kitchens of Anguilla's high-end resorts

[Anguillan newsboy]

By MICHELLE HIGGINS
Published: January 28, 2007


For many years, foreign chefs — many of whom were brought in to run the kitchens of Anguilla's high-end resorts — dominated the culinary scene on this northernmost of the Leeward Islands in the Lesser Antilles. But over the last several years, local chefs who trained at those same resorts have been opening their own restaurants and adding new twists to traditional dishes.
Among the best known is Dale Carty, who worked at Malliouhana, before opening a high-end restaurant called Tasty's in 1999. His interpretations of traditional Anguilla cuisine include Stewed Chicken Grandmas Style and Steamed Fish n' Fungi with Provisions, which Mr. Carty said uses a polenta-like cornmeal and “food from the earth” like yams, sweet potatoes and pumpkins.

In 2004, Gwendolyn Smith, a native Anguillian, was made executive chef at KoalKeel, a restaurant in a building originally constructed in the 1700s as part of a sugar and cotton plantation. While most of her experience in the kitchen was gained on the island, Ms. Smith also honed her pasta skills at Il Bottaccio di Montignoso, a Relais & Châteaux hotel in northern Tuscany. On her menu: Island Pea Soup made with pigeon peas and local sweet potato and Rock Oven Chicken, which is slow-roasted in a 200-year-old-oven and must be ordered 24-hours in advance.

Another native, Vernon Hughes, who began his career as a dishwasher at Anguilla's Cinnamon Reef resort, has opened his own restaurant, called E's Oven, on the site of his mother's old stone oven. His cousin and mentor, George Reid, the executive chef at Cap Juluca, has been fostering local talent for the last four years by hiring high school graduates to work as apprentices in the resort's three restaurants. Many of them go on to work at any of the island's 100 restaurants.