Barbados

🇰🇳Saint Kitts and Nevis

Anguillian Conkie Dumplings

Conkies

Cornmeal, grated pumpkin, coconut and sweet potato spiced with cinnamon and nutmeg, wrapped in banana leaf and steamed into a soft parcel.

🇦🇬Antigua and Barbuda

Antiguan Sugar Cake

Sugar Cake

Chewy confection of grated coconut cooked down with sugar, often tinted pink and flavoured with ginger or nutmeg; a classic Antiguan sweet treat; the mixture is often divided into two batches, one coloured pink and the other left white, poured one over the other to form a pink and white cake; found at markets and schoolyards; the sugar cake of Antigua.

🇦🇬Antigua and Barbuda

Antiguan Tamarind Balls

Tamarind Balls

Sticky sweet-and-sour balls of tamarind pulp rolled with sugar, sometimes with a pinch of hot pepper; a bite-sized Antiguan snack with a tangy kick; coated in granulated sugar; chewy, peppery, sweet, and sour; found at markets and schoolyards; the tamarind balls of Antigua.

🇧🇧Barbados

Bajan Fish Cakes

Fish cakes

Salt cod flaked into a seasoned batter with herbs and hot pepper, dropped by the spoonful into hot oil and sold hot by the bag.

🇧🇧Barbados

Bajan Macaroni Pie

Macaroni pie

Macaroni baked with cheddar, mustard, onion and a whisked egg custard until it sets firm enough to be cut in squares and served as a side.

🇧🇧Barbados

Bajan Pepper Sauce

Scotch bonnets blended with mustard, turmeric, onion and vinegar into a thick yellow sauce that sits on every table on the island.

🇧🇧Barbados

Bajan Pepperpot

Pepperpot

A deeply savory Barbadian stew of meat (often pork, beef, or offal) cooked down with cassareep, a concentrated cassava syrup, plus hot peppers and spices.

🇧🇧Barbados

Bajan Pudding

Pudding

Grated sweet potato seasoned with sugar, hot pepper and herbs, packed into a cleaned pig's intestine and steamed until it sets dark and dense.

🇧🇧Barbados

Bajan Salt Bread

Salt bread

A soft, slightly sweet white roll with a floury top and a seam down the middle, baked in every Bajan bakery and the basis of every cutter.

🇧🇧Barbados

Bajan Seasoning

A wet green paste of marjoram, thyme, parsley, spring onion, garlic and hot pepper, rubbed into every piece of meat and fish before cooking.

🇧🇧Barbados

Bajan Souse

Souse

Boiled pork cuts cooled and steeped in a pickle of lime juice, cucumber, onion, parsley and scotch bonnet, served cold and dripping.

🇧🇧Barbados

Bajan Sweet Bread

Sweet bread

A dense coconut loaf with cherries and raisins, brushed with sugar water so the top glazes, sold by the slab in bakeries.

🇧🇧Barbados

Bakes

Rounds of sweet or plain dough fried until golden and puffed, eaten at breakfast with fish cakes or cheese.

🇧🇧Bridgetown, Barbados

Banks Beer

Banks

The island's lager, brewed in Bridgetown since 1961 and the default bottle at every rum shop, beach bar and cricket ground.

🇧🇧Barbados

Black Cake

A dark, rum-soaked fruitcake of dried fruit, brown sugar and spices, the traditional Christmas cake of Guyana and the Caribbean.

🇧🇧Barbados

Breadfruit Cou-Cou

Boiled breadfruit pounded with butter and salt meat into a smooth mound, served like cornmeal cou-cou with steamed fish.

🇧🇧Barbados

Brown Stew Chicken

Chicken browned in caramelised sugar, then simmered with onion, carrot, pepper and thyme into a dark, glossy gravy.

🇧🇧Barbados

Candied Sweet Potatoes

Sweet potato slices baked in brown sugar, butter and spice until the syrup thickens and clings.

🇹🇹Trinidad and Tobago

Cassava Pone

Grated cassava, coconut and pumpkin baked with sugar, spice and evaporated milk into a dense, chewy slab.

🇧🇧Barbados

Coconut Turnover

Turnover

Sweetened grated coconut folded into a pastry half-moon and baked with a sugar wash, the standby of every bakery counter.

🇧🇧Barbados

Corn 'n' Oil

Dark Barbadian rum poured over ice with falernum and a squeeze of lime, so the rum sits in oily bands over the liqueur.

🇧🇧Barbados

Cou-Cou

Cornmeal cooked with sliced okra and okra water, beaten hard with a wooden cou-cou stick until glossy and smooth, then shaped in a buttered bowl.

🇧🇧Barbados

Cou-Cou and Flying Fish

The national plate: a smooth mound of cornmeal-and-okra cou-cou turned out of its bowl, with flying fish steamed in a tomato, onion and thyme gravy poured around it.

🇧🇧Barbados

Falernum

A Barbadian sweet liqueur of lime, almond, clove and ginger in cane spirit, invented on the island and now a cocktail-bar staple worldwide.

🇧🇧Bridgetown, Barbados

Flying Fish Cutter

A fried, boned flying fish fillet stuffed into a Bajan salt bread with pepper sauce and sometimes cheese — the island's sandwich.

🇧🇧Barbados

Foursquare Rum

Foursquare

Pot-and-column blended rum from a family distillery at St Philip, bottled without added sugar and released in dated Exceptional Cask marks.

🇧🇧Barbados

Frizzled Saltfish

Salted cod shredded and crisped in hot oil with onions, peppers, and thyme, a Barbados breakfast classic often served with bakes.

🇧🇧Barbados

Great Cake

A tall, heavily fruited and rum-soaked cake baked in tiers for weddings and Christmas, kept fed with rum for weeks before it is cut.

🇧🇧Barbados

Grenadian Guava Cheese

Guava Cheese

Traditional Grenadian sweet of guava pulp cooked with sugar until thick and firm; cut into squares; a chewy, fruity confection; of Indo-Caribbean origin; found at Church Harvest festivals and markets; the guava cheese of the Spice Isle; a nostalgic treat; a food souvenir.

🇧🇧Barbados

Ham Cutter

Thick-cut ham in a salt bread with pepper sauce and mustard, the rum-shop counterpart to the fish cutter.

🇧🇧Barbados

Jug-Jug

Guinea corn and pigeon peas cooked down with salt meat and herbs into a thick green-brown mash, made only at Christmas and traced to Scottish settlers' haggis.

🇧🇧Barbados

Lead Pipes

Cylinders of boiled coconut sugar candy, dark and hard, named for exactly what they look like.

🇯🇲Jamaica

Mauby

Antiguan Mauby

A Dominican drink of mauby bark, water, sugar, and spices, fermented slightly and served cold. A bitter-sweet, earthy, refreshing Caribbean beverage.

🇧🇧Barbados

Mount Gay Rum

Mount Gay

Rum distilled at St Michael from a distillery with records back to 1703, making it the oldest continuously running rum brand in the world.

🇧🇧Barbados

Pudding and Souse

Saturday-only plate of pickled pork — head, trotter and belly — dressed with lime, cucumber and hot pepper, served beside slices of steamed sweet potato pudding.

🇧🇧Barbados

Rice and Peas

Rice cooked in coconut milk with kidney beans or gungo peas, thyme, escallion and a whole scotch bonnet, served with every Sunday dinner.