Berbice food and drink — a visitor’s primer

Guyanese food confuses visitors for one reason: it is not one cuisine. The national anthem calls Guyana “one land of six peoples,” and the kitchen is where that is most literally true — Indigenous, African, Indian, Chinese, Portuguese and European cooking sitting on the same table, often in the same meal.

This is a primer, not a recipe collection. It tells you what things are, so you can order confidently.

The dishes people mean when they say “Guyanese food”

Pepperpot. Widely regarded as Guyana’s national dish, and the oldest thing on the table — it is Indigenous in origin. Meat stewed slowly with cassareep, a thick dark syrup made by reducing the juice of bitter cassava, along with cinnamon, hot pepper and other seasonings. Cassareep is what gives pepperpot its almost black colour and its distinctive slightly bitter sweetness, and it acts as a preservative, which is why a pot can be reheated and eaten over several days. It is above all a Christmas morning dish, eaten with plait bread.

Cook-up rice. The other dish Guyanese abroad get homesick for, and also counted among the national dishes. Rice cooked in one pot with coconut milk and peas or beans — black-eye, pigeon peas, red beans — plus meat, and whatever else is in the kitchen. Every household makes it slightly differently and every household is certain theirs is correct.

Curry and roti. Brought by Indian indentured labourers and now completely Guyanese. The curries run to chicken, goat, lamb, shrimp and — a particular Guyanese enthusiasm — duck. The roti comes in several forms, and knowing them helps:

• Dhalpuri — stuffed with seasoned ground split peas. The one most visitors like best.
• Paratha, known here as oil roti or clap roti — soft, flaky and layered, clapped between the hands to separate the layers.
• Puri — fried, and puffs up.

Metemgee (also spelled mettagee, or just called “dry food”). Ground provisions — cassava, eddo, yam, sweet potato — with plantain, simmered in coconut milk, usually with salted meat or fish and flour dumplings called duff. African in lineage, filling in a way that is difficult to overstate.

Garlic pork. Portuguese, from the Madeiran labourers who arrived from 1835, and descended from vinha d’alhos. Pork cured for days in vinegar, garlic, Guyanese thyme, salt and wiri wiri pepper, then fried. It is a Christmas morning dish, eaten with bread.

Chow mein and fried rice. Chinese-Guyanese in origin, now simply everyday Guyanese food — on restaurant menus, at roadside stalls, and at every party.

Bake and saltfish. Fried dough with salted cod. Breakfast, and the thing to order if you want to eat what people actually eat on a Saturday morning.

Cassava bread. Indigenous, and the oldest technology on this page: grated bitter cassava pressed to expel the toxic juice — that juice, boiled down, becomes the cassareep in the pepperpot — then baked flat and dry.

Snacks worth stopping for

• Pholourie — split-pea-and-flour fritters, fried, served with a sour chutney, often tamarind or mango. The default Guyanese snack.
• Egg ball — a boiled egg wrapped in seasoned mashed cassava and fried. Eat it hot, with sour.
• Salara — a sweet yeasted roll coiled around bright red grated coconut. Unmistakable in any bakery window.
• Pine tart — a pastry filled with pineapple. (Not pine nuts. People do ask.)
• Cheese roll — flaky pastry, cheese, and a national obsession.
• Plait bread — the plaited loaf that goes with pepperpot.
• Black cake — dried fruit macerated in rum and wine, often for months, darkened with burnt sugar. Christmas and weddings. Slice thin; it is stronger than it looks.

What to drink

• Mauby — made from the boiled bark of the mauby tree (Colubrina elliptica) with sugar and spices. Bitter, and an acquired taste that is worth acquiring.
• Sorrel — a deep red drink from the dried petals of roselle (Hibiscus sabdariffa). Tart, festive, and firmly a Christmas drink.
• Ginger beer — homemade, sharp, and the other Christmas drink of choice.
• Peanut punch — peanuts, milk and spice. Effectively a meal.
• Swank — Guyanese limeade: lime, sugar (often Demerara brown), water, sometimes a little essence or bitters. Also called lime wash or lime water. This is what you want at two in the afternoon.
• Coconut water, straight from the nut, sold from a barrow with a cutlass.

Rum — and the Berbice connection

Guyana’s rum reputation belongs to Demerara Distillers Limited, formed in 1983 and the producer of El Dorado. DDL operates the last three wooden stills in the world, now all housed at Diamond on the East Bank Demerara.

One of them is ours. The Port Mourant double wooden pot still — which the distillery dates to 1732 — was built on the Port Mourant Estate, in East Berbice-Corentyne. It later moved to Uitvlugt and then to Diamond in 2000, but the heavy, oily, distinctive spirit it makes began life in Berbice, and the still still carries the estate’s name.

The other two are Demerara: the Enmore wooden Coffey still, built around 1880 and the last working wooden Coffey still anywhere, and the Versailles single wooden pot still from the early 1800s.

For beer, Banks — Banks DIH, whose roots run back to an 1840s rum business and the purchase of the Demerara Ice House in 1896, and whose Thirst Park brewery in Georgetown dates from 1969.

Eating in Berbice

Go to the market. New Amsterdam’s municipal market sits below the Town Hall on Strand Street, and it is the best introduction to what is in season — ground provisions, greens, peppers, spices, and fish and shrimp from the river and the coast.

Shrimp is a Berbice industry, not a garnish. Guyana is the world’s leading producer and exporter of seabob shrimp, and there are more than a hundred brackish-water shrimp farms along the Corentyne coast, with government investment in aquaculture at Borlam. If shrimp is on the menu here, it did not travel far.

Eat where people are eating. A stall with a queue at eleven in the morning is a better recommendation than any list.

In New Amsterdam, the corner of 10 Main and Church Streets is a reasonable place to start, because three different things sit within a few steps of each other: Ten Street Sweets for pizza, fried chicken, ice cream and coffee at most hours; The H Bistro and Lounge for a proper meal, drinks and live entertainment; and Eclipse Retro Lounge across the road for the evening.

Practical notes

Pepper is not optional, but it is separate. Guyanese hot pepper — especially wiri wiri, the small round one — is serious. It is usually served on the side. Try a little before committing.

Sour is the general word for the chutneys and pickles served with snacks. Say yes.

Water. Guyana Water Inc. states that it treats to World Health Organization guidelines. As anywhere you are not used to, the standard traveller’s precaution applies: bottled or boiled water, and a little care with ice and with raw produce you have not washed yourself. This is ordinary travel practice, not a warning specific to Guyana.

Cash. Guyana dollars, and small notes. The Bank of Guyana has seven notes in issue: $20, $50, $100, $500, $1,000, $2,000 and $5,000. Many good places to eat do not take cards.

Timing. Lunch is the substantial meal of the day for many people. If you want to eat well and cheaply, eat at midday.

One last thing

If you are invited to someone’s house at Christmas, go. Pepperpot, garlic pork, black cake, ginger beer and sorrel on one table is the single best meal in the country, and it is not sold anywhere.