We finally arrived in Trinidad a few weeks ago, and we like it a lot! More on that later…by the time this huge post gets put up we will have been gone for a few weeks already.
When Kathy’s brother Alan joined us in Trinidad with his son we took some time to be tourists, and one of the more special days we spent was with Jesse James from Members Only Maxi Taxi service doing his internationally renowned “Taste of Trinidad Tour”. It is a lot of fun, though a lot of driving you see much of the island. Jesse is a great tour guide, clearly he loves his country and is proud of his heritage here – and he knows all the places to go!
The format was pretty simple. We’d drive a bit, Jesse would get out and get some sort of local food and bring it back to the van and we’d all share it out. Our kids were troopers and tried most everything. It is a bit of a marathon, starting at 9:00 in the morning with breakfast and finishing at 7:00 at night with dessert, catching all the major meals. It is combined with a drive across the island, stops along the way, lunch on the beach, and a LOT of new tastes.
Something we learned about Trinidad when we got here, is that the ethnic makeup of this island is a bit different than most of the Northern islands. Much of the Caribbean is peopled with descendants of slaves that were imported from Africa, and also with descendents of colonists and planters. But slave descended folk make up most of the majority populations on the independent islands and are what is considered to be “West Indians” – from the West Indies.
But Trinidad is different. After the end of slavery large numbers of “East” Indians, as in from the
country of India, were brought to Trinidad to pick up much of the work done by the former slaves. Many came as indentured servants and got land when their servitude was done. A large percentage of the Trinidad population is therefore “East Indian”, and it is reflected in much of the culture. The foods have a strong Indian influence, and the religious impact of a large Hindu population (and smaller Muslim group) are added to the otherwise Christian influenced island.
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| Oh no you didn’t! |
But the important part of that ethnic breakdown is that it deeply influences the foods you can find on this lovely island.
So here is the master list, with my tasting notes and commentary where appropriate, or where I remember it. If I don’t say anything, we probably liked it but can’t remember anything particularly amusing to say about it. With this many things to try some items became a bit of a blur!
1. Roast bake – a baked bread, tasty.
2. Salted fish – spicy and salty, the adults liked it served on the Bake. Will thought it might have been the most revolting thing he’s ever put in his mouth.
3. Smoked herring – also on the bake. Still in trauma from the Salted Fish, Will took a pass on this.
4. Potato pie – absolutely delicious, with a nice peppery spiciness and a warm friend crust.
5. Beef pie – Similar to the potato pie, but with a beef filling. Surprisingly not as spicy as the potato.
6. Fry bake – this is a fried version of the dough used in the roast bake.
7. Bygam (egg plant) choka – blended roast eggplant and garlic, very tasty. A choka is a blend of roasted vegetables mashed up together, a strong East Indian influence.
8. Fried plantain – Caribbean standard, quite good.
9. Bodi beans – really long beans akin to green beans or pole beans.
10. Pak choi
11. Tomato choka – similar concept to the Bygam, but tomato as the base instead of eggplant.
12. Curried pumpkin – good, but no a favorite of the kids.
13. White sada roti- a roti is conceptually similar to a burrito, there is an outer skin wrapping an inner food, usually a curry based meat dish. Both of these rotis were good.
14. Black sada roti
15. Cow Heel Soup – the soup stock, vegetables, and the sticky little dumplings were absolutely delicious. The actual cow heel…was a squishy little blob of collagen that left a nasty bitter after taste. Recommended for hangovers.
16. Spinach – chopped and stewed; adults liked it and children did not.
17. Carilie – This is a small odd looking vegetable that was very tasty, for about four seconds. Then it unloaded one of the nastiest bitter after tastes I’ve ever experienced.
18. Green fig – a “fig” in much the Caribbean
19. Okra
20. Coconut bake- surprisingly you could barely taste the coconut.
21. Scrambled egg Trini style – I’m a big fan of spicy things in eggs.
22. Chicken gizzards – surprisingly good. 50% of our children were brave enough for these.
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| We’re all over it next time! |
23. Barbeque pig tail – Considered by some to be one of the best things we tried. Really, a bit boney but not dissimilar in taste to ribs.
