Roti on the Run

Like Trinidad and Tobago's rhythmic soca music, island food and drink are a sensual blend of many continents and countries. A mouthwatering melange of African, East Indian, Amerindian, Chinese, Middle Eastern and European flavors combines in recipes that have survived conquest, slavery and indentureship, offering a staggering variety of the most exotic foods in the Caribbean.

The joie-de-vivre that people of these two islands demand as a birthright is as concentrated in their culinary culture as it is in their Carnival. Good eating is an important part of what Trinidadians and Tobagonians enjoy about living in a part of the world where food is plentiful and fresh, though sometimes expensive. And islanders like to cook and love to eat, so they do in abundance. The streets of Port of Spain are crowded with food vendors, bars, snack shops and open markets, and every little hamlet has at least a roti stand. T&Ters are quick to have a "cookup" the minute friends drop by, and social event, like playing All Fours - a card game - or watching a video, is a respectable pretense for a meal. At parties, a full dinner is more the rule than hor d'oeuvres. The style of food you find in private homes depends to a good degree on the ethnic background of your hosts, but a certain blurring of culinary borders has occurred so that Trinidadian cuisine might be said to be made up of unique variations on other people's themes.

Some Local Names: The names of local specialties reflect their mixed exotic sources, encouraging even the jaded to experiment. Who wouldn't be curious about callaloo, coocoo, pelau, roti, buljol, accra and "oil down" or san coche, a recent import from the smaller islands of the Caribbean? And there are unfamiliar and delicious fruit punches - sour sop, shaddock, barbadine - and rum drinks to cool off the heat.

Creole food, which with Indian is most prevalent, is an amalgamation of dishes with an African past that incorporates contributions from French settlers who brought slaves here two centuries ago. Pelau, callaloo and coocoo are all Creole dishes whose likenesses can be found in other Caribbean islands. The country's former Spanish colonists have also left their enduring influence. Pastelles and arepas, spiced corn patties filled with meat or chicken, for example, are purely Spanish, although they taste less of olive oil than their Latin American counterparts.

Curries, roti and other exotically spiced dishes brought here by indentured East Indian laborers in the 19th Century add to the already singular potpourri. Indian foods like those of other cultures commingling in Trinidad and Tobago, sometimes take completely new forms, so that many no longer bear resemblance to their originals.

The Chinese, who also came under indentureship, brought a crisper, fresher version of their cuisine than that usually found in the China towns of the world. Chow mein in Trinidad, for instance, is quickly stir fried, without the cornstarch that gives it the gooey consistency familiar to North Americans and others. Like some Indian dishes, many Chinese foods have been "creolized." Their fried rice borrows spices and flavor from pelau, a rice and peas dish, and many Chinese meat and poultry dishes look suspiciously as if they've been "browned down," the Creole process of cooking in caramelized sugar.

The Syrians, Lebanese and Portuguese have also contributed to the Trinidad and Tobago menu, though to a lesser degree, since their arrival here is more recent. Middle Easterners spread the use of vermicelli, and influenced the already popular potato salad, augmenting it with beets, carrots and peas.

The Rafters on Warner Street is a small restaurant with a typically Trinidadian atmosphere and menu. It used to be an old rum shop and the exterior and interior have been left virtually unchanged. For Creole cuisine there is Villa Creole on the Western Main Road, Veni Mange on Lucknow Street, and Pot Luck on Donaldson street. If you are downtown around lunchtime eat at L&J Caterers at 53 Park St., where the proprietor and his family provide a changing daily menu for office workers and storekeepers much like what you might eat if you had lunch at their home. The Mango Tree and The Outhouse are housed in converted private homes, and the imaginative Creole cooking at The Outhouse is favored by the younger crowd.

The best place for Indian food is Mangal's, in an elaborately gingerbread mansion right off the Savannah. The authentic, hot curries and ample buffet are worth the expense. For good Chinese food and a romantic view, Tiki Village is on the roof at the Kapok Hotel. Shay Shay Tien also offers authentic Chinese cuisine.

