What to Eat in Barbados: A Local's Bajan Food Guide
The best Bajan food is mostly home cooking and street food: cou-cou and flying fish, fish cakes, cutters on salt bread, fried fish, rotisserie chicken, rum punch and roasted breadfruit. This is where we, the team at Yelluh Meat in Black Rock, actually send people, including plenty of places that aren't us.
From the Home of the Original Breadfruit Bowl | Black Rock, St Michael
WHERE WE SEND PEOPLE
We're home of the Original Breadfruit Bowl and breadfruit tacos, so breadfruit is our part of the list. For the rest, here's who we trust.
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Cou-cou and flying fish
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The national dish: cornmeal and okra cooked smooth, with flying fish in a tomato-and-onion sauce.
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Oistins fish fry
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For fried fish, go to Oistins on a Friday night. You'll find grilled fish there too, and plenty more besides.
Where: Oistins, Christ Church.
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Fish cakes and a "bread and two"
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Salt bread with two fish cakes inside, the classic Bajan breakfast.
Where: Hot Legendary Fishcakes, Eagle Hall.
Our own take: Saltfish Yam Poppers, close to a fish cake but made with yam instead of flour. You'll find them on our catering menu.
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Cutters
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A Bajan sandwich on salt bread. Liver cutters are a favourite.
Where: Pink Star, Baxter's Road.
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Grilled fish and chips
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Where: Gloria's, Baxter's Road.
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Rotisserie chicken
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Where: R.A. Mapp Rotisserie Chicken, Eagle Hall.
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Rum punch
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Where: Garry's Rum Punch, near the polyclinic in Black Rock.
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Roasted breadfruit: the Original Breadfruit Bowl
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Breadfruit grows all over the island, and Bajans have roasted it whole in the fire for generations. Households stuffed it with whatever they had: saltfish, tuna, salt meat. We took that tradition and created the Original Breadfruit Bowl in 2015: half a breadfruit roasted over real wood fire, served in its charred shell and topped with Bajan classics like Buljol, De' OG Saltfish Gravy and pickled pigtail. The full story of those traditions is on our Breadfruit Bowl Story page.
Where: Yelluh Meat, Black Rock Main Road, St Michael. Tuesday to Saturday, 10am to 5pm.
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Breadfruit tacos
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Our tacos are made from real breadfruit, not flour tortillas or packaged shells, filled with Bajan proteins like our Beef & Bacon. We also make ground provision nachos from scratch, with breadfruit, plantain and carrot-sweet-potato chips.
Where: Yelluh Meat, on the menu every day we're open.
More from us: the Black Rock Guide and the Breadfruit Bowl Story.