Drinks
Nonalcoholic Drinks
Delicious and refreshing fruit juices - lime, orange, watermelon, grapefruit, papaya and mango - are available throughout Belize.
'Seaweed shakes' sold by street vendors - a blend of condensed milk, a few spices and extract of Eucheuma isoforme, which grows underwater as a tangle of yellow branches - are claimed to have aphrodisiac and many other restorative properties.
In recent years, Belize has started catering to coffee drinkers with its own homegrown beans. Although Belize lacks the high altitudes that benefit other Central American coffee-growing countries, some lodges in Mountain Pine Ridge (p211) have begun experimenting with growing their own beans to serve fresh coffee to their guests. On a finca (farm) in Orange Walk, a local company called Gallon Jug is producing shade-grown beans for commercial distribution. Caye Coffee in San Pedro gets its beans from Guatemala, but roasts them in its facility right in San Pedro, producing such popular blends as Belizean Roast and Maya Blend.
Alcoholic Drinks
Belikin is the native beer of Belize. You'll be hard-pressed to find any other beer available, as there are severe import duties levied on foreign brews. Fear not, however, as Belikin is always cold and refreshing. Most commonly served is Belikin Regular, a lager, but Belikin also brews a lower-calorie, lower-alcohol beer, called Lighthouse Lager. There is also a stronger Belikin Stout and Belikin Premium, in a bigger bottle but the same strength as Belikin Regular. Beer usually costs around BZ$3 to BZ$5 a bottle, although this can vary from place to place.
THE ROOTS OF GARIFUNA COOKING: MRS DELONE JONES-LINO Joshua Samuel Brown When people talk about Belizean food, they think of rice, beans and stewed chicken. But to get the real flavor of Belize, you have to go to a genuine Garifuna restaurant. In Dangriga, I spoke with local chef Mrs Delone Jones-Lino about what makes Garifuna food so good.
'Garifuna people are very indigenous people. We have our own food, our own dances, our own beliefs and our own music. And we definitely have our own food! Our culinary traditions come from St Vincent. When the Garifuna people came here, we brought our traditions, our recipes, and even our crops with us.
'Cassava is a Garifuna staple. Cassava is a starch, like a sweet potato. Here we make cassava bread from it. Then we have something called varasa; it's like a tarnale, but it's made from a kind of cross between a banana and a plantain, picked while it's still hard and cooked until it's soft.
'Hudut is the one food that everyone loves. We serve it here on Wednesday and Friday, and people come from miles around for it. Hudut is made from plantain, cooked until tender and mashed with a big mortar and pestle. Then we cook it up with local fish like snapper and coconut milk.
'The best day to come and try Garifuna food is definitely on Garifuna Settlement Day (p222). That's when we have something called a "boil-up." We have all the traditional foods of our people, and a variety of beverages, sometimes rum or other alcoholic beverages.
'People come to Roots Kitchen from all over the world. When they find us, and see what a small restaurant we are, they're sometimes surprised. A lot of Belizeans go overseas to work, you know. But when they come home, the first thing they want is to eat some traditional Belizean food. Because it doesn't matter how rich you are, outside of Belize you can't get food like this anywhere!'
An expert in Garifuna cuisine, Mrs Delone Jones-Lino is the head chef at Roots Kitchen (p223) in Dangriga.
'Belikin'is Mayan for 'road to the east'and the main temple of Altun Ha is pictured on the label.
Post a comment