Hundreds flock BVI Restaurant Week preview sampler event



The event attracted a number of restaurants around the Territory, including restaurants such as Top of the Baths, Watering Hole, Long Bay Resort, Tierra Tierra, BananaKeet, Cappriccio di Mare, Myett’s, Harris Place, The Dove and many others.
Public Relations representative for the BVI Tourist Board, Meslyn Allan, explained that planning for the event began sometime around September and involved meetings with a number of restaurant owners and generated much interest and active participation.
“The restaurants were really excited [to participate],” she said. “I’m very happy about the turnout and I’m very happy about the enthusiasm.”
Ms Allan explained that one of the aims of the event was for people who had not dined at any of the restaurants to be able to sample what they had on offer and create new relationships with the different restaurants.
She also noted that some of the restaurants will be participating throughout the week while others will only have specials on select days during the week.
Premier and Minister for Tourism Dr. the Hon. D. Orlando Smith was also briefly on hand to sample a few of the delights on offer.
There are plans to make the event an annual one and it was hoped that the success of this event would facilitate that.
One of the most excited proprietors, who had a heavily trafficked booth, was Cynthia Jones of Harris Place located at Little Harbour, Jost Van Dyke. Ms Jones said that her restaurant would be serving up specials on November 17 & 18 and customers could look forward to a wonderful meal. She also noted that transportation to the island was made easier with $20 round trip fares.
Ms Jones then gave a sneak preview of the menu, which included lobster soup, French garlic bread, garden salad, lobsters of choice, barbecue and much more.
Proprietor of the Dove Restaurant, Paloma Helm, also had lots on offer for persons to sample during the event, including a special chilled mango sauce among a few other delicacies.
The Dove operates out of Road Town (next door to the Commercial Court) and their special menu for Restaurant Week will be available from November 20 to 24.
Ms Helm said she attended restaurant week in Vancouver previously and had always enjoyed it. “I think it’s really good and hopefully we’ll get a lot of people who haven’t come to try us before to come check us out,” she said with much excitement.
Interested persons can access the various menus on offer for restaurant week on the BVI Tourist Board's website www.bvitourism.com/restaurantweek.


19 Responses to “Hundreds flock BVI Restaurant Week preview sampler event”
Bad planning, bad management and bad execution.
Problems:
Tents were not erected until almost 11 am, the time the event was schedule to begin.
No signage for each restaurant present. This would have added attendees with clearly identifying each property.
The conditions of the tent! Embarrassing! This was a tourist board event, don't they have tents?
Every event we put on must be on an international level. I understand this event was targeted towards the locals, but the quality of the production was very poor.
There was no announcement made during the event advising the attendees as to what was going on. Several persons only wandered into the park because of the loud (to loud) music. It would have been nice to have a tourist board representative make periodic announcements as to what was taking place.
The tourist board employees made it a point to parade themselves up and down, but didn't take the time to communicate with each property. This is a joint effort, it's not a for show effort. Much more professionalism needed there.
Again I say great effort, but we much improve on the quality of the events we put together. We must go above and beyond to ensure when the pictures are taken and the story is told, it's told on a high level of quality and professionalism.
Ok..........................that's my two cents!