Meet & Eat with Locals for a True Taste of Caribbean Culture

Gastronomy, Insider Info, Tours & Activities

Article written by Theresa Storm.

Experience the Caribbean’s culture with locals who live there and, of course, know it best. If you’re keen to leave your resort and the beach scene behind for a few hours, some islands and mainland Caribbean destinations offer visitor programs or locally-led experiences that allow you to learn about islanders’ lifestyles, traditions and customs, as well as tasting local foods and drinks.

On your next trip, these three islands invite you to spend a few hours living like a local:

Bahamas — People-To-People Experience

One of the most enjoyable mornings – ever. This P2P ambassador in Freeport welcomed us into her home and to the most amazing breakfast. She gave us a tour of her gardens explaining the usage of some of the herbs and vegetables – and we gifted her with Canadian maple syrup! The whole morning felt like a warm hug.

If you want to understand the place you are travelling in, get to know the people who live there. Offered at no cost, The Bahamas’ People-To-People Experience (P2P) is the best bargain a visitor will ever find.

The program, operated since 1975 by The Bahamas Ministry of Tourism, connects inquisitive visitors with a volunteer Bahamian ambassador, who is like your local guide. The experience offers an authentic, immersive and informal glimpse into Bahamian hospitality and culture, akin to visiting a friend.

Visitors sign up (preferably in advance but last-minute requests are accommodated) and are matched with a host based on shared interests, hobbies, occupations, age and other personal details. Hosts, from all walks of life, are screened and certified by the Ministry of Tourism.

The experience is designed as a cultural exchange rather than a traditional tour. Depending on the host and interests, visitors can share a meal, visit a local home, explore the island together, learn about Bahamian culture or take part in an activity with their host. For example, for travellers looking to connect with local people, Stephen and Terry Bellot serve up a traditional Bahamian feast and invite their family, friends and neighbours.

On the program’s website, People-To-People Ambassador Beverly Wallace-Whitfield says, “You share an experience not just of a light sightseeing nature, but something more with the heart in it.”

And Ambassador Anthia Butler adds, “You’ll get to see another side of the island. Eat where we eat. Do what we do.”

Latia Duncombe, Director General of the Bahamas Ministry of Tourism, Investments & Aviation said, “Over 500 Bahamian citizens have wholeheartedly embraced the program; their willingness to open their homes and lives to visitors is invaluable, offering an authentic showcase of our culture, heritage and landscape to hundreds of guests each year.”

The program is available on ten Bahamian islands: Nassau & Paradise Island, Abaco, Andros, Bimini, Exuma, Eleuthera, Harbour Island, Cat Island, San Salvador, and Freeport, Grand Bahama.

Editor’s Note:  I have had the pleasure of having three People to People experiences on different islands in The Bahamas.  Truly, each experience was rewarding and a highlight of that particular trip.  Highly recommend!

Barbados – Dine with a Bajan

Guests share a meal and conversation through Barbados’ Dine with a Bajan experience. Photo courtesy of Visit Barbados.

Get a true taste of Barbados, eat like a local and feel like family when you Dine With a Bajan. This cultural dining experience platform connects visitors with locals for an authentic, home-cooked Bajan meal that is served in their home, offering an intimate look at traditional, time-honoured recipes and warm island hospitality.

It’s an immersive farm-to-table experience where Barbados’ rich cultural and culinary heritage take centre stage. From flavourful fish cakes to classic cou-cou with flying fish and lamb shepherd’s pie, each dishes’ bold flavours tell a tale of family traditions.

Whether you’re interested in brunch, lunch or dinner, Dine With A Bajan hosts can oblige.

Guests can also gain hands-on experience in a fun cooking tutorial, where they learn to create some of the island’s best-loved delicacies, such as conkies (a traditional sweet steamed cornmeal-based dumpling wrapped in banana leaves, popular during Barbados Independence Day celebrations in November).

Prices from $195 Barbadian dollars (approximately CA$140) per guest. To book your experience or learn more, visit the website.

Antigua and Barbuda – The BushBungalow Experience

Chef Jermaine Jonas prepares a meal at BushBungalow, where, as their t-shirts say, food is grown here, not flown here!  Photo courtesy of BushBungalow.

For a really local, hands-on immersive dining experience in Antigua, join Chef Jermaine Jonas at his home, BushBungalow, to prepare a nourishing and elevated plant-based meal. He has many years of experience working with health-focused cuisine all over the world and is proud to be Antigua and Barbuda’s first plant-based and planet-friendly space serving only local and regional produce.

