What to Eat in Barbados

Bajan food is herb-forward, generous and almost entirely unbothered about impressing you. It's also distinct from the rest of the Caribbean in ways worth knowing before you order — this is not jerk country, and the things people assume are Bajan often aren't.

Here's what to eat, and when.

The national dish: cou-cou and flying fish

Cou-cou is fine cornmeal cooked down with okra into something between polenta and grits — smooth, slightly slippery from the okra, worked with a flat wooden paddle called a cou-cou stick. The flying fish arrives either steamed in a tomato and onion creole gravy, which is the classic pairing, or fried.

It's comfort food, and it's the plate that tells you where you are.

Saturday is Souse Day

This one is not negotiable and it is genuinely island-wide, across every social class. Pudding and souse is sold on Saturdays from vans, roadside stalls and small eateries, and it disappears by mid-afternoon.

Souse is pork — traditionally trotters, ears and snout, which Bajans call "extensions" — boiled tender and steeped in a sharp pickle of lime juice, cucumber, onion and scotch bonnet. Pudding is steamed spiced sweet potato, seasoned with thyme and marjoram, traditionally packed into casing, though plain steamed versions are common now.

It is nose-to-tail eating with African and British roots, it is cold, sharp and rich all at once, and it is the most Bajan thing you can eat. If you're squeamish about the pork cuts, order it anyway. Once.

The everyday things

Macaroni pie. Baked, not stovetop. Macaroni tubes, evaporated milk, several cheeses, a little mustard and hot sauce, baked until there's a crisp golden top. It's firmer than American mac and cheese and it's cut in wedges. Classic Sunday lunch side.

Fish cakes. Salt cod, boiled twice to draw out the salt, flaked into seasoned batter and fried by the spoonful. Breakfast food, snack food, any-time food.

Bakes. Fried dough, eaten alongside saltfish or fish cakes in the morning.

A cutter. This is the sandwich you need to understand. Bajan salt bread — crusty outside, pillowy inside, and despite the name not salty at all — split and stuffed. The iconic version is fried flying fish. You'll also find marlin, tuna, ham, cheese and fried egg. Related but different: "bread and two" is fish cakes, usually two, in the same roll.

Sweet bread. Dense, coconut-studded, with raisins and spice. Teatime and Christmas.

Conkies — but only in November. Steamed pudding of cornmeal, pumpkin, coconut, sweet potato and spice, wrapped in a banana leaf. Originally made for Guy Fawkes Day under colonial rule, and repurposed after independence in 1966 — so now they appear around Independence Day on 30 November and are essentially unavailable the other eleven months of the year. The wrapping-and-steaming technique is West African.

What is not Bajan (and everyone thinks is)

Roti is Trinidadian. It's everywhere here — Chefette, the big local fast-food chain, sells it island-wide, and chicken-and-potato is the default order — but it was not invented in Barbados.

Pepperpot is Guyanese, preserved with cassareep, a dark syrup reduced from bitter cassava juice. It arrived with the Guyanese diaspora and shows up at Christmas.

Jerk is Jamaican. Bajan seasoning is a completely different animal: a wet green paste of thyme, marjoram, parsley, green onion, garlic, scotch bonnet and lime, herb-forward rather than allspice-forward. It goes on everything.

Enjoy all of them. Just don't tell a Bajan the roti is their national dish.

Cuz's Fish Shack

A blue shack in the beach car park at Pebbles Beach, on the Bridgetown side, and one of the genuinely great cheap meals in the Caribbean. The order is a fish cutter — fried marlin in salt bread with lettuce, tomato, cheese, mayo and pepper sauce. Cash only, lunchtime queue snaking through the car park, roughly late morning until around sunset.

It is a shack. That's the whole appeal.

Rum shops

There are, by common estimate, more than a thousand rum shops in Barbados — small, brightly painted buildings that function as bar, corner grocery and community centre all at once. They've been part of the island for three centuries.

The etiquette catches visitors out. You generally buy rum by the bottle, not the glass, with ice and a chaser, and you share it. Dominoes is the ritual, and the tiles are slammed down hard on purpose. "Fire one" means have a drink.

Walk in, be friendly, buy a round. Nobody will mind that you're a visitor.

The flying fish, honestly

Barbados is "the land of the flying fish" and the fish is on the one-dollar coin. It is not, contrary to a lot of travel writing, on the coat of arms — that's a dolphin and a pelican.

The harder truth is that landings have fallen sharply — the Chief Fisheries Officer has put the decline at close to half since 2011. Two things are happening at once: sargassum inundation, which correlates with dramatically lower catches, and a southward shift of the shoals into Trinidad and Tobago's waters. Thousands of Barbadians depend on that fishery.

Eat the flying fish. It's excellent, it's the national dish, and it's worth understanding that it's not guaranteed forever.

Roughly what things cost

Barbados fixes its dollar at two BBD to one US dollar, and has since 1975, so conversion is simple.

• A cutter or street lunch: BBD 16–24 (US$8–12)
• A plate at Oistins: BBD 30–60 (US$15–30)
• Mid-range dinner: BBD 40–80 (US$20–40) a head
• High-end beachfront: BBD 80–300+ (US$40–150+)

A 10% service charge is added to most restaurant bills. Extra tipping is appreciated, not expected.

If you eat only five things

1. Cou-cou and flying fish 2. Pudding and souse, on a Saturday 3. A fish cutter from a shack, not a restaurant 4. Macaroni pie with anything 5. Grilled fish at Oistins on a Friday night

Bring cash for all five.