Roti on the Run: One of the most delicious and popular foods to be found anywhere and everywhere is the roti. A complete meal, roti consists of a delicate Indian flat bread filled with curried beef, chicken, goat, shrimp or vegetables. Curried potatoes and chick peas are added and the bread is folded over everything to create a portable crepe. The bread, called dhalpourri, is made of two flat thin layers of dough seasoned with ground split peas in between. In many shops the dhalpourri is still baked on iron rolling stones heated over coal pots. There are also other breads used with the curried meats, like paratha, aloopourri and dosti, more common in the homemade varieties.

Rotis are sold from roadside stands, bars and restaurants, and are practically the cheapest food you can buy. They are ideal for lunch, or as an informal dinner. Specialty roti shops still do the briskest business of all food sellers, although American style fast-food restaurants have mushroomed in recent years. In places like St. James along the Western Main Road, and Back Chain Street in San Juan you'll find what might be called "roti rows." The Hot Shoppe, near the Trinidad and Tobago T.V. station, and the new Breakfast Shed, near the Holiday Inn, are reliable and popular restaurants for roti lunches.

A day at the beach should include fried shark and hops, called bake "n" shark, usual fare at beach side bars and restaurants. The deep fried roll and thick fish steak are doused with the ever handy hot pepper sauce, and downed with a number of Carib beers. These hot sauces are usually mustard or oil based, and may contain papaya (or pawpaw), lime, onions and plenty of the hot, yellow variety of pepper that grows all over the islands.

The hungry visitor must be adventurous traveler to discover the out-of-the-way (and unassuming) places serving serious local food; buljol, salted codfish, onions, tomatoes and hot pepper, related to the Portuguese dish bacalao; coocoo, a dumpling of cornmeal and okra; callaloo, pureed okra and spinach; and pelau, rice and peas spiced with cinnamon, allspice and any number of secret ingredients such as coconut milk or red wine, depending on the cook.

Rum shop Society: An aspect of city life that is sadly disappearing is the once vibrant rum shop, a liquor bar where working-class men used to gather after work for simple socialization and drinking at a cheap rate. Outside the rum shop on the pavement, vendors sold black pudding, and souse or pig's trotters. Akra and float, a salt fish cake and pancake, and thick slices of fried shark in hops bread were also available. Inside, men (women never entered) sat at tables under ornate ceilings, or lounged, against equally ornate bars and drank their rum and talked. The potent effect of the spirit added considerably to the heat of the argument about every subject under the sun, voices raised so loudly they could be heard way down the street.

Outside, and side by side with the vendors, would be small Salvation Army bands and groups of Baptist preachers with lighted candles and ringing bells, conducting services.

There used to be a rum shop at the corner of Park and Tragarette Road, the walls of which were painted green, so the corner became known as Green Corner. It was a terminal for taxis commuting to and from the districts on the western outskirts of the city Known as Carenage and Point Cumana, which were close to the U.S. Navel Bases at Chaguaramas, during World War II. With servicemen patronizing the shop, Green Corner grew notorious.

Today, only a few rum shops still remain, but wherever they are found, they provide the same atmosphere of friendship and lively conversation. Brooklyn Bar at Roberts Street, Woodbrook, still exists. So, too, do Broadway Bar on South Quay, the Empire at the corner of Prince and Henry Street, and the only all night rum shop, Canon Bar, at the corner of St. Vincent and Duke, all of which retain the old character of traditional rum shops.

Trinidad produces over 4 million gallons of rum annually, but grudgingly only what the people can't drink themselves, so that Trinidadian brands are less familiar, though no less excellent, than Barbadian and Jamaican brands. Old Oak and Vat 19 are the best-sellers in a country where rum drinking is a national pastime, approached with more gusto than eating. During the Easter, Christmas and Carnival seasons, and much of the time in between, since there are 13 national holidays celebrated, drinking becomes a national avocation.

Street Sweets: During Carnival, food shacks spring up all around the Savannah, and even during the rest of the year street vendors offer a broad choice in one of the safest cities in the Caribbean to buy roadside food.

Doubles, saucy, curried chick peas spread between two (thus the term "doubles") lightly flavored breads called barahs, is another Indian - influenced street food widely eaten as a lunch on the run. Indian vendors also carry aloo pies, katchowrie, sahina and poolouri, all seasoned breads eaten with mango or tamarind sauces, and invariably, a touch of pepper sauce.

