Cayman is an expensive island with a food scene that runs from beach shacks to serious restaurants, and a family on a condo week eats best by cooking breakfast, eating lunch at a shack and picking two dinners out.
The national dish is turtle stew, from farmed turtles, and it is on the menu at the local restaurants. Most visitors skip it and that is fine. Cayman style beef, a slow cooked stew, and the fish, which is the thing, are the orders for a family.
The fish fry is the lunch. Grouper, snapper or mahi in a crumb, with fries, coleslaw and a fried plantain, at the fish shacks by the George Town harbor or the ones on the way to West Bay. Conch fritters as the starter. A fish sandwich in a bun for the kids. Fresh, cheap by Cayman standards, and with a view of the water.
Lobster, Caribbean plates and the cake
Cayman lobster in season, from December to February, grilled with butter at the waterfront restaurants. The Caribbean plate at a local place, jerk chicken or oxtail with rice and beans, fried plantain and macaroni pie. Cayman style, which means with peppers and onions and a bit of heat, ask for it mild.
Heavy cake is the dessert, a dense cassava pudding with coconut and brown sugar. Coconut water from the roadside. The Tortuga rum cake is the souvenir, in a tin, and every child on the plane home has a slice.
The tap water is desalinated and safe. Caybrew is the beer. Fresh juice at the breakfast spots. And a mudslide at Rum Point for the adults, which is where the drink was invented, on a slow afternoon in a hammock.
Planning Cayman Islands with kids? Start with the full Cayman Islands 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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