FAQs

What is Street Food?

We should probably cover this first. Street Food is the new way to eat gourmet dishes without paying the earth. It’s a bunch of passionate, motivated owner-operators who have a product they love and create it right there in front of you using local, high quality ingredients. The people you are buying the food from are the chefs, the owners, the drivers, the marketers, the buyers and the servers of the meal you’re eating. It’s artisan cooking at it’s most direct. This distinguishes it from more established cousins festival caterers (larger units, often many units owned by one company, mainly large festivals) and mobile caterers (think markets and car boot sales, selling straight forward food) although there is a lot of crossover, and you will find us all hanging out together when it’s raining.

Benne balls: A delightful (and somewhat jawbreaking) confection made of sesame seeds.

Blue food: (cf. provision): Dasheen is one of the hearty root vegetables (or ground provisions, as we say) popular in local cuisine. It has a bluish tinge, and is usually eaten boiled. Other common ground provisions include cassava, eddoes, sweet potato, yam and tania.

Buljol: Salted codfish shredded and seasoned with peppers, onions, tomatoes, and olive oil, often served in coconut bake.

Callaloo: Made from spinach-like dasheen leaves and okra; other ingredients may include coconut, crab and pigtail.

Chadon beni: Chadon beni or shado beni is a herb with a strong pungent scent and flavor that is used extensively in Caribbean cooking, more so Trinidad cooking. The scientific name for the herb is ‘Eryngium foetidum’ but in Trinidad and Tobago the popular “market” names for chadon beni is bhandhania.

Coconut Bake: A type of bread made with grated coconut, often eaten at breakfast with buljol or cheese.

Cou-cou: A mixture of cornmeal, okra and butter, boiled and stirred till firm enough to be sliced (similar to polenta). Usually served with steamed fish and callaloo.

Crab n’ dumpling: A filling, savoury dish in which the crab is stewed with curry and coconut milk and served over flat flour dumplings.

Doubles: Curried channa (chickpeas) sandwiched between two baras (fried flour and split pea bread), usually eaten with a dollop of hot mango kucheela.

Oildown: Breadfruit is the main ingredient here, combined with salted meat and boiled down in coconut milk. Called “rundown” in Jamaica.

Pacro Water: An aphrodisiac made by boiling a local crustacean. Definitely an acquired taste.

Pastelles: Meat-filled corn dumplings cooked in banana leaves. Vegetarian variations are filled with soya or lentil peas.

Pelau: Pigeon peas and rice cooked with meat, sometimes flavoured with coconut milk.

Phulouri: Small, deep-fried balls made from a mixture of ground split peas and flour, served with spicy chutney.

Pigeon peas: Pigeon peas and rice is a popular dish for Christmas and New Year, said to bring luck and prosperity.

Roti: A flour wrap, accompanied by curried meat (goat, chicken, lamb, beef, shrimp) or vegetables. Dhalpouri roti made with split peas, is a thin wrap; paratha roti (often called buss-up-shut) is served in fragments, used to scoop up the accompanying dishes; sada roti is slightly stiffer, usually served with choka – vegetables sautéed Indian style.

Sancoche: Sancoche is part of Trinidad's Hispanic heritage, 300 years of Spanish rule, but there is also a strong West African heritage of soup making with ground provisions. Some say that the roots of Sancoche hark back to a time when there was but one pot to prepare the single "daily meal", a meal usually made of root crops, green bananas, and breadfruit (inexpensive ingredients), which had to be as hearty and filling as possible, able to sustain a man for an entire day.

Shark and bake: Fried leavened bread (bake) filled with a well-seasoned shark fillet, dressed with a variety of spicy condiments, including pepper, garlic, and chadon beni (cilantro) sauces.

Snow Cone or Sno-cone: Shaved ice, syrups made from guava, pineapple or kola and, if you ask for it, delicious, sinful condensed milk. Not just for kids.

Souse: Pig trotters boiled and served cold with a salty sauce of lime, cucumber, pepper and onions