Turtle Bay Launch Party (Cardiff)

Interior design of Turtle Bay, Cardiff, UK.

Interior design of Turtle Bay, Cardiff, UK.

Last night I had the pleasure of attending Turtle Bay‘s launch party, thanks to an invite from BUZZ Magazine. The party was at full swing when we arrived and we were welcomed with a glass of passionfruit and rum punch (yum!).

Turtle Bay is a chain of Caribbean restaurants with an impressive 25 venues scattered across the UK. It has a relaxed, food shack vibe with an open kitchen and stage for live music.

The open kitchen at Turtle Bay (Cardiff).

The open kitchen at Turtle Bay (Cardiff).

(To those of you who don’t know yet, I loooove food and have a blog – aptly named, ‘Naomi Noms‘ – where I post photos and recipes of stuff I’ve made).

Sample of Goat Curry from Turtle Bay (Cardiff)....because you can't blog about food without an obligatory Instagram-style photo.

Sample of Goat Curry from Turtle Bay (Cardiff)….because you can’t blog about food without an obligatory Instagram-style photo.

Samples of their dishes were handed out and I was lucky enough to nab some goat curry with rice, BBQ lamb, sweet potato fries and some other delicious morsels I don’t know the names of during the course of the evening. The first two were easily my favourites. The goat curry had wonderful layers of savoury, spicy, tangy and mellow flavours that melted in the mouth, and the jerk-marinaded medium-rare lamb was succulent inside with a smoky charred crust.

I tried almost all of the 4 cocktails available that night (don’t judge me, haha!), bar the Caribean Pimms, as I’m not a fan of the original kind and didn’t feel like trying out. Bay Bramble is a sweet blackcurrent-based drink that’s easy to drink (like a boozy Gummy Bear 😉 ); Ting-Well is a more potent mix of Blackwell Rum and Ting (grapefruit pop), which leaves a slightly bitter aftertaste; and House Rum Punch…I’m not sure what was in it but I was at least 6 cocktails in at this point and found it too sweet. I’ve been cutting down on sugar in my day-to-day life for the past 2-3 years, so I’m pretty sure I exceeded my sugar limit by then!

Photo of my tattoo posted on Twitter. Cheers for sharing! :)

Photo of my tattoo posted on Twitter. Cheers for sharing! 🙂

A live band played for an hour or two while food was being served and they really got the party going. Overall, the music was way too loud to network, but I handed out the odd card here and there and people seemed to really enjoy the fun, relaxed atmosphere. It was so nice to have an excuse to dress up and go out for a change too, as life has been really busy setting up/maintaining NAOHOA over the past few months.

We nipped out for a meal after the samples had dried out and when we returned, people were getting their groove on at the dance floor. 😉 Great fun – I’ll defo check it out on a Saturday night so I don’t have to worry about work the next day!

Kudos to the staff for being so attentive and helpful. It was mega busy and they were working their arses off – you didn’t have to wait long to be served. Great job!

Cheers for the VIP invite, BUZZ Magazine! I had a blast.

Naomi xxx

P.S.: Don’t forget that you can still vote for NAOHOA as “Best New Business” at Regional Awards via this link! form.jotformeu.com/53242971318355 Thank you~ ♥