Westworld Alberta
Issue link: http://westworldmagazine.ama.ab.ca/i/365611
He also demonstrates a few favourite cocktails, end- ing each anecdote with a round of drinks. e concoc- tions are mostly creamy and syrupy – just how many locals like them, according to Browne – and though i prefer my liquor neat, i drink up to be polite. i'm woozy from the samples when Browne asks how i enjoyed the event, and without thinking i tell him i'm no fan of sweet drinks. He smiles and says to stop by mount gay sometime so he can make some- thing more to my liking. "look me up" is one of those empty things you say back home, never expecting to see a person again, but Browne underlines how laid- back and intimate Barbados really is by handing me his number. when i ring him up a few days later, he answers, sets up a tour of the distillery for me, and then suggests i join him for another tasting at st. nicholas abbey, a 17th-century sugar plantation in the north of Barbados that has been transformed into a rum distillery. He regales me with more island stories and snifters of mount gay 1703 old Cask selection – served neat, and as smooth as fine cognac. with my head rum-clouded, i make my way to Queen's Park, a grassy fairground in the centre of Bridgetown that's host to a festival event of local street food. e street names and places i encounter – tweedside road, st. michael's row – and the flour- white colonial facades are a jarring disconnect from the steamy heat, wild tropical flowers and blazing sunshine. at the field, vendors in tents prepare steaming trays of food while onlookers sit in the shade of tamarind trees and listen to a band blast out lilting reggae. it might sound cliché, but Barbadians (Bajans in local parlance) move slower than a sailboat on a Fried crab backs and (opposite) a cook at Mr. Delicious Snack Bar, next to Miami Beach, Barbados. (both pages) jenn judge