Beverages, meats aplenty at Meet Street x Coffee Festival

As far as the eye could see, it was food, glorious food served hot and steaming at the Jamaica Food and Drink Kitchen’s Meet Street and The Market, and the Jamaica Blue Mountain Coffee Festival at Hope Botanical Gardens on Saturday. Patrons came with their purses and their appetites to try dishes they had never heard of and let their taste buds guide them along the journey of culinary discovery. There were countless meals provided, and while most were the usual soup, pizza, hot dogs and jerk chicken offerings, there were enough standouts for those who craved something extraordinary to get excited.

Chef Simone Walker-Barrett of Street Food Saturdays was happy to share that they are now in their 15th year of offering a river dining experience, and since their menu changes for each experience, they adjusted it for the festival as well, bringing the river dining concept to the gardens. “Today we are doing a doughnut sandwich, which is something that I always make for my kids. Since the dough is bread, it is not unheard of to use it for a sandwich. So my son said, ‘Mommy, since you are going down into Kingston, why don’t you just share the pulled pork sandwich?’ Remember, pork likes anything sweet, so we put it on the doughnut and serve it with some bacon jam and cheddar sauce for that nice bite. There is none left, so I guess that means the response has been great,” Walker-Barrett told Food.

For Aaron March, founder of Crispy Pork Belly Ja – a company less than a year old – business has been steadily growing. Demand at the festival was so strong that he sold out his first batch of pork and had to bring in more. “This is the second-largest food event I’ve been to as a vendor after Kingston Kitchen, and it is going extremely well. We have already sold out our first batch of pork, and the day is just halfway through. Everybody who says Jamaican people don’t like pork is lying. It’s a big lie. I’m getting messages at 2 a.m. for pork. A lady came up to me today at the stall, and I asked her if she was interested in trying the pork belly, and she said, ‘No, I don’t really eat pork’, and I said, ‘OK’. It won’t be the first time that I changed somebody’s mind. If you don’t like pork, fine. But, there is no way you are going to try [it] and not say crispy pork belly isn’t delicious [after]. So she got her piece, fell in love and actually placed an order.”

The way the pork is prepared is the reason, he said, why people keep coming back for more. “That is the reason it stands out from the rest. The way I prepare my pork belly makes it super unique as it changes the whole flavour, texture and profile. You get the crispiness and the crackling, and it’s not too hard to wear [down] your teeth, but it’s also not soft and stretchy. [The texture is] uniformed throughout the whole belly. Once there is skin, there’s crackling,” said March.

Café Blue was also a crowd favourite with their new Biscoff crumble frappé with its secret ingredient, which they kept close to their chest. Operations Manager Jodi-Ann Stewart said that it was a drink they introduced in December, and the response has been so good that they knew they had to bring it to the Coffee Festival. Over at Café Dolce, their cloud matcha and banana bread iced latte were the favourites, with the latter becoming the coffee-based iced drink patrons swarmed to in the afternoon heat. Manager Amanda Hudson said the ingredients – caramel, coffee, banana cold foam and almond milk – are straightforward, but they presented it with a twist. “It’s new, but it’s been received so well. It tastes like a dessert, so everybody’s loving it.”

Patrick Barrett of East Side Products out of Rum Store Plaza in Morant Bay, brought out his coffee-based freezies that look similar to what Jamaicans know as Kisko pops. “It’s not just for kids but for everybody, as there is no alcohol in any of them. It comes available in vanilla, salted caramel, bulla, gizzada and milo-coffee, and these freezies are new on the market, and people are intrigued by it because it reminds them of what they used to enjoy as children.”

nicola.cunningham@gleanerjm.com