His signature project, the BushBungalow Experience, takes place in Freeman’s Village, the central community that was the island’s first free village post-emancipation. Here guests engage with the history, culture and rhythms of rural Antigua through storytelling. You’ll learn about Papa Sammy — probably the village’s most famous person, explains Jonas — and the village’s legacy, forage in the neighbourhood for seasonal fruits and hear stories about Chef Jonas’s family. He’s the third generation living in the rural cottage built in the early 1900s that once was home to his grandparents and father. It was thoughtfully reimagined by Jonas and today it’s an intimate culinary retreat.

Alongside Chef Jonas, guests are invited to prepare a selection of his signature plant-based dishes. Along the way, he shares his philosophy about why food that is grown here, not flown here matters for health, environmental sustainability and the local economy.

Al fresco dining concludes the planet-friendly experience, with guests enjoying the meal they’ve prepared.

Jonas will offer the experience in 2027. The cost for two guests is US$100 per person and you can book on Airbnb Experiences or contact him via his website.

Article by Theresa Storm.

A four-month-long solo island-hopping adventure through the Caribbean 28 years ago ignited Theresa’s passion for the tropics, culture, nature and trying new adventures.

Back home in Calgary, her increasingly restless, itchy feet soon led to a career writing about travel worldwide.  She loves escaping winter for warmer climes, especially to the Caribbean, which has long felt like her real home.

As an award-winning travel writer and photographer, she’s penned scores of articles for magazines, newspapers and e-zines, and contributed to books including Caribbean Escapes and the first edition of DK Eyewitness Caribbean.

Her articles and photographs have been published in magazines including Bon Vivant, Extraordinary Experiences and Vacations (Ensemble Travel Group), Wanderlust (U.K.), Avenue Calgary, WestJet (WestJet Airline’s in-flight), Morning Calm (Korean Air’s in-flight), LUXE Magazine Canada, AAA publications, Cruise & Travel Lifestyles, Dreamscapes and Today’s Parent.

She is a two-time winner of the Caribbean Tourism Organization’s Canadian Travel Writer of the Year award and twice won CTO’s best photograph with a feature article and best online feature.  She also was honoured with the Travel Media Association of Canada’s excellence in Caribbean travel writing award.

Eat Your Way Around the Caribbean on a Food Tour!

Gastronomy, Insider Info, Tours & Activities

Article written by Lisa Kadane.

When we travel, our family loves to try cuisine from the country or island we’re visiting. Not only do new foods expand our taste buds, they expose us to cultural traditions that help us better understand the place we’re exploring. Over the years, we’ve had the most fun on food tours because we get to try lots of different dishes, and a guide is there to explain the history behind each one. Turns out, we’re onto something—food tours are surging in popularity, driven by a shift toward experiential travel and the desire to see where the dish is coming from and why it’s on the menu.

Food is such a cultural bridge that you’ll find cuisine tours throughout the Caribbean, from Antigua to Saint Martin. Here are a few drool-worthy adventures that will introduce you to the flavours of four unique islands.

‘Culture on a Plate’ in The Islands of The Bahamas 

Guide Bre Smith offers artisan chocolates at Graycliff Chocolatier. Photographer: Lisa Kadane

You can’t visit The Islands of The Bahamas without trying a conch fritter, and the pillowy, savoury, deep-fried balls at Bahamian Cookin’ restaurant are some of the best in Nassau. My daughter and I gobble up the delicious snacks, which are made with minced veggies and meat from the Queen Conch, a large marine sea snail.

“There are criteria to a good fritter,” explains Bre Smith, a guide with Tru Bahamian Food Tours. “It needs to be ‘conky.’ It can’t just be dough—there has to be pieces of conch in it.”

Next we try coleslaw over peas and rice, plus baked macaroni and steamed chicken. Other foodie stops on the Bites of Nassau walking tour serve up crispy caramelized plantains, hearty conch chowder, rum punch, and a non-alcoholic drink called ‘switchie,’ which is limeade made with tart key limes and sweetened with simple syrup.

“We like to take our culture and put it on a plate,” says Smith, explaining that many of the simple, tasty dishes are holdovers from the slavery era, which lasted until 1834 when it was abolished throughout the British Empire.

