Store

Trinidad and Tobago Foodways

National

⚠ TWO ISLANDS, TWO FOOD HISTORIES, ONE STATE. TRINIDAD sits on the South American continental shelf, was Spanish then briefly French-settled then British, and received the largest INDIAN INDENTURED migration in the Caribbean — roughly 40 per cent of the population is of Indian descent, the highest in the Americas. Its food is the most thoroughly Indo-African fused cuisine anywhere: DOUBLES, ROTI and DHALPURI, CURRY of every kind, PELAU, CALLALOO, BAKE AND SHARK, pholourie, saheena, aloo pie, and a pepper-sauce and chadon beni culture of its own. TOBAGO is a different island — Afro-Caribbean, with almost no Indian-descended population, and a kitchen of crab and dumpling, curried crab, and its own provision cooking. ⚠ TREATING TOBAGO AS SMALL TRINIDAD IS THE ERROR, and this system does not.

Atlas — where and when

Where in the world

Communities and languages

  • Trinidadians community documented
  • Tobagonians community documented

Languages: English, Trinidadian Creole English, Tobagonian Creole English, Caribbean Hindustani

What is recorded

  • Trinidad and Tobago are recorded as two distinct food systems within one state. Trinidad received the largest Indian indentured migration in the Caribbean and approximately 40 per cent of the national population is of Indian descent, the highest proportion in the Americas. Tobago received no significant Indian indenture and its foodways are Afro-Caribbean. The canonical language registry holds Trinidadian and Tobagonian Creole English as separate languoids. documented

Related foodways

This foodway relates to

  • part of Lesser Antilles Foodways documented
  • related to Guyanese Foodways documented

    The two largest Indo-Caribbean populations, the same indenture route and the same decades. Separate national cuisines.

  • related to Venezuelan Cuisine documented

    Eleven kilometres apart. The 1783 Cedula, parang, Venezuelan migration and a shared coast.

Recorded as relating to this foodway

  • related to Cou-Cou and Flying Fish disputed

    ⚠ The flying fish shoals moved south toward Tobago as water warmed, producing a real fisheries dispute between Barbados and Trinidad and Tobago that went to international arbitration in 2006.

Regional cuisines

Recipes

No recipes are filed under this cuisine yet.