A little over two years ago, Eric Ripert was tapped to host a new culinary festival anchored at the Ritz Carlton Grand Cayman. An inspired pairing, as Ripert has lent his name and talent to the Ritz-Carlton Grand Cayman, in the form of two restaurants: Blue and Periwinkle. Blue received the coveted AAA Five Diamond Award, the only restaurant in the Caribbean to receive this rating. Both restaurants make creative use of local food products—particularly lobster and red snapper, which are strictly sourced from the surrounding waters—as well as sea salt harvested by evaporation.
Ripert is a French chef based in Manhattan. In 1982 he moved to Paris where he worked for two years at La Tour d’Argent, a famous restaurant more than 400 years old. Ripert next worked at Jamin and was soon promoted to Assistant Chef de Partie. In 1989, Ripert moved to the United States and was hired as a sous chef in the Watergate Hotel’s Jean Louis restaurant. In 1994, Ripert became Le Bernardin’s executive chef after Gilbert Le Coze died unexpectedly of a heart attack. In the Michelin Guide NYC 2006, Ripert’s Le Bernardin was one of four New York City restaurants to be awarded the maximum three Michelin stars for excellence in cuisine.
Ripert is the Chair of City Harvest’s Food Council, and President of the Jean-Louis Palladin Foundation. He has been a guest chef at the French Embassies in Mexico and Venezuela and for the New York City Ballet.
With such a luminous career trajectory, Ripert had little trouble in recruiting an all-star line up for his First Annual Cayman Cookout, January 16–19, 2009. “The festival talent happened very organically. I made a few direct calls to my friends in the industry and that was it. No booking agents or managers involved, so it was a much more civilized process,” he recalls candidly as we sit in the Ritz Carlton Grand Cayman lobby bar.
The Cayman Cookout offers an incomparable roster of world famous chefs, sommeliers and spirits blenders presenting tastings, demonstrations, tours and dinners celebrating the barefoot bliss that is the Cayman Islands in January. Joining Ripert in the star-studded line up: the salty Anthony Bourdain, the daring Dean Fearing, the saucy Ingrid Hoffmann, the ingenue Michael Laiskonis, the seasoned Laurent Manrique, the savant Michael Richard and the sensualist Laurent Tourondel. As if that wasn’t decadent enough, the festival imported the saavy sommelier talent of Ray Isle, Anthony Giglio and Joshua Wesson.
Arriving at the Ritz Carlton Grand Cayman beach for the Opening Night Gala, I checked my bronze thong sandals at the fashionable “footwear concierge” with a giddy glee. The aroma of savory sizzling scallions and the upbeat tempo of great live music fills the night air. To the right of me, vast towers of shellfish, to the left, carnivore carving stations that would satisfy a victorious NFL team on a bender. I spot Jim Cramer, CNBC host of Mad Money, sharing a laugh with Eric Ripert and Anthony Bourdain as Ripert’s children play in the sand nearby. That’s just the kind of laid back mise-en-scene this festival promises.
Destined to be the biggest date in the Caribbean gourmet calendar, the Cayman Cookout combines A-List culinary talent with truly inventive and site-specific programming. Where else could you chow down on spicy curried goat with Anthony Bourdain in an open air market? Then cool your crush on his renegade good looks with a chilled glass of homemade fever tea? This kind of innovative “episode” can only be brought to you by the Cayman Cookout. And the intimacy of the events... incredible. Not something you’d find at the throngs of food groupies at the South Beach Food & Wine Festival.
A festival highlight, A Cook’s Tour of Cayman hosted in the National Historic Site of Pedro St. James, is of course one of the hottest tickets in town. Anthony Bourdain, intrepid host of the Travel Channel’s No Reservations takes us on a sensory journey of the finest the Cayman Islands have to offer. Bourdain engages the crowd with bold and cunning declarations, taking us on a circuit of about a dozen stalls. Local Caymanian chefs and sauce makers are basking in Bourdain’s attention and reveling in his plucky quips. This local line up is obviously ready for their close up! As Bourdain leads the small assembly of three dozen or so foodies, I experience homegrown delicacies like spicy conch salad and yummy casava cake. The air is filled with lively local music and stalls offer artisan crafts.
