The sun’s high scattering the clouds, the seas are rolling and the crew is hoisting the flapping sails of the 100-foot wooden schooner Friendship Rose as she starts the 8 mile trip from Bequia to Mustique. These little lumps of the Grenadine islands, 32 cays of extinct volcanoes, are battered by both the Atlantic Ocean and the Caribbean Sea which at the turn of the tide can transform channels into surging torrents. Already I can feel the boat bouncing on the waves as I lie leeside enjoying the occasional ocean splash. I can’t believe it: there are no jetskis! Jetskis are banned in the Grenadines.   more »

You can take Brad Moore out of College Street but can you take College Street out of Brad Moore?

Brad Moore: an imaginative fashionista chef who opened Indian-inspired Xacutti a few years ago. The menu read seductively with spice-lite dishes such as Indo-Thai prawns in lime-mint coconut curry spice. yam fries with soy-chili sambola, spinach kofta..But Moore’s commitment to cooking was overwhelmed by the College St aesthetic – a hip, noisy bar scene and on Sundays, the ur brunch, a meal that isn’t a meal at all but a sugar/starch blowout leading to severe carbover.

So when I heard Moore was opening a new place, Eleven at Jarvis and Front, I wondered whether he’d found the faith and was going to take spice seriously.   more »