Bajan food & culture

The island

Barbados is a small island, about twenty-one miles long and fourteen across, sitting further east into the Atlantic than any of its neighbours. You could drive from one end to the other in an hour, though most people take a good deal longer than that, because you always run into somebody you know.

It isn't a volcanic island like most of the Caribbean. Barbados is coral limestone that was pushed up out of the sea over millions of years, and that's why the land rolls away in long gentle terraces rather than climbing into mountains, why the sand is so pale, and why the water sitting over all that limestone turns the colour it does.

The west coast is the calm side, facing the Caribbean Sea, where the water is warm and flat enough to swim at any hour of the day. The east coast is another island altogether. It takes the full weight of the Atlantic, so the wind comes hard and the surf is rough, and the cliffs and empty beaches there are some of the most beautiful in the region. Most visitors never make it across.

Around 280,000 people live in Barbados. Bridgetown is the capital, the buses are loud and painted every colour you can think of, cricket is taken very seriously indeed, and the middle of the day belongs to the heat. The fishing boats come in each morning and what they land is eaten the same day. On a Friday evening half the island seems to end up at Oistins, sitting at long tables by the water eating fried fish and talking until late.

The British arrived in 1627 and stayed for more than three hundred years. Barbados became independent on the thirtieth of November 1966, and a republic on that same date in 2021. All those centuries left their mark on the way we speak, on the schools, and most of all on the way we cook.

Where the name Barbados comes from

Portuguese sailors came upon the island in the early sixteenth century and called it Os Barbados, meaning "the bearded ones". The name almost certainly comes from the bearded fig tree, Ficus citrifolia, which grows all over the island and sends long aerial roots hanging down from its branches like beards. Stand underneath one and the name explains itself.

You'll hear another story, that the beards belonged to men rather than trees, but the fig tree is the version Barbadians grow up with, and the tree remains a national symbol to this day.

Bajan, not Barbadian

Bajan, said BAY-jun, is what we call ourselves, the way we speak, and the food we eat. It's the word "Barbadian" worn smooth by a few hundred years of being said out loud every day, and it's what you'll hear at home. Nobody in Barbados says Barbadian.

Bajan is a language of its own as well. English is what's official and what gets written down, but Bajan Creole is what's actually spoken in the kitchen and in the market: English words carried along on West African grammar. The food came out of exactly the same history, which is why the two go together so naturally.

And of course, there's the food!

Barbados was a sugar colony, and almost everything about the way we cook traces back to that. Three traditions came together over those centuries, one on top of the other.

• West African, brought by enslaved people, and the foundation underneath all of it. Cornmeal cooked until it's stiff, okra used to thicken, everything in one pot over the fire, tougher cuts cooked long and slow, and the habit of seasoning meat well before it ever meets the heat.
• British, which is where we get pastry, and pickling pork so it can be eaten cold, and macaroni cheese turning up as a side dish on a plate rather than a supper on its own.
• Everyone who arrived afterwards, from India, from China, and from the other islands. It's why you'll find chow mein on a Bajan menu and no Bajan will think it the least bit strange.

What ties all of it together is Bajan seasoning: parsley, thyme, marjoram, scallion, onion, garlic and hot pepper, blended wet and worked right into the meat hours before it goes anywhere near a flame. People sometimes confuse it with jerk, but jerk is Jamaican and it's a different thing entirely, all smoke and fire, where ours is green and herby and gets under everything. Mark makes ours the way his family has always made it, and that seasoning is the reason our food tastes the way it does.

The dishes that define it

Cou-cou and flying fish

This is the national dish. Cou-cou is cornmeal and okra, cooked down slowly and turned with a wooden stick until it comes together smooth and firm enough to hold its shape on the plate. It descends directly from West African fufu, and it's a close cousin of Italian polenta. It's served with flying fish, steamed in a gravy of tomato and onion. Barbados is known as the land of the flying fish, and you'll find it on our coins as well as on our logo.

Pudding and souse

Saturday food, and one of the dishes Bajans abroad miss most.Souse is pork, often the cuts other kitchens would throw away, pickled in lime, cucumber, onion and hot pepper and served cold.Pudding is grated sweet potato, seasoned heavily and steamed until it's dense and sweet. The two go on the plate together, cold and sharp alongside soft and rich, and if you mention it to a Bajan you'll see their face change.

Macaroni pie

This isn't macaroni cheese as you might know it. It's baked firm enough to be cut into neat squares that hold their edges, and it's seasoned with mustard and pepper so it has some backbone to it. It goes on the plate beside rice and peas, which does mean two starches together, and that's exactly how it's meant to be.

Fish cakes and cutters

Salt cod fritters, fried fresh when you order them and best eaten standing up while they're still almost too hot to hold. Put a couple of them inside a salt bread roll with some pepper sauce and you have a cutter, which is the Bajan sandwich and the reason salt bread sits on every bakery shelf on the island.

Conkies

Cornmeal, coconut, pumpkin, sweet potato and spice, all wrapped up in a banana leaf and steamed. They belong to Independence in November, so they come around once a year and are all the more welcome for it.

What people drink

Mauby is brewed from the bark of a tree, and there's a real bitterness sitting behind the sweetness of it. It's a taste you have to grow into, and Bajans grow into it as children, which is why so many of us drink it and so few visitors finish the glass. Sorrel is the other one: a deep red drink made from dried hibiscus with ginger and clove, and the smell of it means Christmas is on the way.

And then there's rum. Barbados has a genuine claim to having invented it, and Mount Gay has been distilling on the island since the early seventeen hundreds.

Crop Over

Crop Over began as the celebration at the end of the sugar cane harvest, when the work was finally done. It faded away for a time and was brought back in the nineteen seventies, and these days it runs right through the summer and finishes with Grand Kadooment, when the costumes come out, the calypso plays and the whole island takes to the road. If you've ever seen photographs of Barbados in feathers and sequins, that's what you were looking at.

Where to start

If this is your first time eating Bajan food, order a plate with BBQ chicken, rice and peas and macaroni pie, and put fish cakes on the side. That's how we'd introduce anyone to it. Come back for pudding and souse once you know you like us.

If a word on the menu is unfamiliar, the glossary will have it, and the FAQ covers everything else.

Island photographs by Tom Jur and Desmond Lingard via Unsplash.