“Eating Trini“, not “Eating
Trinis“. No ‘s‘ there! I’m not advocating cannibalism; I’m not that nuts (yet).
No, this post is about all the delicious local Trinidadian food you will find
when you are on the island. It surrounds you, it can be obtained almost
everywhere and at almost any time, as far as my experience goes. And, really,
it’s very good.
It is also very intense. In
terms of flavour and calorie content. Therefore, other very appropriate names
for this post might have been „Weight Watcher’s Hell“, „How to gain 20 kilos in
under a month“, or „No, I’m not hungry, but, yes, I will eat“.
I’m extremely lucky that I
have, over time, developed a lot of willpower when it comes to eating – or
not-eating, really. Otherwise I probably would have gained a lot of weight and
I would have overeaten every single time an opportunity presented itself.
What I want to tell you
about are some of the most typical Trinidadian foods, the ones you will find on
many, many street corners, in every city, town and village. The ones everybody
loves. Or should love, according to me and many of my friends. I will not
mention every single dish there is, because I haven’t eaten every single dish
there is and I think I might get you obese and diabetic by just making you read
about the bulk of it. So, I’m limiting this to my favourites combined with the
essentials.
Also, this is food only. No
drinks. You’ll have to wait a while for the rum and the juices and the rum and
the coffee and the rum and the soft drinks and the rum.
Another disclaimer: I am
not including fast food in this, unless you count the street food as fast food,
which I don’t. I’ve mentioned before that KFC and Subway are hugely popular in
Trinidad – the KFC in Independence Square, Port of Spain, is said to be among
the busiest in the whole world. Other fried chicken chains include Royal Castle
Chicken, Church’s Chicken, Jap’s and Chirpee’s and on top of that there are
hundreds of small non-chain fried chicken places. Yes, fried chicken is super
important. And then there’s Mario’s and Boomer’s and Burger King and there are
even two McDonalds, so no matter where you’re from you’ll find something that
you recognize. Even chains like Wendy’s, Pollo Tropical, TGIF, Pizza Hut and
Ruby Tuesday’s have made their way to Port of Spain. BUT that is not special to
the island. It is the case all over the Caribbean and this here is about
Trinidad only, so I want to concentrate on the food that is local not
international, traditional not completely new and – most importantly – good not
low-quality.
Let’s get to it.
Definitely high in Calories,I think Trinis are in denial about that though.. Don't even talk about portion size control.. That doesn't exist
ReplyDeleteLOL - that's why people like you and me are going to be the ones to bring the big change to the world (island), because we care about the healthy and we're going to teach EEEEEVERYONE! Or maybe not, but well, we can try at least.
Deletesunday lunch is the super calorie one! one or two types of meat with gravy, rice, macaroni pie, potato and or macaroni salad and boiled provisions. dont forget the super sugary juice
ReplyDeleteyou're off to a good start with the outline... now i'm going to sample your bake and shark ;)
Sunday lunch, that would fit best with the 'Creole Food' blog entry, that's coming up in the next days!
Deletemhmmmmm looking forward :)
Delete