Trinidadian

Trinidad & Tobago is the southern Caribbean's most-distinct kitchen — a result of 1845-onwards Indian indenture migration that brought Bhojpuri-speaking laborers from Bihar and Uttar Pradesh, who imported their roti, their curry powder, their channa (chickpea), and their split-pea tradition into the existing Afro-Creole pantry. The result is curry-everything: curry chicken, curry goat, curry crab, curry duck. Roti shops are on every corner of Port-of-Spain; the doubles vendor with his bara-and-curried-chickpeas is the universal breakfast.

But Trinidad isn't only Indo-Caribbean. Maracas Bay's bake-and-shark sandwich is Trinidad's national beach food, sold by ten competing vendors who pile shadow beni, tamarind, mango chutney, and a dozen sauces onto the fried fish-and-bread. Callaloo (here a thick soup of dasheen leaves and crab, not the Jamaican stir-fried version) is the Sunday lunch starter. Cou-Cou and Flying Fish belongs to Barbados — but the doubles, the roti, the pholourie, the bake-and-shark — that's all Trini.