Antiguan food is Caribbean with a British accent, and for a family on a resort week the trick is to get off the resort for two meals and eat what the island eats.
Pepperpot with fungee is the national dish. Pepperpot is a thick stew of meat, spinach, okra, squash and pumpkin, cooked slowly, and fungee is a ball of cornmeal cooked with okra, like a polenta, to eat it with. Saturday is the day. The local restaurants in St John’s do it for lunch, and the kids eat the fungee with butter and try the stew.
Ducana is a sweet potato and coconut dumpling steamed in a banana leaf, served with saltfish. Conch fritters at the beach bars. Johnny cakes, the fried bread, with breakfast. Goat water, the goat stew, is the one the adults order once.
The pineapple and the hill
The Antigua black pineapple is the sweetest pineapple in the world, small, dark skinned, grown on the south west of the island, and sold at the roadside stalls and the market in St John’s on a Saturday morning. Buy one and eat it on the beach. The kids will not go back to the other kind.
Shirley Heights on a Sunday evening is the barbecue. Jerk chicken, ribs, corn, rice and peas, from the grills at the old fort, with a steel band from four and a reggae band after, and the sunset over English Harbour. It is the island’s party and it is for families until about eight.
Wadadli is the beer. Rum punch for the adults, in every bar, with nutmeg on top. Fresh juice, sorrel at Christmas, and a coconut water from the man at the beach with a cutlass. The tap water is fine at the resorts, bottled elsewhere.
Planning Antigua & Barbuda with kids? Start with the full Antigua & Barbuda family travel guide, or send me the ages and the dates and I will come back with what is really available.
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