24. Macaroni pie – like baked Mac & Cheese
25. Coconut roll
26. Macaroni strudel- macaroni in a crust.
27. Fried beef pie – nice spicing; these pies seem a staple in a lot of the foot stands.
28. Spinach rice – grownups liked it, kids maintained their disdain for cooked spinache
29. Chinese noodles
30. Fried salmon
31. Stewed chicken – lots of things are “stewed” in the island; cooked in with a gravy/sauce with vegetables
32. Pomme ceylete- if I recall correctly this was an odd pickled fruit.
33. Dhal- Indian style blended vegetables, tasty.
34. Callaloo soup- very widespread throughout the Caribbean.
35. Curried duck – local specialty; I thought ours was kid of fatty and bony. Not a favorite.
36. Cassava
37. Sorrel drink – Sorrel flavored drinks became a popular choice for the kids the rest of our time in Trinidad.
38. Brazil nuts- this came in what Jesse called a UFO Nut, a huge brown thing that was vaguely acorn shaped. Inside this were some other nuts in their own case which were the Brazil nuts. Who knew? Our kids spent some time picking out all the nuts and saving them.
39. Silk fig – banana
40. Sugar apple – Caribbean fruit, a lumpy green thing that is quite tasty.
41. Doubles – Trinidad national food, it there is one. Messy, spicy sort of sandwich of a chick pea based filling inside two flat breads. Pepper sauce level optional. Very good.
42. Sahina- roasted eggplant with spices, also pepper sauce level optional.
43. Chacourie
44. Stewed beef
45. Curried chicken – all the the curries and stews we tried for lunch (44-49) where quite tasty.
46. Curried chickpeas
47. Curried potatoes
48. Curried mango
49. Curried goat
50. Dahl pourie
51. Parata roti- served as a flat bread to eat with various curries.
52. Peanut punch – quite good creamy peanut flavored drink.
53. Soursop milk – made from the Soursop fruit, one of the Caribbean fruits we failed at.
54. Mauby drink – made from the bark of a tree, has a nice flavor with a sharp aftertaste some disliked.
55. Bust up roti- Roti skin and fillings seperate from each other.
56. Pineapple chow- Jessie makes this himself, it’s pineapple soaked in a blend of spices and pepper. However, he made a small mistake with this one. He knew a few of us like things hot, so he thought to leave the seeds in the pepper to remove later. He forgot to remove the seeds, making this pineapple the absolutely spiciest thing we tried all day. But it was also shocking as it was pineapple, which is supposed to be sweet, not head-melting hot. We thought we were going to lose poor Alan, he turned almost purple and couldn’t breath…he declined a second piece.
57. Water melon – from a road side vendor, just off the vine
58. Philourie
59. Mango sauce
The next few items were part of “Tea Time/Snack Time”, some were snacks from a road side vendor who made them in her home, others from a bakery.
60. Paw paw balls – good, made from Papaya
61. Pickled plums – look like olives but taste sweeter
62. Tamarind
63. Chalta
64. Red mango – mango soaked in a red dyed sugar sauce
65. Sugar cake
66. Ballerina cake – like crusty pastry cake with coconut
67. Rock cake – small dense cake, quite tasty
68. Bread pudding
69. Sweet bread – more like a fruit cake, has nothing to do with calf parts
70. Kurma
71. Barfi- better than it sounds
72. Trillium
73. Cerries
74. Green plums- fresh plums, which are sized more like grapes and green that you eat whole
75. Guava- Fresh fruit
76. Cocoa beans- from a cocoa bean pod, you suck on them and discard the bean
77. Portugal- a type of fruit
78. Star fruit
79. Passion fruit
80. Green fig salad- again, fig = small banana
Dinner from a great BBQ place outside Spanish Harbor
81. Spanish rice
82. Barbeque pork
83. Barbeque lamb
84. Jerk pork
85. Pastille – a Pastille is conceptually similar to a pie, except the shell is very light and delicate and the fillings are a but smaller, quite tasty.
86. Passion fruit juice
87. Grapefruit juice
88. Portugal juice
89. Homemade ice cream – from a stand off the road, flavors were Peanut, Coconut and Caramel. All good…
For this post I do wish we’d made more detailed tasting notes and of course that I did it more quickly. But this list was such a daunting task it took me a lot of attempts to get through it all and I still couldn’t remember everything. But there were very few things I didn’t like, though others reactions varied.
If you do get to Trinidad, I can not recommend highly enough that you spend a day with Jesse doing this tour!
