Flirting with Food: Meet Cat Daddy and Chef Mark McEwan

This is a cross-post with the lovely GangStarrGirl, who joined us for Parlour's Eat Play Love Barbados travel deal. As a woman of color travelling around the world, there can be a great many experiences including sexually inappropriate ones and unexpected compliments. Here's the bright follow-up to GangStarrGirl's cautionary tale. Enjoy ladies!The HighDrama aside, I had more positive experiences with the men in Barbados than negative. Enter Mark McEwan, a celebrity chef and judge on Top Chef  Canada with whom my friends and I developed a casual acquaintance. Mr. McEwan is a cat daddy. A cat daddy is man who is 50 years-old or higher with swag (I hate that word but work with me) and can successfully bag women 20 years their junior. While there was no bagging going on Mark had the Parlour crew swooning.Our first encounter with Mr. McEwan was at Ambrosia III, one of the festival’s major parties where a number of chefs come together and dole out samples of their sumptuous food. I recognized Mark from television and decided to try his dish, a ricotta gnudi with a lamb ragout. I don’t even eat lamb or much meat at all, and almost bypassed the table until I heard Mark explaining his sample to a few other guests. I nearly fainted when he said his ingredients were fresh and local — that was the foodie in me — but had I actually fainted, I would have had to have been resuscitated and only so I could pass out again because he was so personable, friendly and charismatic. So, I tried Mark's dish and I fell in love. I have made it a goal for 2013 to visit one of his restaurants in Toronto. I was so sprung that my friend and I decided to get a picture with him, and his dish was the talk of the night … and the next day when we spotted him on the beach.As my friend and I were lounging on the beach at our hotel, Tamarind Cove, Mark, who was staying at the same location, set up shop behind us.“Did you see our chef friend from last night,” I whispered to my homegirl, who was completely oblivious.“OUR CHEF FRIEND? HUH?” She blurted.Fuck! I thought. I looked at him kind of embarrassed but he just chuckled, so I played it off by telling him that his Ambrosia dish was the best. After that, I started doing headstands — partially because I had been drinking rum but also because I just like randomly doing headstands — and he watched, amused. He saw that we were some fun loving chicks and wanted in on the ratchetry. Hell, it’s vacation, right?As the weekend passed, my girls and I ran into the chef on the beach again and again, exchanging more small talk with Mark and his crew, which included his assistant and accompanying chefs. One day, I found myself constantly tumbling off a paddleboard until Mark — a paddleboard aficionado — gave me some good tips that helped me balance better and voila, I got it. There is video proof of this tutorial, by the way.On Sunday night, my girls and I ran into Mark on our way to the festival’s main event, a candle light dinner at The Cliff restaurant prepared by celebrity chef Marcus Samuelsson, and he offered us a ride. We all silently screamed and felt major as we walked in with our boy. After dinner he asked us where the after party was, but we didn’t know because we'd separated from the Parlour girls Shannon and Hills. Womp. However, on our final day in Barbados, a swagged out Mark, who was also soaking up some last minute sun before preparing to leave, came over to our entire group, which was about five deep, and asked if we wanted some drinks. We all said rum punches but got quiet when he blank stared us. At this point, ordering a rum punch in Barbados was cliché but we didn’t know any better. We felt like little girls getting schooled. He suggested a mango concoction and we all obliged because he is a chef after all, and when he walked away Hillary blurted, 'Did we just get pimped into changing our drinks?'Yes, we did. Indeed.That’s what that cat daddy vibe, which I also refer to as the Dracula Effect, will do for you. Like Mark, you'll have vegetarians eating meat and who knows what else. We got gamed, and we liked it. It was very Sex and the City but the international brown girl edition and I’m not mad. Again, I’m already on the look out for the 2013 Barbados Food, Wine and Rum Festival and I suggest you get on that program too. Food, wine, rum and fun with my girls on a beach? What more could anyone ask for? Oh, that’s right, hanging with a top chef like cat daddy Mark McEwan. See you next year? Liked this? Catch more of Starr's musings at GangStarrGirl.