba­ton Rouge which spe­cialised in New Or­leans’ cui­sine where he was chef for the next sev­er­al years.

Bartholomew's love for spicy Asian food led him to his culi­nary trail of dis­cov­ery for sev­er­al weeks in a Szechuan/Thai restau­rant, how­ev­er, he even­tu­al­ly left the restau­rant scene to do per­son­al chef gigs in New York.

Dur­ing this time he met many well-known peo­ple in show busi­ness, who would walk in­to the restau­rants he worked at in New York City over the years, es­pe­cial­ly in Ft Green, Brook­lyn. He was on­ly will­ing to give one en­ter­tain­er's name; Queen Lat­i­fah.

Bartholomew said that it was fun meet­ing these celebri­ties and then cook­ing their spe­cial se­lec­tions.

He re­turned to T&T in 2014 and start­ed the Co­copine line of pep­per and oth­er fruit-in­fused sauces.