More than a cuisine crash course, the tour also educates us about the Bahamas’ history, from its pirate problem in the early 1700s up to independence from the United Kingdom in 1973. It’s an interesting and delicious way to get our bearings in a new place and kindle our appetite at the same time.

Food tours are surging in popularity, driven by a shift toward experiential travel. Here are a few more drool-worthy adventures that will introduce you to the flavours of unique Caribbean islands.

Spice Up Your Vacation in Grenada 

Garden Tour & Chef Cooking Demo at Mount Cinnamon Beach & Wellness Resort in Grenada; photo courtesy of Mount Cinnamon.

On the Caribbean’s Spice Island of Grenada, immerse in the intoxicating scents of cinnamon and nutmeg at the Grand Anse Craft & Spice Market, the first stop on a Sights and Bites Tour with Spice Foodie Tours. The morning tour kicks off with a local market breakfast of savoury salt fish served with fry bread, eggs and ‘fruitti moss’ (a fruit infused sea moss beverage), and ends with a local lunch in Grenville. In between, participants try everything from fresh coconut water from the husk, to roasted corn, a traditional street food.

The tour also takes in local sights and experiences, including a refreshing stop at thundering Annandale Falls, and a visit to Carlton Cocoa Station in St. Andrews. At this cocoa bean collection point, participants get a lesson in curing cocoa beans, and the chance to taste the country’s famous chocolate.

For more foodie fun, travellers can check into Mount Cinnamon Beach & Wellness Resort and sign up for the Garden Tour and Chef Cooking Demo. The boutique hotel grows everything from pumpkin and okra to basil and cilantro on site, and the culinary team uses this bounty to create dishes like creole barracuda and callaloo, a hearty, coconut-milk based soup.

“We are very lucky in Grenada that we have so much freshly grown produce as well as fresh seafood,” says executive chef Jason Joseph. “We want guests to see where the food comes from and show them how to get the best from the ingredients.”

Ride a Moke to Anguilla’s Favourite Foodie Stops

Savouring Anguilla on the Island Sights & Bites Food Tour with Quest Experiences; photo courtesy of Quest Experiences.

Regularly dubbed the “Culinary Capital of the Caribbean,” dreamy Anguilla boasts renowned international chefs, fresh seafood, and excellent seaside dining. To take in the island’s stunning white sand beaches while tasting some of its celebrated dishes and learning about its history and culture, join the Island Sights & Bites Food Tour with Quest Experiences (consider upgrading to a moke, which is an open-air buggy).

The three-course food crawl visits both popular and hidden gem spots where participants usually try the national dish of peas and rice with fish, and a tropical dessert like coconut cake. Goat—an animal that does well on drought-prone Anguilla—is often on the tasting menu, too, paired with a twist on a piña colada.

“Anguilla’s food scene is developed through the love for quality meals made from fresh ingredients,” says Quest Experiences manager Clemvio Hodge. “Our ‘fast-food’ is home cooked so you feel like family wherever you dine.”

Tour A Farm or Take a Cooking Class on Tortola

Aprons on, drinks in hand — savouring the flavours of a BVI food tour; photo courtesy of The Brick Oven.

There are a couple different ways to experience the local flavours of the British Virgin Islands (BVI).

On Tortola, visit Good Moon Farm and enjoy bush tea, cassava bread and seasonal fruit before joining founder Aragorn Dick-Read for insight into the history of agriculture in the British Virgin Islands. He guides guests through the regenerative organic farm and explains the “Good Moon” planting philosophy, which includes composting, no-dig farming techniques, the importance of earthworms, and other sustainable practices that support healthy soil and crops.

For a more immersive experience, learn to prepare traditional dishes like Johnny cakes or conch fritters at The Brick Oven. Led by chef and owner Shyril Smith, classes include a demonstration of brick oven baking and stories about the island’s culinary heritage, before digging in and then taking home the recipe.

“The BVI’s culinary scene is built on traditions passed down through generations, with families and local cooks continuing to share the flavors, stories and techniques that make our food culture so special,” says Natasha Chalwell, Deputy Director of Tourism for the British Virgin Islands Tourist Board & Film Commission. “From tender stewed goat to freshly baked coconut bread, food tours offer guests an authentic taste of BVI cuisine.”

Food is such a cultural bridge that you’ll find cuisine tours on most Caribbean islands, from Antigua to Saint Martin. For more ideas, check out the Sugar City Express trolley food tour on St. Kitts and the Soma Garden tour on Dominica. Happy eating, drinking and island hopping!