Trini Food - Hot Stuff!

Living in Trinidad for awhile, we've had the opportunity to sample some of the local food. It's a mix of Indian and Creole and African, with a Caribbean flair. They make use of locally grown veggies and fruits mixed with the spices they're use to. They like “HOT”. In fact, one of the world's hottest peppers, the Moruga Scorpion is grown here. Hot sauce is usually available and on the table in every restaurant.

We've talked about roti before, but there are so many different foods here that we've never mentioned. Bake & Shark, for instance. First, you catch a shark, cut the meat into sandwich-size filets and deep fry it. Then you fry up some dough (aka bake) and make a sandwich. Add some lettuce and tomato and maybe some catsup or hot sauce and you've got bake & shark. Maracas Beach, on the north coast, is especially noted for this local favorite, but we saw signs advertising it throughout the island. David tried it and liked it … basically a fried fish sandwich with a bite.

Doubles are offered daily right outside the Power Boats entrance gate. The local workers line up at little makeshift stands and the ladies dish up the doubles for breakfast and lunch. Doubles are a pretty common street food here. It's basically a flatbread sandwich filled with channa (curried chick peas) and some kind of topping like mango, tamarind or cucumbers and maybe some added hot sauce.

Legend has it that those who eat cascadura (aka cascadoo) will end up back in Trinidad. It's a freshwater fish covered with scales and does not look particularly appealing. It's usually served curried and we heard about it, but never got a chance to try it. I guess we're not coming back.

Fruit chows, comprised of local fruit in season like mango and pineapple, are common and sold as a snack food. The fruit is mixed with lime juice, garlic, cilantro, oil and peppers.

There's souse which sounds disgusting. Pig trotters or chicken claws (i.e. pig or chicken feet) and sometimes conch, are boiled and the meat (how much meat is there on a chicken foot?) is served cold in a briny sauce seasoned with lime, cukes, peppers and onions. We passed on this one, too.

The locals also hunt during season (and probably out of season) for agouti, iguana, possum (manicou), wild hogs (quenks) and armadillo (tatoo). We saw none of these on the our menus. Just as well.

At the market, I had to do a little translation. Ochro is okra, melongene is eggplant and zaboca is the local avocado. Papaya is pawpaw. Garbanzo beans are chickpeas or channa. Dasheen is taro and its leaves are used to make the African-Caribbean callaloo soup, which is quite good.

When we were at Toco Beach, we were offered sea moss (sea weed) … both dried and also as a drink. The fellow selling it claimed it was good for energy. We read that Trini men also claim it to be an aphrodisiac. If it is, it would certainly be more ecologically sound than rhino horn powder.

While we were driving through the countryside, we saw a small, hand-painted sign for “Sucker Bags for sale”. Turns out this is a frozen confection made from sweetened, condensed milk.

There's also coocoo (corn meal and ochre) and cowheel soup, pigtail and frypork and several dishes where goat is the main ingredient. There's probably dozens more dishes we've never tried or heard of. Eating in a foreign country is always interesting, but Trinidad has been an ongoing epicurean adventure.

Walking in Port of Spain

Our Trinidad touring was coming to an end … already … and we hadn't even spent any time in the capital city of Port of Spain. Lin had Marriott points and we camped out for a couple of nights at the Courtyard close to the city center. What a lovely change from the musty room at Salybia. Let's face it … we can and do adjust to third world accommodations, but first world hotels are really wonderful … especially when they're free. Sounds snobbish … and it is. We had a map of Port of Spain, our trusty Maps with Me app and a new free app I'd found, GPSmyCity, which had several interesting walks in Port of Spain. We were all ready to go.

We took the local transport, a Maxi-Taxi (shared van ride), and got out at the Red House, Trinidad's historic Parliament building, which unfortunately was under renovation and pretty much covered up. Judging from newspaper articles, the building has been deteriorating for decades and only in March was serious renovation begun. It was painted red in 1897 to commemorate Queen Victoria's Diamond Jubilee and became popularly known thereafter as “the Red House”.

The Old Police Headquarters is pretty much across the street from the Red House. Built in 1876, its limestone Gothic style architecture with traditional arches and tower are quite handsome. It still houses several police department offices, as well as the T&T Police Museum. We passed on the museum.

The old Fire Station was picturesque and a good example of how building preservation and restoration can work and how old and new can blend. Built in 1896/1897, it was restored in 2000 and is now part of the National Library complex.

The Cathedral of the Holy Trinity is the oldest Anglican church in Trinidad. Built in 1818 for the British troops that lived on the island, it's a combination Gothic/Georgian architecture and very impressive as cathedrals usually are. We stepped inside to admire it and get out of the heat.

The cool interior was lovely and peaceful with lots of stained glass windows to let in filtered light. It has a particularly ornate ceiling of carved mahogany supported by graceful hammered beams.

The streets of Port of Spain are bustling and crowded. Buildings, shops and street scenes caught our interest.

