Michael Winner ( Renowned food critic, writing in the Times of London)

After 26 years of going every Christmas-New Year to Barbados I've at last found a great restaurant there. One that ranks with the finest in the world....It's Barbados as it used to be. The place is furnished with exquisite antiques, the table settings, napkins, everything is to perfection. The gardens are alive with the sound of brightly colored macaws in enormous cages.The whole thing is an experience of total delight.

John's home and/or restaurant is a beautiful plantation house originally built in 1635 in the middle of cane fields. You drive down a rutted track.

John's wife, Rain, is co-conspirator. Her brother, Craig Barnard (I like him), owns Le Sport, a great hotel in St Lucia. John's family came to Barbados in 1638 from Scotland. He and Rain are the finest example of old-school hospitality. We lounged in the garden, following in the sitsteps of Prince Harry, the Tony Blairs, Drew Barrymore, Helen Mirren et al. 

A 70-year-old macaw, Melvin, was next to us. They had trouble finding him. Perhaps he passed away, I suggested. But Melvin was sleeping at the bottom of his cage. Nearby Macaws were called Columbus and Orinoco. 

John said, 'Don't put your fingers through the bars, because you'll lose them'. I wasn't planning to. 

I had a pina colada, Geraldine rum punch in a shell. Terrific canape. 

At lunch, pumpkin, carrot and ginger or callaloo soup were served at the table. The rest is a Sunday buffet. Eighty-seven-year-old Betty Sheppard, splendidly dressed in satin, played the piano. I took red snapper , swordfish and steamed flying fish with plantain as my starter. Followed by brilliant plantain fritters, peas and rice, chicken fricassee, macaroni pie, pepper pot
in a big bowl, stewed pigeon with peas, corn souffl?nd curried green bananas. 

All done to perfection, I observed. John said,' It's just a labour of love'. I've never seen Geraldine eat so much. There was a whole local pig with pepper jelly, the pork so soft it was triple historic. 

Desserts I tried included, but were not limited to, bread and butter pudding with butter sauce, chocolate mousse, trifle, coconut baked sweets. I've eaten so much I'm going to burst,? observed Geraldine. I was stuffed speechless. 

I nearly forgot to tell you the name of this amazing place. It's Fisher Pond Great House, St Thomas, Barbados. Only available to the public for Sunday lunch. During the week, if you're six or more, they open specially. That's no good for me. I haven't got five friends, so I'd never get in.




WINNER'S DINNERS ' The Restaurant and Hotel Guide'.....
BEST VERY PERSONAL,WIFE COOKS,HUSBAND DOES FRONT OF HOUSE:FISHER POND GREAT HOUSE,BARBADOS.Set in an elegant mansion in the sugar cane fields,a touch of the very best of old Barbados.Tasty local food brilliantly prepared by Rain Chandler.Hubby John is host with the most. An example of everything a restaurant should be.

At the Winner's Dinners award ceremony in London in November 2009  Fisher Pond Great House received the award for 'Best Very Personal Restaurant'.



TRAVEL MAGAZINE (The Sunday Times) February 2010 issue.
Tropic Of conversation By Nick Redman.

You happen abruptly upon Fisher Pond,in the green heart of St Thomas parish:a blur of churches on the drive from the coast,pink villages,a bumpy track.Then the Great House,a weathered plantation property,materializes among the cane fields.It's a slab of sepia-tinted Caribbean,stately -home-familiar to the British,yet exotic against branches of red African tulips.
  Shutters are open to the Barbados January sun,a piano-plink comes from within,and a white bearded owner John Chandler shows you to one of a dozen garden tables,covered in psychedelic bougainvillea,busy with chatting guests.A woman gets a tablecloth caught to her as she rises .Is she about to perform some EL Stupendo whip-it-away magic act? It wouldn't surprise me; 'camp' is too tame a team for this place.There are pink parasols in the Rum punches that John's wife Rain , is dispensing .Tablecloths are resplendent  with Swiss-cheese -plant motifs.Betty eighty something,is the one on the baby grand,playing beside a superb -looking home-cooked buffet.she launches into La Vie en Rose, and i glance at Ashley,my cival partner- or entertainingly uncivil partner after two drinks.What have we let ourselves in for ? Graham Norton's 59th? Carry on up the Caribbean?
  We're light years from the demure Barbados of Home Countries brochure clichés. A macaw screeches,putting me in mind of Maria Callas.(Not  so much the vocal impression; just that i read somewhere about the opera singer holidaying on the island with her pet marmoset.) Jewel-colored glasses are filled, the lunch grows longer,woozier,and Fisher Pond Great House blooms into Barbados past,like a Noel Coward play. The cooking is all done by Rain - and what cooking,based on classic recipes from across the West Indies. There's curried green banana from St Lucia; from Martinique,a caramelly flan made with condensed milk, leaving room (just) for the guava bread pudding,an old Bajan recipe.We fill our bellies,indulging in the classic Barbados holiday pursuit: people-watching.Cue uncivil partner.
  'The older lady,two to your left,' I say,'Wallis Simpson?'
  'Definitely more Marge Simpson.'
  Both of us are loving Barbados.For the sun and the sands and the sheer unadulterated indolence,sure,but more than anything for the characters.Sit around for a while,tune in,laugh,let your mind loose a little,and it's like The Archers in the tropics; rustic,nostalgic,just tragically not weekly.John Chandler has the most intoxicating lilt to his voice,somewhere between  Bob Marley  and Pam Ayres.I could listen to the bajan accent all day.
   We're almost too heavy to stand by the time John offers us a whizz around his antiques,including a pair of 18th-century hurricane-lantern shades owned by post-war PM Anthony Eden.They'd look lovely in our flat but are too big to smuggle out under T-shirts.John's family arrived from Scotland to grow tobacco in 1638.



Sun, sea and G&T-Telegraph. (november 2009)... Fisher  Pond  Great  House, at the heart of  another  former  plantation. Built in 1635, it is now the home of John & Rain chandler,who open to the puplic for lunch on sundays ( Rain is renowned as one of the best cooks on the island) and by special arrangement at other times . The Chandler family arrived in Barbados in 1638,and John can tell stories about every era of it's history- from Sam Lord,the "Regency Rascal" who wrecked boats and kept his wife in a dungeon,to the thirties,when Noel Coward and Cole Porter arrived with a crowd of bright youg things,leaving thev wall street crash behind them,and banishing the great depression in the light of the caribbean sun.

 Lunch at Fisher Pond is served on a long mahogany table,and the talk turns to Anthony Eden's hurricane lamps (bought from Eden's Barbadian retreat,Villa Nova)and to ghosts.Several flit through the house,according to the Chandlers,who talk about them in the same soothing tones as they welome  their living guests.One is a little Girl,they say,who drowned in the pond-a gentle spirit,who does nothing more alarming than move glasses on the table.Another is an upright-looking Englishman in a tweed jacket and leather boots,with a handlebar moustache . "He clears his throat  just behind me," says John Chandler.As he speaks,the wind blows through the palm trees , knocking the doors and the shutters open,rustling through the fields of sugar cane beyond; and the past is on the wing and in the air,rising up into the high blue sky that seems to go on forever and always.