Second Annual Slow Food Day Grand Cayman on Saturday, February 2, 2013 Celebrates Eating Local in the Cayman Islands

James Beard Award-Winning Chefs Hugh Acheson and Michael Schwartz Join

Local Chef Partners & Farmers to Raise Awareness of Ingredients Grown & Harvested On-Island

Michael’s Genuine Food & Drink, Slow Food South

Sound, and Cayman Islands Agricultural Society are proud to announce the Cayman Islands’ second annual Slow Food Day on Saturday, February 2, 2013, a celebration of local ingredients and the people that grow and harvest them, with visiting guest celebrity chef Hugh Acheson. Slow Food Day 2013 is made possible through a collaboration of local chefs and farmers and is comprised of two main events with the goal of generating demand, as well as more opportunities for farm-fresh products to show up on restaurant menus and grocery shelves across the island.

• Farmers Market Tasting – Join the Cayman Islands Agricultural Society as it pairs the island’s farmers with chefs from Camana Bay restaurants and others around the island who are committed to sourcing local for a feast of seasonal ingredient-inspired dishes. Guests attending Saturday’s weekly Farmers Market at Market at the Grounds will be able to meet the chefs and farmers, sample their dishes, and get the recipes to make them at home. Relax and enjoy live music and enter the raffle for a chance to win prizes including restaurant gift certificates, a pair of tickets from Cayman Airways, autographed cookbooks, and more. 9-11:00 a.m., The Grounds in Lower Valley/Savannah, complimentary admission.

• Farm-to-Beach Dinner with Chef Hugh Acheson – Winning two 2012 James Beard

Foundation Awards this year – one for best chef southeast and the other for his cookbook, A New Turn in the South: Southern Flavors Reinvented for Your Kitchen, Canadian-born chef Hugh Acheson visits the island from Georgia where he is the chef/partner at Five & Ten and The National in Athens, and Empire State South in Atlanta, also making regular appearances as a judge on Bravo TV’s Top Chef. Get a taste of his fresh approach to Southern food as he explores the local cuisine and its ingredients in a feast on the beach, with support from the Michael’s Genuine kitchen including chef Schwartz and his executive chef on-island, Thomas Tennant. The meal will include passed snacks, dishes put out from stations on the sand, a pit with delicious local meats roasting and smoking, and, of course, plenty of cocktails and wines that love the beach. Our local farmers will join us to celebrate their labor of love, prepared fresh, simple and pure. Copies of A New Turn in the South will be available on-site for purchase and signing by the chef courtesy of Books & Books in Camana Bay. 5:00 p.m., Camana Bay Beach Park, $110 US all-inclusive via Brown Paper Tickets.

“We’re happy to see our home away from home become a leading culinary destination in the Caribbean, and to us that means not only having great restaurants on the island, but also that its chefs understand the importance of sourcing local,” explains chef/owner Michael Schwartz. “As we approach our third year at Camana Bay on Grand Cayman, we are doing our part to renew our commitment to the emerging homegrown food scene that we’ve been getting to know over the past

couple of years with Slow Food Day. We’re really excited to be working again with the local chef community and share what slow food means on the island with Hugh. I’m sure he’s going to have a field day with the ingredients, both familiar and new to him.”

Slow Food South Sound is the local chapter of Slow Food International, a global, grassroots organization with supporters in 150 countries around the world who are linking the pleasure of good food with a commitment to their community and the environment. A non-profit member supported association, Slow Food was founded in 1989 to counter the rise of fast food and fast life, the disappearance of local food traditions and people’s dwindling interest in the food they eat, where it comes from, how it tastes and how our food choices affect the rest of the world. Today, the organization has over 100,000 members joined in 1,300 convivia – our local chapters – worldwide, as well as a network of 2,000 food communities who practice small-scale and sustainable production of quality foods. Michael’s Genuine’s relationship with Slow Food began with the Miami convivium, where since 2009, Schwartz and his team have hosted its annual Ark of Taste Dinner to preserve heritage foods in danger of extinction. Since opening an outpost on Grand Cayman, the chef has partnered with the Slow Food South Sound on myriad events, most notably a monthly farm to table dinner series stewarded buy chef Tennant, now culminating in the annual Slow FoodDay celebration.

“Slow Food Day continues to be an important milestone in raising awareness of the ever-increasing variety of local produce available on Grand Cayman,” says Slow Food South Sound Convivium Leader Alan Markoff. “Visitors and residents to the island who haven’t been to The Grounds before will probably be surprised at the high quality of food produced here. It’s also exciting to see more and more local restaurants – from casual to fine dining – source Cayman’s own ingredients for their

menus. Bringing the chefs together for Slow Food Day is an opportunity to show how product grown and raised close to home tastes better, and can at the same time enrich the livelihoods of people in our agricultural community. Chefs Schwartz and Acheson have been pioneers of this philosophy in the States, and we’re fortunate to have these two talented chefs embrace it and help perpetuate it here in Cayman.”

Slow Food Day 2013 is made possible from generous underwriting of our presenting sponsor Camana Bay, as well as Bon Vivant, BlackBeard’s, Flava Magazine and Cayman Islands Department of Tourism. Get all the latest updates on Slow Food Day and its participating farmers and chefs by following Michael’s Genuine Food & Drink Grand Cayman on Facebook, and on Twitter @mgfd_gcm, @mgfd_mia, and hashtag #SFD13. To purchase tickets and for more information on the events, please visit michaelsgenuine.com/SFD13.