Guyanese food is the nation's history served hot — African, Indian, Indigenous, Chinese, Portuguese and European kitchens simmered together for three centuries into one unmistakable cuisine.
Pepperpot. The national dish — beef slow-stewed in cassareep, the Indigenous cassava reduction that preserves and perfumes it with cinnamon and clove. Every Christmas morning, the whole country wakes to a pot that has simmered all night, eaten with thick plait bread.
Seven-curry & roti. At Hindu weddings and religious functions, seven vegetarian curries — dhal, pumpkin, katahar, bhaji and more — are served on a lotus-leaf in the lap. Every day of the week there is dhal puri, chicken curry and buss-up-shut roti fresh off the tawah.
Street food. Bara — the spiced split-pea fritter, doubled up with chutney; egg balls with mango sour; pholourie by the paper bag; channa and plantain chips outside every school gate.
Cook-up rice & the mains. Cook-up rice — rice, peas, coconut milk and whatever the pot deserves — is Friday-night law. Beef curry and roti are everyday mains; metemgee brings ground provisions and dumplings in coconut broth; and fat tap, souse and black pudding rule the Saturday stalls.
Sweet endings. Vermicelli cake at Eid, sweet and fragrant with cardamom; mithai, gojas and salara (the red coconut roll); pine tarts and cheese rolls at every gathering; black cake at Christmas — fruit soaked in rum for months — and rum cake all year, made with the world-famous El Dorado.
Wash it down. Mauby, sorrel at Christmas, fresh coconut water at Stabroek, peanut punch, and a Banks beer or ten-year El Dorado as the sun sets over the seawall.
