WITH a family of five hungry boys to feed it’s probably just as well that Jamaican-born Valda Douglas always enjoyed cooking.
And when one of her sons, Barrington, the second youngest, began to show an interest in food and its preparation she was only too happy to show him how it was done.
“My mum just pulled me to one side and said ‘watch this pot’ and told me what to do. I was about 12 but I’d always been interested in cooking,’’ explained Barrington, now 42.
“I used to watch my aunties baking and I ended up knowing things like how to dissect a chicken for the Sunday dinner. None of my brothers were interested at all,’’ he added.
Valda, who came to Huddersfield with her husband Wilbert during the wave of emigration from the West Indies in the 1960s, taught Barrington the traditional Caribbean recipes from her homeland.
“She was taught to cook by her own mum,” he explained. “She used to shop for fresh meat and veg and cook every day. When there was no money she’d find something in the fridge and rustle up a five-course dinner.’’
Even today Valda still cooks for her large family and supplies the restaurant with her own home-baked sweet potato pudding.
“We still go to my mum’s on a Sunday, with our children. There are usually at least seven grandchildren and as many adults,’’ he added.
Although food has always been a passion for Barrington, who was raised in Deighton but now lives in Fartown with his wife Cheryl and two young sons, he remained an enthusiastic amateur until 2006 when he opened his restaurant, Discovery Bay, in Wood Street.
“It used to be my hobby, something I did outside of work,’’ he said. “Most of my cooking was done at the weekends when I’d go to the market and find fresh ingredients and then cook all day Saturday. I used to ring my mum up and say ‘it doesn’t taste right’ and she’d tell me where I’d gone wrong’’.
After saving up for 20 years for his own business the self-taught chef decided that he’d waited long enough.
“I was a salesman in the construction industry, selling timber and construction products but I knew I was no longer giving my work the 200% that I had been and my mind was elsewhere ,’’ he said.
Barrington and his brother Jason set about transforming an “empty shell” of a building in Wood Street, giving it a £40,000 kitchen re-fit and decorating the restaurant from top to bottom. It took about 20 weeks to complete.
Although Barrington rapidly made a name for himself – appearing on both the Rhodes Across the Caribbean series for the UK Living food channel with Gary Rhodes and, more recently, Gordon Ramsay’s F-Word for Channel 4 – the restaurant has seen difficult times.
“I’m glad that all the hard work is finally paying off,’’ explained Barrington, “because there have been some sleepless nights. We were really busy for the first three months we were open and then it died down and you find that you’ve got to do something to keep yourself in people’s minds. You have to be pro-active. That’s why I try to get myself on television.
“The recession did hit us bad. There was a time when I had no money, I was really, really tired and I rang my mum up and said ‘I’m going to jack it all in.’ But she talked me out of it,’’ he added.
What did Valda say?
“I said that you know you have to keep going and give it another try. He’s always had the ‘get up and go’ so I just encouraged him,’’ she said.
At the end of this month Barrington will find out if he has a place in a new Channel 4 cookery series called Iron Chef. The American-originated programme pits chefs skills against each other and would be another opportunity for him to raise the profile of Discovery Bay.
Who, I asked, looks after the business while he’s becoming a celebrity chef? “I have a very good chef, La Shaun Price, who takes care of things. I couldn’t do it without him,’’ says Barrington.
Although Discovery Bay is a Caribbean restaurant its owner says he wants to make a name for cooking authentic recipes with a contemporary twist. It’s this approach that got him on the F-Word and won praise from Mr Ramsay.
“Caribbean food is made up of cuisines and ingredients from around the world – the rice was Chinese, the curry from India and the yams from Africa. Salt fish is a European thing.
“Caribbean cuisine has evolved and I am continuing that by bringing different things in,’’ said Barrington.
The top selling dish at the 36-cover restaurant – which has been full every night since the F-Word – is the rum pork main course he cooked in Gordon Ramsay’s restaurant. But a personal favourite for Barrington is the macaroni cheese pie, which, he says, is a staple throughout Barbados.
“I use the white flesh from a watermelon to make a chutney to serve with the pie, which has peppers, garlic and ketchup with cheese. It’s quite different,’’ he said.