To cool the hot sauce, a nearby vendor will gladly offer coconut water, spilling from the fruit he has just opened with his machete. All around the Savannah in Port of Spain, and by the roadside in more rural areas, the coconut trucks dispense fresh coconuts from the full backs of their flatbed trucks. By merely shaking the fruit the seller knows if it is ready or not, and when he finds a ripe one a few deft, frightening strokes of his blade reveal the milk. It's also an opportunity to savor the jelly that remains after the milk has been drained, which, after hardening, provides the nut that is grated as flavor or main ingredient in numerous dishes.

Pastry vendors are also common, their little glass boxes filled with coconut and currant rolls, sweet cassava breads called pone, beef pies and even vegetable patties. Some vendors get fancier, including the less ethnic fare like sponge cake and fruit tarts. In recent years, many vendors have begun selling the Rastafarian - inspired "Ital" or vegetarian patty. Other forms of Ital food, some of which are delicious, have gradually found acceptance among the public.

Wherever sugar is produced, sweet tooths are rampant, and in Trinidad and Tobago confectionaries are to be found everywhere. The islanders use coconut in a variety of these sweets - mixing it with sugar and baking it into a sugar cake, or grating it into chips to be blended with molasses for tooloom, a sweet that was favored by slaves. The tamarind ball is a wicked idea invented to confuse the tongue. In this candy like dumpling, sugar and salt collide with the tangy flavor of the tamarind fruit. Indian inspired sweets include kurma, a sweet dough dropped in oil and fried until crisp, which is the candy of choice on the islands. Other Indian sweets like jilebi, ladoo, maleeda and sawaine, can only be found in the market stalls on Sunday mornings.

Sea Moss and Sorrel: Expectably, fruit is everywhere on these two lush islands. An endless variety of mangoes competes for shelf space with more exotic offerings like pomsitae, guava, sapodilla - the gum of whose bark is used to make chicle - sour sop, kymet and sugar apple, in addition to vast quantities of banana and citrus fruit. Mango is curried and used as a side dish, grated and seasoned into chutney as a condiment, and preserved in varying degrees of sweet and sour. Tropical plums and cherries are also preserved and sold widely by vendors.

Oysters are another roadside victual, feeding the islanders' belief in their aphrodisiac qualities. The oysters are very small in Trinidad, where they grow on mangrove roots in swamps. They are also more succulent than sea oysters. And while health codes now prevent vendors from selling the mollusks in their shell, oyster cocktails have become as popular as the oyster plate that once allowed the aficionado to suck them out. The oysters are dressed in a sauce of hot pepper, tomato ketchup and vinegar.

There are a number of other foods and drinks islanders claim have aphrodisiac powers. These include sea moss, a kelp drink; babande, made from a tree bark; bush rum or mountain dew; and pachro, sea urchin. Consumption of these and more obscure concoctions never seems to diminish. We offer no guarantees, but do encourage the adventurous to experiment and report findings, please.

The list of non-alcoholic drinks is long. Most popular are sorrel, a tangy, ruby colored drink made from the petals of the sorrel flower; ginger beer, the spicy predecessor of ginger ale; mauby, a slightly bitter extract from the bark of the mauby tree; and peanut punch, a peanut butter flavored thick shake. Of course, even non-alcoholic drinks are likely to be spiked with a drop of rum, and the world-famous Angostura Bitters, whose secret herbal ingredients are lock and key in the company's offices in Trinidad.

Bitters is an important component of punch-a-creme, a spiked eggnog that can lay out the light-headed when really potent. Bitters is also used heavily in a mixture of Guinness stout, milk and nutmeg called "the Bomb" and said to make one virile and other macho things.

The ultimate drink on an island that produces some of the finest rums in the world is the rum punch. In Trinidad and Tobago, this fruity drink finds a flavor more subtle and seductive than that found on other islands. The best rum punches, needless to say, are more likely to be found at a private home than at the bars. Everyone's uncle or aunt adds some secret ingredient that makes his or her rum punch special - anything from whole spices to fruit slices might appear in homemade punch. The bottled variety put out by Angostura and offered in most restaurants is certainly an able substitute until you can wangle a private invitation.

