{"id":24418,"date":"2019-08-08T09:07:04","date_gmt":"2019-08-08T13:07:04","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/?p=24418"},"modified":"2019-08-08T09:07:13","modified_gmt":"2019-08-08T13:07:13","slug":"renowned-mixologist-bowen-creates-signature-drink-for-intercultural-festival","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/renowned-mixologist-bowen-creates-signature-drink-for-intercultural-festival\/","title":{"rendered":"Renowned mixologist Bowen creates signature drink for Intercultural Festival"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

By Brock Weir<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

You may not be able to catch lightning in a bottle, but\nyou\u2019ll be able to swish Aurora in a glass next month at the inaugural\nIntercultural Food & Music Festival courtesy of renowned mixologist Jamaal\nBowen.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Mr. Bowen, CEO and Founding Director of the TopShelf\nAcademy in Barbados, will be at Town Park on Friday, September 6 to serve up\nhis latest signature drink, a centrepiece of the Festival which celebrates the\nties between Canada and Barbados.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

With nearly 20 years in the food and beverage industry,\nMr. Bowen has several bartending awards to his name, awards secured with wholly\nnew creations and new spins on classic cocktails. Aurora \u2013 that is, the drink \u2013\nfalls into the first category and Mr. Bowen himself is not completely finished\ncreating the concoction.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThey key here for me is really trying to understand the\ndemographics and try to bridge the gap in bringing more Barbadian kinds of\nflavours to the Festival,\u201d he explains. \u201cI try to use things that probably\naren\u2019t used in Canada as much as they are in Barbados. We\u2019re doing away with\nrun-of-the-mill things. We\u2019re not going to do anything with orange or\npineapple, but I am going to go out of the box and not focus on imported fruits\nlike strawberries; I am going to try focusing on lots of spices we use in the\nCaribbean like nutmeg, cinnamon, all spice, and you might even get a bit of\ntarragon in, too.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cA big thing right now is butterfly pea flower. It\ndoesn\u2019t have a lot of flavour, but when you introduce it to citrus it changes\ncolour, going anywhere between cyan to lilac to heavy hues of blue.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

So, three things are certain: it is going to be vivid,\nfull of flavour and, given that this is an event celebrating Barbadian culture,\nit will be based on rum.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The power of food and drink to bring people together is\nsomething Mr. Bowen says was clear to him from a very young age. It not only\nevokes a sense of home, but it can also foster dialogue. His interest in food\nand drink comes from his grandmothers, who each had very different approaches\nto the culinary arts. His maternal grandmother was very much set on routine,\nhaving set menus for each day of the week which rarely deviated from the norm.\nHis paternal grandmother, on the other hand, was more adventurous with her\nflavours.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Herbs and spices were the hallmarks of her kitchen and\ngrandmother and grandson bonded over their shared love of crackling (deep-fried\npork fat), a taste that was not shared by other members of the family, but is\nvery much on trend in today\u2019s restaurants.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It soon became clear he wanted to be a chef, taking this\npassion into studying hospitality, and while his work started out in the\nkitchen, he found he really hit his stride \u2013 and won the admiration of his\npeers \u2013 behind the bar.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cA chef can only do so much with food: chicken has to\ntaste like chicken, pork has to taste like pork, fish has to taste like fish \u2013\notherwise you\u2019re sending it back to the kitchen,\u201d he says. \u201cIf I tell you four or\nfive ingredients for a drink, you\u2019ll probably think it is going to taste [a\ncertain way] but when you take your first sip it can taste totally different\nfrom what you assume it to be, or it can taste exactly the way you want it to\nor envision tasting. You can tell a story through food and drink.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

See the story unfold at The Aurora Intercultural Food\n& Music Festival on September 6 at Town Park. Sponsored in park by Tourism\nBarbados, the festival will feature an evening of food and drink, music from\ncalypso musician Red Plastic Bag, chefs from around the world, and more. For\nmore information on this free admission event, including food and drink\ntickets, visit facebook.com\/aurorainterculturalfestival. The event will be\nfollowed Saturday, September 7, with the annual Aurora Multicultural Festival. <\/p>\n\r\n\"Facebook\"<\/a>\"twitter\"<\/a>\"mail\"<\/a>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

You may not be able to catch lightning in a bottle, but you\u2019ll be able to swish Aurora in a glass next month at the inaugural Intercultural Food & Music Festival courtesy of renowned mixologist Jamaal Bowen.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[27,4,5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-24418","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-arts-and-culture","category-general_news","category-news"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p3D2k4-6lQ","publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-05-10 09:54:00","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24418","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=24418"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24418\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=24418"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=24418"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=24418"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}