Taste the real flavour of Caribbean food by moving away from the mainstream tourist traps and try the local ingredients from street stalls to fine dining restaurants. Here are six of the best foods you should try to know the real culture and tradition of the Caribbean cuisine:
- Cou-cou. Learn the culture of Barbados through its Oistins fish fry every Friday and Saturday nights located at the Christ Church parish. The area will be filled by festive stalls where locals cook their specialties in open air. The cou-cou, Barbados’ leading delicacy, is basically cornmeal and okra with tomato, chives, onion, fresh pepper, thyme, spicy stock and garlic.
- Bake and Shark. Food enthusiasts go to Trinidad to taste the bake and shark. This luscious native dish is made out of shark fillets that are deep-fried then stuffed to “bake.” Then it is kneaded with flour to form puffy rolls. You can find this food in the entire food stall along the areas city streets as well as in the high-end restaurants.
- Keshi Yena. If you are a cheese lover, Curacao’s traditional dish will definitely fill your taste pallets. This food consists of chilli con carne, spicy tomato sauce, olives, chicken, and prime slices of Gouda. This food originated way back the Dutch slave trade in the area.
- Sopa de Lima. Cancun’s specialty soup is influenced by the Mayan tribe. This is Mexico’s chicken soup. This is made out of chicken stock as well as limas agrias. It has chunks of chicken, cilantro, avocado, and crispy tortilla stips.
- Lionfish. Hordes of lionfish came, eat the little fishes and almost destroyed the ecosystem of Little Cayman in 2008. Good thing, humans love the taste of lionfish. Chefs remove the venom from this fish and cook them into amazing delicacies.
- Callaloo. If you love your greens, then you should taste Jamaica’s Callaloo. This is a curry-like food based on its West African roots. It consists of saltfish, tomatoes, scotch bonnet peppers, and onions.