T&Ters consume beer like it's going out of style, blaming their bibacity on the heat. The sun and fresh trade winds seem to neutralize alcohol content, particularly during Carnival, making it easy to down four or five in a couple of hours. The two local beers, Carib and Stag, compete vigorously with that other universal favorite, Heineken.

A Meal at Home: As much on-the-run eating as islanders do during the week, weekends are a time for substantial family meals. Sunday dinner might consist of rice, meat, fish or poultry, and some kind of stewed peas or callaloo. Or it could be curried crab, gingered bok choy stir fried with pork or codfish, and roasted eggplant with garlic. Or coocoo and fish steamed with coconut milk in a thin gravy. Ground provisions - root vegetables - also find their way onto most tables. So, quite frequently, do rich macaroni pie and a Lebanese inspired potato salad.

Preparation for Sunday dinner sometimes begins Saturday evening, but really gets going with an early Sunday trip to the open market. A Sunday morning market scene begins before full dawn, as knowledgeable housewives seize the opportunity for first pick at the offerings. The largest market by far is in Port of Spain which attracts both wholesalers and retail shoppers. But most medium sized towns boast their own markets. Back at home, the entire family is conscripted for odd tasks like shelling pigeon peas, cleaning callaloo leaves and okra, or peeling the ground provisions. And by late Sunday morning, the entire country is a scented room of seasoned selections.

Callaloo is a mixture of leaves of the dasheen plant, similar to spinach and called taro by the Latinos, pureed with chopped okra and flavored with either crab or salted pork. Both the dasheen and okra were brought here by African slaves and were a big part of the slave diet. The callaloo can be cooked with a hot pepper for that little extra kick. Generally it is poured over rice, and served with meat or poultry. Gourmets, however, serve it as a soup, an appetizer for the meal to come. Callaloo is such an important part of Trinidad and Tobago that in 1984, band leader Peter Minshall made it the theme of his Carnival celebration!

Coocoo is a blend of corn flour and okra, steamed with coconut milk into a cake that hardens after it cools, akin to grits or the Italian polenta. The okra moisturizes the coocoo, although it must still be eaten with lots of gravy to be swallowed smoothly.

If you don't happen to know any Trinidadians to invite you for a home cooked meal, the Port of Spain Hilton puts on a Creole spread by the pool once a week which is surprisingly good and close to homemade.

Bush Meat and Seafood: Seafood, not surprisingly, is plentiful and widely consumed. Be on the lookout for beach parties - open to the public - in Tobago, where beachcombers can quickly "season down" something from the day's catch for a peppery fish broth. The cascadura, an oily river fish, has gained almost mythical proportions, allegedly responsible for luring Trinidadians and Tobagonians back home no matter where they roam. King fish usually dominates the day's ocean catch. A meaty fish similar to swordfish, it's often fried, curried a lot, and a favorite in fish broth. Red snapper, shark, grouper, bonito, carite, yellow tuna and salmon also fill the fishermen's nets. There are also good shrimp, chip chip (a tiny, clam like crustacean), lobster and oysters. And a beach party is probably the most likely place to find "bush meat," the several varieties of game that more adventurous islanders enjoy. Some people's eyes glaze over when they speak of manicou stew, made with fried iguana or possum. Others love the tender meat of the tatoo, species of armadillo, or quenk, a wild boar.

More common meats and poultry are likely to be browned down, which has the added effect of making the food a tad sweet. There's also a habit of slipping bits of vegetables into the browned down meat or poultry. And some stew beans in the pot, but more often that's done separately, and frequently flavored with pumpkin.

Pelau is used either as a side dish or a main course. Variations of this dish are infinite, but always the internet is to produce a sweetly spicy mix of rice, pigeon peas and vegetables.Everyone adds this or that little something else for a particular taste - a whole green pepper, coconut milk, or a bit of wine.

But enough! There's but so much reading one can do about all this delicious food. The taste of the pudding is in the eating, and fortunately, there's even a chance to get a taste of some of these foods in North America and Britain. A roti shop or restaurant always springs up wherever T&Ters and other West Indians find themselves.