Top chefs offer local culinary delights at BVI Festival Food Fair

TORTOLA — The British Virgin Islands Festival Food Fair never disappoints.

That’s because any one showing up to find a specific culinary delight will always find something else that satisfies the palate. This year was no different as hundreds converged Friday and Saturday at the Cyril B. Romney Tortola Pier Park for the 70th Emancipation Festival Food Fair. St. Croix’s Linda Callwood, and BVI native Allen King, who lives in New York, both came searching for something specific —peas soup with pork and fried “ole wife,” respectively — late on Saturday afternoon.

Callwood didn’t get exactly what she had a taste for. “I was looking for the peas soup with pigtail, but I didn’t get any pigtail. I love pigtail, so I wanted pigtail, but I got smoked turkey. I was surprised. I thought I’d also get salt beef. But the peas soup was good. I enjoyed it,” she said. King didn’t find his fried ole wife fish. “That’s my favorite dish,” he said, but because there was none “I settled for the salt fish.” King, who was home to see family, said he was otherwise enjoying taking part in the celebration because “I haven’t been here in a long time.”