|
|
|
|
|
ISLAND DELIGHT – Business Profile |
|
Business
profile: Making salt fish patties British The cook who wants his salt fish patties to be as British as chicken korma Rosie
Murray-West meets a Caribbean culinary revolutionary My
taxi driver has almost given up on finding Island Delight Foods when he
spots a factory, garishly decorated with palm trees, nestling behind
the local Pentecostal church. Since
the only Island in the vicinity is home to a few traffic cones and a Give
Way sign, and 'Delight' is a pretty strong description of this particular
part of Birmingham, he looks dubious when I ask to be dropped off outside.
However, the strong smell of minced meat and salt fish is proof we're in the
right place to meet Wade Lynn, Caribbean patty king. Mr Lynn, a 44-year-old Jamaican with a broader Brummie accent than Jasper Carrott, is on a mission to do for Caribbean home-style cooking what Patak's did for chicken korma - make it ubiquitous and comfortable enough for the British to accept as their own. His
patties, of which we consume six million a year, come in flavours from
innocuous-sounding vegetable to slightly scarier salt fish. He just about
puts up with me describing them as 'a bit like Cornish pasties', contenting
himself by dubbing their UK cousins 'very bland', and remarking: 'The
British palate has changed.' The
lecture on Nasa is typical. Mr Lynn trained as a teacher before founding
Island Delight in 1988, and the didactic urge is still strong. By the end of
an hour, he's disgorged a mine of information about Portuguese cookery, food
fairs in Las Vegas and the taste of breadfruit. By the time he's shown me
round the factory I could probably take an exam in Caribbean cooking. Jamaican
by birth, Mr Lynn moved to Birmingham as a child, and grew up attending the
local secondary modern. "I loved my food, and in Jamaica it's normal
for the boys to do cooking - most of the chefs are men, so I started
learning how to do it at the age of 14. I would come home from school and
make the gravy." His mum must be proud of having taught him all she
knew? "She's moved back to Jamaica with my dad, and she hasn't tasted
my stuff for ages," he says. "But she reckons it's good." He
goes back to Jamaica several times a year, to get new ideas as well as to
see his parents, and has just been out shooting a promotional video for the
company. "It was very hard work," he moans. "We had to be up
at sunrise on the beach," It's somewhat hard to be sympathetic,
especially when he starts raving about the "fantastic" lobster
patties he had and that he might introduce here. After
he's tempted us in with the familiar-looking patties, he's hoping we'll
graduate to other Caribbean tastes, in the shape of the ready meals he is
just beginning to develop. "You have Tex-Mex, Chinese and Indian, so
why not Caribbean? There are two flights out to Jamaica every week and they
are all potential customers for our food when they get back". He'll
probably start with jerk chicken - "I can see you've heard of
that" - and move on to more hardcore delicacies, although probably not
goat. "It tends to be goat in Jamaica because there aren't many sheep,
but round here we use lamb." Island
Delight supplies thousands of patties to prisons, and they're slightly
smaller than the ones sold in shops. Downstairs, the factory is
in full swing, with vast vats of bubbling beef and spices, acres of
yellow-tinted pastry and brightly coloured wrappers galore. Mr Lynn is resplendent in a monogrammed white coat, clearly master of all he surveys. "Luckily, you are going to get some free samples," he says grandly. "I always give everyone a bag so they can give them to their friends. My daughter likes to take them into school, it makes her very popular." Jamaican
businessmen are a rarity at local CBI meetings, in which he takes an
enthusiastic part, and he says he enjoys going into schools and telling the
children about industry. "You can succeed in it, whatever your
background." Daily Telegraph Saturday 31 July 2004
|
|
Contact | Site Map | Search | News & Articles | Home |
