Cover Story
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A lot of Jamaicans don’t realise there are small batch producers who create such amazing food items, such as chutneys, jams, sausages, cheeses.
The three friends came together in August to concoct Kingston Kitchen, a food market with a difference. “I had read something in the New York Times about outdoor food markets and I said to Jacqui that’s fantastic. Why can’t we do something like this here? So we said, yeah, let’s really do it. We met and we just kind of brainstormed that day and Kingston Kitchen was born. We had the food part covered but we wouldn’t have a clue how to actually put the event together, so we called [Melanie],” Wong explained. Jamaicans know their markets, from the historic ‘Corrie’ in the heart of Downtown Kingston to the Linstead Market of folksong fame. Many a Saturday has been spent bargaining over ground provisions, vegetables, seasonings and meats. These things are now available in supermarkets, but nothing quite equates to that market tradition. Sinclair, Miller and Wong, who have playfully dubbed themselves the ‘Kitchenettes’, are putting a fresh, new spin on this tradition, creating a space for local small batch food producers to reach a wider customer base. “Kingston Kitchen encompasses [both] the food aspect and the local aspect. That’s very important. A lot of Jamaicans don’t realise there are small batch producers who create such amazing food items, such as chutneys, jams, sausages, cheeses,” Sinclair stated. “A lot of people don’t know that we have www.ezineslimited.com
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real artisanal cheeses here. They see the foreign stuff in the supermarket but our goat’s cheese is amazing, for example.” Kingston Kitchen is the perfect combination of the three Kitchenettes’ talents: Sinclair is the Cordon Bleu-certified ‘Juicy Chef ’, food stylist, writer and recipe developer; Wong is a journalist who has spent the last five years writing about food, first for the Jamaica Observer, then as editor of Skywritings magazine and now as a freelancer, contributing to Maco and Kuya magazines; Miller is an event producer, interior designer and stylist who has been involved with the South Beach Food Festival since 2001. Sinclair and Wong are both British – Jamaican while Miller, who graduated from Florida International University, is Jamaican “born and raised.” With their backgrounds, the women bring a cosmopolitan edge to the local scene. “Typically on a Sunday, there’s nothing to do. Leisha and I are coming from a picnic culture in the UK. We’re very green park-oriented, but it was bloody cold. So when you can have that nice weather and be in the grass, it was such a big thing for us,” Sinclair pointed out. “We wanted to bring to Jamaica a taste of what we’ve enjoyed and grown up with overseas and we’re like, why can’t we do this in Jamaica? We have the perfect weather, perfect island and we thought Hope Gardens has been underutilised and this is the perfect place; it’s accessible to everyone, so it speaks for itself.” Your Style eZine 12