country Essentials · 12 foods
Haiti Essentials
A considered first route through Haiti: the foods that carry its everyday habits, celebrations, ingredients, and memory.
Explore all Haiti foods →THE
ESSENTIALS
The complete shortlist
12 foods to know.
Each selection includes the reason it belongs here—so this is a guide, not just a pile of names.
Haiti
Soup Joumou
Squash soup eaten every 1 January, from the squash that enslaved Haitians were forbidden to taste.
Haiti
Griot
Griyo
Sour-orange pork braised then fried hard, and never served without a spoonful of pikliz.
Haiti
Pikliz
Cabbage and scotch bonnet sharpening in vinegar for days; the jar on the table gets refilled, not replaced.
Northern Haiti, Haiti
Diri ak Djon Djon
Rice turned black by the liquor of mushrooms that grow in only a few parts of the north.
Haiti
Legim
Vegetables cooked down for hours until nothing is recognisable — which is exactly the point.
Haiti
Tassot
Taso
Goat dried in the sun and then deep-fried, chewy on purpose.
Haiti
Epis
The green herb base in a jar in every Haitian fridge, spooned into everything before it cooks.
Haiti
Makawoni au Graten
Baked hard enough with milk and cheese to be cut in squares, and argued about at every family table.
Haiti
Bouyon Haïtien
Bouyon
The Saturday pot: beef, dumplings and roots in a broth that cooks all morning.
Haiti
Pen Patat
Sweet potato, banana and coconut milk baked into a dark sticky pudding, sold in slabs.
Petit-Goâve, Haiti
Dous Makòs
Striped condensed-milk fudge from Petit-Goâve, held up to bus windows on the road south.
Port-au-Prince, Haiti
Rhum Barbancourt
Distilled from fresh cane juice, not molasses, at Damien since 1862 — grassier than any Cuban rum.