Paul Wedgwood Celebrates Barbados with Special Dinner

Award-winning Edinburgh chef Paul Wedgwood presented his guests with a Bajan (Barbadian) dinner last week in his restaurant on the Royal Mile.

Paul was head chef at this year’s Celtic Festival Barbados and during that week in May worked up a fusion of flavours with local chefs in Barbados.

He created the first-ever Bajan haggis using the local black belly sheep, created a variation on cranachan using rum, coconut and mango to replace whisky oats and raspberries, and a Guinness chocolate cake featured with cock-a-leekie skewers.

Paul is notorious for creating the minute detail in a dish and absolutely zinging the palate with an explosion of flavours from the tiniest little morsel of food, and this he did with panache for his guests.

From tiny salt cod fish cakes and miniature macaroni pie, a very traditional Bajan dish presented as canapés, to a tiny cube of cou cou or pudding, his Bajan menu was incredibly authentic.

Guests were treated to the famous “pudding and souse” dish presented in only the way that a fine-dining chef like Paul would, startling piled high from the chilli and cucumber “souse” through the pork, to a delicacy of pigs ear on the top. Swordfish curry on pumpkin followed with a lime and coconut pie for deserts.

There were Facebook messages from chefs in Barbados during dinner, congratulating Paul on presenting what is probably the first full Bajan dinner in the UK.

The event was supported by the Barbados Tourism Authority whose UK representative Ms Petra Roach said: “Paul is an incredibly talented chef with an enormous passion for Barbados.

“We were delighted to have him on our wonderful island three times this year. He worked with our local chefs researching carefully all the ingredients and spices we use which are typically Bajan. And he spent time with them telling them about how he runs his multi award winning restaurant in Scotland’s Capital City.

"As Paul said, the fridge at the Hilton Barbados where he presented one meal during the Celtic Festival was bigger than his whole restaurant, so the wealth of the exchange of cultures between our two countries was a rich experience for everyone involved.”

Also present was Bajan artist Heather Dawn Scott, who presently resides in Edinburgh and paints her glorious, colourful paintings which are sold from galleries in Barbados. She has just finished painting the murals in the children’s’ nursery at the famous Sandy Lane Hotel in Barbados.

Paul Wedgwood will once again be head chef at next year’s Celtic Festival in Barbados which runs from 7th-14th June. It is a music festival with flavours of food included in an extensive one-week programme.

More information:

Wedgwood The Restaurant.

Celtic Festival Barbados.

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