Stephon Nicholas

To­ba­go Cor­re­spon­dent

Hun­dreds of vis­i­tors once again flocked to the Bloody Bay Recre­ation Grounds, To­ba­go, yes­ter­day to savour a culi­nary ex­pe­ri­ence root­ed in dasheen.  

The an­nu­al Blue Food Fes­ti­val saw To­bag­o­ni­ans ex­plore their cre­ativ­i­ty in the kitchen with dasheen as the sta­ple.

From as ear­ly as 8 am, shut­tles be­gan car­ry­ing pa­trons to the venue to en­joy their favourite dish­es.

Many reg­u­lars stopped at the Ca­lyp­so Girls Ex­pe­ri­ence booth for the pop­u­lar dasheen ice cream, dasheen punch and dasheen wines.

Dasheen phu­lourie was al­so a tremen­dous hit with a va­ri­ety of sauces to com­ple­ment the treat. Oth­er ven­dors used dasheen flour to cre­ate sweet treats such as dasheen khur­ma and dasheen cakes. 

With the hunt­ing sea­son open, Kevin Hors­ford, pop­u­lar­ly known as Har­vest Gawd, said the event al­lowed pa­trons to en­joy dasheen dumplings and pro­vi­sions with their favourite wild meats, in­clud­ing igua­na, tat­too and agouti. His booth al­so of­fered smoked tu­na, pork and oth­er meats.

Hors­ford, known for his de­lec­table dish­es at har­vest time, said the fes­ti­val shows To­ba­go has so much more to of­fer than beau­ti­ful beach­es.

“One thing To­ba­go is known for is good food. I re­peat, one thing To­ba­go is known for is good, tasty food,” he said.

He be­lieves mar­ket­ing this as­pect of the is­land can un­lock To­ba­go’s tourism po­ten­tial. 

Mean­while, To­bag­on­ian Naph­tali Jakerov, who en­joyed the fes­ti­val in 2025, brought her sis­ter Au­rie-Ann this year, and in­tends to re­turn in 2027 to get more scoops of the dasheen ice cream.

“It’s smooth and creamy, you could tell it’s home­made, which I like. Plus it has lil chunks of dasheen in there, which is my favourite part,” she said. 

Her sis­ter told Guardian Me­dia the fes­ti­val was big­ger than she an­tic­i­pat­ed. Her favourite food, she said, was a dasheen cin­na­mon roll.

Their friend J’Da Nicome praised the event for not on­ly serv­ing up tasty food, but qual­i­ty live en­ter­tain­ment. 

Reg­u­lar pa­tron Josanne George was al­so a huge fan of the dasheen ice cream and buss up shut.

She praised or­gan­is­ers for build­ing booths for ven­dors, not­ing it made it more user-friend­ly for pa­trons.

Sev­er­al artistes hit the stage dur­ing the day, with T&TEC New East Side Di­men­sion al­so lift­ing the en­er­gy with a vi­brant per­for­mance play­ing sev­er­al ca­lyp­so and so­ca hits.

Pa­trons gave or­gan­is­ers and the po­lice ser­vice thumbs up for the shut­tle ser­vice and smooth flow of traf­fic to get to the venue. How­ev­er, leav­ing brought a dif­fer­ent chal­lenge with many com­plaints heard about in­fre­quent shut­tles to de­part the venue.