Guyana
Aloo Pie
A fried dough pocket filled with spiced mashed potatoes, a popular Indo-Caribbean street snack in Guyana. Split open and topped with chickpea curry, chutney and pepper sauce.
south-america
Guyana
Explore 56 foods connected to Guyana, from everyday staples to rare local specialties.
56 foods12 leading categories1 Essentials guides
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The local shortlist
Guyana Essentials
12 editor-selected foods for understanding the place through what people eat.
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Traditional foods from Guyana.
56 foods in this view. Filter by category, type, rarity, or search every recorded name.
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Guyana
Aloo Roti
Guyanese aloo roti is a tawa-cooked flatbread filled with seasoned mashed potato, then folded and softened for eating with curry.
Guyana
Bake and Saltfish
A fried flour cake split open and filled with salt cod sautéed with onion, tomato and pepper.
Georgetown, Guyana
Banks Beer
Banks
A pale lager brewed in Georgetown by Banks DIH, the default beer in Guyanese rum shops.
Barbados
Black Cake
A dark, rum-soaked fruitcake of dried fruit, brown sugar and spices, the traditional Christmas cake of Guyana and the Caribbean.
Guyana
Buss Up Shut
Paratha roti cooked in layers on a tawa then beaten with wooden sticks until it collapses into torn, soft shreds.
Guyana
Cassareep
Juice pressed from bitter cassava and boiled down with spice into a black, bitter-sweet syrup that both flavours and preserves.
Guyana
Cassava Ball
Cassava balls are grated cassava shaped around a savory filling and fried until the outside is crisp and the interior stays soft.
Guyana
Cassava Bread
Bitter cassava grated, pressed dry in a woven matapee and baked on a griddle into a large, flat, hard disc.
Guyana
Cook-Up Rice
Rice cooked down in coconut milk with black-eye or pigeon peas and whatever meat is in the house — salt beef, chicken, pig tail — into one pot.
Amazonas, French Guiana
Couac
Roasted cassava semolina/grits; grated cassava pressed to remove toxic cyanide juice, dried, crumbled, sieved, and roasted on a steel plate; yellow to gray to white; eaten like bread at every meal; an Amerindian legacy; long shelf life.
Guyana
Crab and Okra Soup
Crab soup
Blue crabs simmered whole with okra, coconut milk and hot pepper into a thick soup eaten with the shells still in it.
Guyana
Dhalpuri Roti
Dhalpuri
Flatbread stuffed with a dry, seasoned ground split-pea filling before rolling, so the pea layer is sealed inside.
Guyana
Doubles
Two soft fried turmeric-yellow flatbreads holding a scoop of curried chickpeas, dressed with tamarind, cucumber and pepper sauce.
Guyana
Duck Curry
Duck cut small on the bone and curried hard with green seasoning, wiri wiri pepper and a long, dark stew until the meat falls off.
Guyana
Egg Ball
A boiled egg wrapped in seasoned grated cassava, rolled into a ball and deep fried, eaten with sour.
Guyana
El Dorado Rum
El Dorado
Demerara rum distilled at Diamond on the East Bank, including stills — a wooden Coffey and a double wooden pot — that exist nowhere else.
Guyana
Fish Cakes
Elongated salt-fish croquettes mixed with mashed potato and herbs, rolled and fried until golden. Served in Guyana with bakes or pepper sauce.
Guyana
Fly
Rice or cassava lightly fermented with sugar and ginger into a cloudy, faintly alcoholic drink made at home over a few days.
Guyana
Guyanese Cheese Roll
Cheese roll
Sharp cheddar folded into a flaky pastry rectangle and baked until the cheese leaks and crisps at the seam.
Guyana
Guyanese Chicken Curry
Curry chicken
Chicken browned in a hot pan of curry powder and masala 'chunkayed' in oil, then stewed down until the gravy clings.
Guyana
Guyanese Chow Mein
Chow mein
Guyanese chow mein stir-fries wheat noodles with cabbage, carrot, scallion and seasoned chicken or shrimp in a dark savory sauce.
Guyana
Guyanese Fried Rice
Fried rice
Guyanese fried rice is wok-tossed rice with egg, scallion, vegetables and seasoned chicken, shrimp or pork.
Guyana
Guyanese Garlic Pork
Garlic pork
Pork steeped for days in vinegar with crushed garlic, thyme and hot pepper, then fried in its own marinade.
Guyana
Guyanese Ginger Beer
Ginger beer
Guyanese ginger beer is a non-alcoholic infusion of fresh ginger, citrus and spices, sweetened and chilled.
Guyana
Guyanese Green Seasoning
Green seasoning
Fine-leaf thyme, eschallot, culantro, garlic and wiri wiri blitzed into a green paste that every pot of meat is marinated in.
Guyana
Guyanese Pepper Sauce
Pepper sauce
Wiri wiri and scotch bonnet peppers ground with vinegar, garlic and mustard into a fierce condiment kept on every table.
Guyana
Guyanese Pepperpot
Pepperpot
Beef, pork or mutton stewed for hours in cassareep with cinnamon, clove and hot pepper until the meat blackens and the liquid turns to syrup.
Guyana
Guyanese Souse
Souse
Pig's foot and ear boiled, sliced and pickled cold in lime, onion, cucumber and wiri wiri pepper.
Guyana
Guyanese Sugar Cake
Sugar cake
Grated coconut boiled with sugar and ginger until it stiffens, then dropped in spoonfuls to set hard, often tinted pink.
Jamaica
Jamaican Ginger Beer
Ginger beer
Fresh ginger grated and steeped with lime and sugar until it turns fiercely hot, then strained and chilled.
Guyana
Kitchrie
Rice and split peas boiled together into a soft one-pot with turmeric, garlic and a spoon of ghee stirred in at the end.
Guyana
Labba
Labba is paca, a forest rodent, stewed with cassareep, pepper and aromatics; it is an occasional interior food rather than an unrestricted wild catch.
Guyana
Lime Wash
Swank
Lime juice, brown sugar and water stirred in a jug and drunk cold — the field-worker's drink of the coast.
Guyana
Mango Sour
Mango sour is green mango cooked or steeped with vinegar, garlic, pepper and spices into a tart Guyanese condiment.
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.