A seafood fest that was not

The Editor, Sir:

On Emancipation Day, I thought long and hard about how we should spend the day. Should we go to Denbigh in Clarendon, or the seafood festival in Ocho Rios? I had been contemplating this for the previous two weeks. My thoughts of lobster, shrimp and conch done in various ways, scallops, and even octopus, finally won me over, so it was off to the seafood festival.

Having paid $1,600 to enter the venue, we proceeded to the food stalls and were invited by vendors to purchase their "fried chicken, curried goat, fried and roasted fish".

By the time we got to the fourth stall, I told the vendor that I had not come all the way from Montego Bay to a 'seafood festival' to purchase curried goat and chicken and so I enquired, "Where is the seafood?"

The response was, "You can get fried fish, roasted fish and conch soup."

Having decided to settle with a cup of conch soup, to my dismay I was actually eating red peas soup and breadfruit. After my protest, the vendor informed me that it was conch soup and that peas and peanuts were in it. But I did not want peas soup, I wanted conch. Her only comment was "sorry".

Rip-off

At another stall, the cup of 'mannish water', sold for $150 also, neither looked, smelt nor tasted like mannish water and after about a tablespoon of soup, there was only breadfruit, breadfruit and more breadfruit.

On my enquiring about seafood, I was told that a few stalls up the line had shrimp and lobster.

At one stall, I was told that shrimp meals were "$1,500 up" and at another "$500". Along the row of stalls, there was fried fish and more fried fish.

Could this really be classified as a seafood festival? What a disappointment.

Then, to make a bad situation worse, there were very few seats and as the rain fell, starting about 2 p.m., there was nowhere to shelter as even those seats had no coverings.

One would have thought that the organisers would have provided a big tent with chairs for patrons who needed to sit and eat or be sheltered form the expected rain. Our umbrellas were no match for the showers.

Finally, at 4 p.m. I thought we had enough. We walked back in the pouring rain to the designated car park and headed back to Montego Bay, soaking wet and totally disappointed in this 'seafood festival'.

This was a rip-off, waste of time and money.

I am etc.,

Dr H.E. HERON

Montego Bay, St James