Denzil Brissett and Richard Campbell won the Best Booth
competition at last year's Portland Jerk Festival. Campbell tells us how they topped the field. DENZIL BRISSETT has been wooing crowds ever since the birth of the Portland Jerk Festival five years ago, but it was his participation last year that landed him a place in the hearts of judges and jerk lovers.
The 45-year-old who works as a Food Service Manager at the College of Agriculture Science and Education (CASE) in Passley Gardens, Portland, teamed up with colleague, 38-year-old CASE Farm Manager, Richard Campbell to win last year's Best Booth competition, hands down.
HOW THE BOOTH WAS WON
"We just did our regular jerk items (chicken, fish, pork, boiled corn), and worked at making the service good and different from what everyone else would be doing," Campbell said of the team's winning strategy. "We weren't even aware of the criteria."
"We used only natural seasonings and blended and stuffed the meat overnight. Then, in terms of presentation, where most booths had foil to serve their customers, we had (lunch) boxes and every customer was served lemonade with their meal. We had T-shirts with the name of our booth, good signs identifying the team -- Campbell and Brissett Original Jerk -- and a menu board with a price list."
Polly Perry, JTB parish manager, said booth operators were judged on the "attractiveness of their booths, customer relations and cleanliness."
A CRUSH THAT LED TO LOVE
While the men are excited about the upcoming jerk festival, it was never only all about food for the duo.
"I got involved with food at 17 years old when I left my Woodwork class to go to a Food and Nutrition class because I had a crush on the teacher," Brissett explained. "She was a very nice, black, young lady (Prudence James) and I remember thinking that she must be the closest thing to an angel. It was more than a crush really, but at that time as a student/young boy you couldn't dare tell her or anybody that you had a crush on an adult -- your teacher at that. I kept going and stayed because I was just happy to be in her class. Later I came to love it."
He has never looked back.
The young Brissett received a scholarship to study Food Science and Catering, at CAST (now the University of Technology -- UTech) and is now pursuing a degree at North London Business College in England.
DOWN TO THE EARTH
While food preparation and catering is Brissett's area, Campbell has full range on meat, vegetable and produce selection. Agriculture has been a mainstay in his life, he says.
"I've studied agriculture since I was about 15 or 16 years old. I've always had an interest, mainly because I'm coming from a rural background (Westmoreland).
It was familiar and then afterwards I really grew to like the area."
A past student of CASE, he has pursued his love of agriculture to the tertiary level with programmes at the University of the West Indies, St. Augustine, Trinidad.
The team, he says, was bound to have been a winning one. "We got together because we thought we would make a good team with his background in catering and mine in agriculture, and it worked."
The two are well into their preparations for Sunday's festival and plan to again wow patrons with several secret 'weapons' -- including a mango/otaheiti sauce to complement jerk spare ribs.
