St. Lucia's vibrant cuisine blends Caribbean flavors and ingredients with African, French and Indian influences. The menus brim with local seafood, particularly lobster, dorado and snapper, often accompanied by plantains or starchy root vegetables like cassava and dasheen (taro). During our time on the island, we made it a point to try St. Lucia’s specialties, three of which quickly became favorites.

Menu Misnomer

I remember when I first heard about the country’s national dish of green fig and saltfish, I envisioned sweet sticky figs paired with a plain chunk of overseasoned cod. In fact, “green fig” is the local nickname for green bananas, and the fish comes shredded in delectable flakes. The unripe bananas must be boiled, but otherwise, the dish has no set recipe. Chefs might sauté the fish with onions, chives, garlic and thyme and perhaps enliven it further with Caribbean flavors of their own choosing. Local scotch bonnet peppers often make an appearance, as do whole cayenne peppers, yellow bell peppers and chopped tomatoes. The boldly spiced fish is an ideal accompaniment to the bland bananas. One driver was adamant that the key to good green fig and saltfish is using coconut oil, while another insisted that mixing the fish with mayonnaise once it had cooled down was best. For me, the dish was too pungent for breakfast (it’s served throughout the day), but I enjoyed its various incarnations at lunch, ideally accompanied by a salad of fresh grated cucumber and a glass of the local pilsner-style Piton beer.

Tropical Stew

One evening, my companion and I were chatting with our server about St. Lucian cooking, and he was thrilled when we told him that we had never tasted callaloo soup. Though a stew may not sound especially appealing in a tropical destination, this one works. Chefs prepare the soup from the dark leafy greens of callaloo ­— a plant in the amaranth family — that have been simmered with onions, coconut milk, scotch bonnet peppers, okra and cubed pumpkin or potato. Though spinach can replace callaloo and the starchy root vegetables can vary, the flavor profile remains about the same. The coconut-milk base makes this dish comforting, and the spicy peppers and other Caribbean seasonings bring the island’s bold personality to the table. We ordered callaloo soup as our starter before tucking into freshly caught lobster bathed in a garlic-butter sauce, and we enjoyed it immensely. Some restaurants add crabmeat to their versions of the soup, turning it into a nourishing main dish.