What to eat in Tobago: a food lover's guide

Tobago eats well, and it eats local. The island's food is the most direct way into its culture, a blend of African, Indian and European roots cooked with the day's catch and a jar of green seasoning. Here is what to order, and where to find it.

The island's signature is curry crab and dumpling, and you eat it with your hands.

Tobago's signature, and officially the island's national dish. Local blue crab is simmered in a coconut-milk curry loud with green seasoning, the island's all-purpose blend of chives, thyme, garlic and herbs, then served with soft flour or cornmeal dumplings. It is rich, a little messy, eaten with your hands, and completely unmissable.

Beside the beach at Store Bay sits a row of long-running food huts, Miss Jean's and Miss Trim among the most famous, serving the national dish alongside a full plate of home cooking: stew chicken, curry goat, callaloo, macaroni pie, ground provision and coo coo. It is cheap, generous and the real thing, eaten at a table a few steps from the sand.

Store Bay, where the island's best-known food huts are.

The wider table tells the island's story. Callaloo is a velvety stew of dasheen leaves, often cooked with crab. Pelau is the beloved one-pot of rice, pigeon peas and chicken browned in burnt sugar. From the Indian heritage come roti and curry; from the African, coo coo. And Sunday lunch is an institution: stew chicken, macaroni pie, callaloo and provision, eaten slowly.

On Sunday nights the village of Buccoo holds its weekly open-air street party, known to everyone as Sunday School. A steel pan band plays early on, barbecue and snack stalls line the square, the beer and rum are cheap, and the dancing carries on late. It is the friendliest, most local night on the island.

The bay by night, where Tobago's evenings unfold.