We wandered in search of souvenirs in the shopping district, but were always on the lookout for interesting things to see. Fabric shops are plentiful in Port of Spain and we browsed at the rich, colorful, glittery, sequined materials perfect for carnival costumes and saris. Lots of “bling appeal”, but no souvenirs.

For lunch, we stopped in a roti shop. Lin had never eaten roti and was intent on trying it before leaving Trinidad. She chose veggie and we chose chicken roti … chicken curry with veggies (potato and pigeon peas) wrapped in chapati (flatbread). It's messy and watch out for the chicken bones!

Back out into the heat of day, our feet were getting tired and our bodies longed for A/C and cold beer. We'd hoped to get to the Botanical Gardens and the zoo, but after finding very few acceptable Trini souvenirs, we gave up and headed back to the Courtyard for some pool time, a cold drink. We needed time to rest and get ready for a special evening.

Lin had read about Buzo Osteria Italiana in Trip Advisor. This gourmet restaurant, situated in an old, stone salt house in downtown Port of Spain, has been consistently rated as the #1 place to eat in the city and we were longing to splurge and try it. In Italian, “osteria” usually translates to a place serving basic meals and wine with a limited menu. Buzo was anything but basic and limited. We ordered appetizers to share and three different fish entrees as our mains … halibut for Lin, grouper for me and a zuppa di pesce (a top shelf seafood stew) for David. We sampled each others, ate our own, drank some wonderful Montepulciano, lingered over cappuccino and had a spectacular, most memorable evening.

Our touring vacation of Trinidad ended on an up-note, but all too quickly, it seemed. It was time for Lin to head back to the States and time for us to tend to Nine of Cups and get her back into the water. It's time to move on. Where to next? Let's see where the wind blows.

Afternoon Tea at Mount St. Benedict

It was a Brazilian Benedictine monk, Dom de Caigny, who originally purchased 240 acres in 1912 to establish the Mount Saint Benedict Abbey. Located 700' above sea level, overlooking the town of Tunapuna, the Abbey looked rather majestic with its tower and red roofs as we drove the tortuous, narrow, steep road below which leads up to it.

The motto of the Benedictine order is “ora et labor” (pray and work), but with only 10 monks left, they get some help from the locals to maintain the church, monastery, seminary, a drug rehab center, a yogurt factory and the Pax House. The Pax House, a guest house and lodge on the Abbey grounds, is quite well known for serving a traditional afternoon tea in serene surroundings. I'd made reservations on-line to take tea one afternoon and a breather from our whirlwind tour of Trinidad.

The Pax House (pax = peace in Latin) was built in 1916 and offers views of the sprawling city below. It's plain, as you might expect. From the front, it looked lovely, but on closer inspection, like so many other sites we visited in Trinidad, it is also regrettably in sad disrepair. We arrived a bit late due to traffic and our welcome was less than warm. We were left to wait on the porch for 10 minutes before being shown to a table in the tea room, though there were only two other young women taking tea.

The xeroxed menus offered three tea services … the Presidential, the Traditional and the British. We ordered one of each. What had enticed us to come to the tea room was this description: “A famous room at the Pax House is the Tea Room. The Tea Room was constructed during World War II and it is the oldest Tea House in the country. The Tea Room serves a variety of teas from different countries.” They were out of two of the three teas offered, so we settled on one big pot of Earl Grey (which I have every morning for breakfast, by the way...nothing too exotic there). After a short wait, the tea and accompaniments were served.

Lin poured. We drank and nibbled, unimpressed by the tea, the food and the tea room. It was, indeed, very quiet, almost too quiet. Our voices echoed in the near empty room. After delivering the tea, the server never appeared again. We had hoped to learn more of the history of the Pax House or perhaps which areas of the grounds were open for further explanation, but alas we found no information available, nor anyone to provide any insight.

We took a peek out the back porch overlooking the hillside where hummingbird feeders attracted the local birds. The adjacent porch was falling away from the house and we wondered about the one upon which we were standing.

David left cash on the table for our tea. We wandered through the small parlor, seeking more information about the house and the Abbey, but could find none. We left without another word to or from the staff, quite disappointed.

We spotted a small graveyard, overlooking the city below, and walked through.

We climbed the steep hill to see what we could see, but were reluctant to trespass in areas in which we might not have been welcome. We saw a monk in the window of the abbey above and waved, but he closed his window and walked away without a sign of acknowledgment. Otherwise, we saw no place nor anybody to query.

After the 1-1/2 hour trip in traffic to get there, it was a disappointing afternoon. It might well have just been the particular day we visited, but it was a letdown after having read so much about it. I guess I was expecting tiny watercress sandwiches on crust-less bread and clotted cream and fresh fruit on scones and a wonderful story about the Pax House and Abbey. I remembered having tea in England years ago and more recently the tea house we visited in Mauritius. Perhaps that's more of what I had in mind.

Ah, well … we survived our disappointment and moved on. Tomorrow we're heading into Port of Spain for a self-guided walking tour and look around. Put on some comfy shoes and come along.