NARIS­SA FRAS­ER

Af­ter suc­cess­ful stag­ings in 2024 and 2025, the Pot on Point Com­mu­ni­ty Culi­nary Fes­ti­val will re­turn for this year’s Point Fortin Bor­ough Day Cel­e­bra­tions. It will be held on April 25 at the Gar­den Jew­elz Foun­da­tion in New Vil­lage.

Un­der the theme Food Ex­trav­a­gan­za, pa­trons can en­joy a va­ri­ety of lo­cal and in­ter­na­tion­al cuisines. Some lo­cal favourites in­clude crab and dumpling, dou­bles, coo coo and callaloo, roti, and bake and shark. There are al­so Ital­ian dish­es like chick­en al­fre­do and spaghet­ti bolog­nese, as well as Asian foods like won­tons and Thai ori­en­tal chick­en.

Lo­cal ar­ti­sans will al­so get the op­por­tu­ni­ty to show­case and sell their crafts and prod­ucts .

Event di­rec­tor Roland “Jem­ba” Hamil­ton told Guardian Me­dia the first two stag­ings of the event showed that pa­trons loved the con­cept. He said the feed­back has been pos­i­tive and that peo­ple of all ages have shown in­ter­est.

“It cre­ates a re­al­ly in­ter­est­ing at­mos­phere,” he said. “There’s the am­bi­ence, the en­ter­tain­ment, the arts and cul­ture, with tra­di­tion­al (Car­ni­val) char­ac­ters and of course, the food. So I would say we have giv­en a re­al­ly great prod­uct that keeps im­prov­ing.”

When it comes to both the chefs and the ar­ti­sans, he said, the aim is to main­ly in­clude peo­ple from with­in the bor­ough and en­vi­rons as much as pos­si­ble. “We re­al­ly try to in­volve the com­mu­ni­ty be­cause we feel like they must al­so be able to ben­e­fit from this,” he added.

He said this year’s stag­ing will have the widest va­ri­ety of foods yet, hence the term ex­trav­a­gan­za in the theme. “But the event in it­self of­fers a wide range of things. If you want to dance, have a time and en­joy your­self, you can get that. If you like cul­ture, you can get that. And this time, there’s more food than ever.”

He re­called that some peo­ple have even just at­tend­ed sole­ly for the food and cul­tur­al as­pects, took pho­tos of them­selves and the set­up, and left be­fore it was time to hit the dance floor. “There’s re­al­ly a space for every­one.”

Asked if, giv­en its con­tin­ued suc­cess, the team would ever con­sid­er host­ing it at even more lo­ca­tions through­out the coun­try, Hamil­ton said, “Def­i­nite­ly.”

“Even though the name is Pot on Point and it’s kind of a dou­ble en­ten­dre, every­thing is on point—from the decor, the food, the en­ter­tain­ment, the hos­pi­tal­i­ty … We al­ways try to have every­thing on point. So we are not lim­it­ing our­selves to just keep­ing this event in Point Fortin.”

Cur­rent­ly fund­ed out of pock­et, Hamil­ton said the team hopes to part­ner with cor­po­rate en­ti­ties that share their vi­sion and can help the event con­tin­ue to grow. “I know that the event can reach very, very far, pos­si­bly even reach­ing all-in­clu­sive sta­tus.”

He al­so thanked event pro­duc­er Kei­th Miller for his con­tin­ued sup­port. “He’s been very in­stru­men­tal every time and we work very close­ly,” Hamil­ton said.

It be­gins at 4 pm and food will be served from 5 pm.

Tick­ets can be pur­chased on­line at Is­land E-Tick­ets. Event com­mit­tee mem­bers can al­so be con­tact­ed via the tick­et hot­line, for which the num­bers can be found on Clas­sic O Events’ so­cial me­dia pages.