Belizean food is the food of a small country with a lot of coast and a lot of history: Kriol, Garifuna, Maya, Mestizo, and more, all cooking with coconut, plantain, fish and whatever the season brings. It's home cooking more than restaurant cooking, which is why the best meals usually happen in someone's kitchen.
Breakfast: fry jacks
Start where everyone starts: fry jacks, puffed triangles of fried dough, with beans, eggs and a dab of hot sauce. You'll find them everywhere from San Pedro's side streets to roadside stands on the Hummingbird Highway.
Lunch: rice and beans, and stew chicken
The Kriol midday meal is rice and beans cooked together in coconut milk, served with stewed chicken, potato salad and fried plantain. It's distinct from beans and rice, where the beans come separately, and people have opinions about which is better.
Boil-up
Boil-up is a Kriol one-pot dish of salted fish or pig tail, boiled eggs, cassava, plantain, sweet potato and dumplings, served with a tomato sauce. It's a weekend and family dish more than a restaurant one. If someone offers you a bowl, say yes.
Hudut in Hopkins
On the Garifuna coast the dish to eat is hudut: fish cooked in a coconut broth, called sere, eaten with green and ripe plantain pounded together in a wooden mortar until smooth. The pounding is rhythmic work, and it's worth watching. We arrange suppers with Garifuna families who host visitors in their own kitchens, which is the best way to eat it.
In Hopkins, someone's auntie makes the best hudut on the coast. We'll tell you whose.
From the sea, in season
Lobster is grilled on half-oil-drum barbecues along the cayes and in Placencia, but only in open season, which closes in spring to let the stocks recover. Conch is closed in the summer months. When it's open, conch fritters and conch ceviche are on every menu. Please eat both only in season; the closed seasons are what keep them on the menu.
Something to drink
Fresh lime juice, seaweed shake (a sweet, milky drink thickened with seaweed), local beer, and rum. On the coast, ask for ereba, a flat, crisp bread made from cassava, to take home. It keeps well.
Want a trip built around kitchens? Tell us and we'll plan the coast meal by meal.
Seasons, times and rules in this story change. Check before you travel
