country Essentials · 11 foods
Trinidad and Tobago Essentials
A considered first route through Trinidad and Tobago: the foods that carry its everyday habits, celebrations, ingredients, and memory.
Explore all Trinidad and Tobago foods →THE
ESSENTIALS
The complete shortlist
11 foods to know.
Each selection includes the reason it belongs here—so this is a guide, not just a pile of names.
Guyana
Doubles
Two limp turmeric flatbreads round curried channa, ordered by how much pepper you can take.
Trinidad and Tobago
Bake and Shark
Fried shark in a fried bread at Maracas Bay, dressed by you at a table of ten sauces.
Trinidad and Tobago
Pelau
Rice browned in sugar burnt almost to bitterness, with pigeon peas, coconut and chicken.
Trinidad and Tobago
Trinidadian Callaloo
Callaloo
Dasheen leaves swizzled smooth with okra, coconut and a whole crab dropped in the pot.
Trinidad and Tobago
Curry Duck
Duck seasoned overnight and curried dry over an outdoor fire until the sauce clings to the bone.
Guyana
Buss Up Shut
Paratha beaten with sticks until it shreds, then torn by hand to scoop up curry.
Trinidad and Tobago
Curried Crab and Dumplings
Tobago's blue crab in coconut curry with dumplings, eaten with hands and a mallet.
Antigua and Barbuda
Green Seasoning
The blended shadon beni and chive marinade every household keeps and every meat sits in overnight.
Trinidad and Tobago
Trinidad Pepper Sauce
Pepper sauce
Scotch bonnet and mustard blended into the sauce that sits on every counter in the country.
Port of Spain, Trinidad and Tobago
Angostura Bitters
Aromatic bitters made in Port of Spain since 1875, with a label that has never fitted the bottle.
Jamaica
Mauby
Antiguan Mauby
Tree bark boiled with spice into a bitter-sweet drink people either love or flatly refuse.