The Tobago holiday guide. Written by tourists for tourists.

here’s a lot of choice in Tobago for such a small island. You can eat delicious local fayre for less than £3 per head, or go the whole hog at one of the top hotel restaurants and dine on tournedos rossini with morels and roquefort. Good restaurants have been springing up all over Tobago and there is now good choice in price, variety and ambience. You can eat well if you’re self catering, with lots of fresh food options and very good prices. More about that later.

Fresh tropical breakfast

In between, there are plenty of restaurants offering fresh fish, steak (the local beef is delicious), chicken and lots of Caribbean veg and fruit, like paw paw, mango and breadfruit. Expect to pay at least £15 per head for a meal at a good non-local food restaurant. Prices are much the same as at home in the hotels and good restaurants. Again, more later.

You'll see food names around the island that you may not recognise but are delicious local dishes that you may want to try, and are local favourites -

A typical Tobago family meal could consist of

peas and rice
callalloo - a sort of coconut and spinach soup
curried crab and dumpling - whole blue crabs in spices
chicken pelau - slow cooked chicken with coconut, spices and rice
pea soup - a thick soup of fresh picked peas, dasheen, sweet potato, flavoured with bacon
roti - a thick curry of chick pea and potato with either beef, chicken, lobster or goat, wrapped takeaway style in a kind of flour tortilla
provision - local vegetables
bake - delicious fried bread rolls usually stuffed with something yummy like fish or meat

Roti has to be the best value meal on the island. It's Tobago's equivalent of fish and chips. If you see a sign for roti, get some. It's an Indian chapatti style pancake , wrapped up around a thick curry of potato and chick peas with either chicken, beef shrimp or goat. It's absolutely scrummy and if you pay more than £1 in the street booths you've been had.

Tobago boys & blue crabs

Crab and dumpling is a must. Tobago has blue land crabs that tend to live in holes by the edge of the roads. They're caught and cooked whole in their shells with curry sauce and served with flour dumplings. Yum. When it rains, the crabs tend to come out from their roadside hiding places, and if the children are on their way home from school, you'll see them catching crabs to take home for mum to cook for tea.

Most of the eating out places are concentrated in the Crown Point area. Here you can go to a good restaurant, get pizza or burgers, ice cream, fresh fish or local dishes. There’s lots happening.

Me Shells. On the corner of Shirvan Road and Old Buccoo Road. Nice decor, well spaced out and attentive staff. Starters include a seafood crepe, deep fried shrimp with a passion fruit marmalade, then you can have lobster, or the Castara Curry or steak. Children’s meals include ‘Flying Fish and Chips’. A huge portion of chunky fresh fish with chips and vegetables.
Tel: 001 868 631 0353 ; Fax: 001 868 639 0574; E-mail meshe@tstt.net.tt

A little bit of Italy

Tobago has its own top notch Italian restaurant - 'La Tartaruga' - run by the entertaining Gabriele. This restaurant is a car drive to the non-tourist village of Buccoo. The food here is as good as anything you could get in Rome, and the service is embarrassingly good. Michael Winner would find it hard to complain, and that’s saying something. Gabriele truly entertains you with his effervescent rundown of tonight's menu - and of how his mama has had the parmesan and olive oil flown in from Italy.
Tel: 001 868 639 0940; Fax: 001 868 639-5482; E-mail latartarugatobago@hotmail.com
Gabriele now has a very good website you can check out for menus and prices www.latartarugatobago.com

Dillon's Seafood restaurant in Crown Point is another old favourite. Crayfish, kingfish, lobster, crab etc, etc.

Bonkers is popular. A lot is packed into a very small place - bar, pool, chalets, and dining area - but the food is good and reasonably priced. Lots of fishy things on the menu, and pork and steak dishes. Nice atmosphere. Kids will love to find the toucan that lives in a large cage behind trees at the restaurants entrance.

A super restaurant in Scarborough is the Blue Crab. It's half way up the hill in Scarborough. It’s extremely popular, especially with the local businessmen, and wise to book. For about £8 you get a plateful of local cuisine - maybe grilled fish with avocado, fried plantain, pigeon peas, dasheen, vegetable rice, coo-coo, and salad.
Tel: 001 868 639-2737; Fax: 001 868 660-7748

Out at Speyside there’s the famous Jemma’s treehouse restaurant. It’s not licensed but does fab chicken and fish dishes, right over the sea edge. There’s also Manta Lodge’s restaurant - Green Moray Eel. Here you can get things like yellow pea soup, seafood crepes, chicken supreme with saffron rice and vegetables all for really good prices and with a daily menu change.

The Cascreole Restaurant in Castara is a great local find. It’s on the beach and has a great menu. You can get all the usual local fish dishes for less than a tenner, soups, salads, and then there’s shrimp, a long list of chicken dishes, kebabs, T bone steaks, pork and lamb. Tel: 001 868 685 4101

For breakfast you can eat out well too. The House of Pancakes at Crown Point on the road to Scarborough is well worth a visit. Not just for the treat of eating an American style breakfast in the fresh air and with the radio on, but for the comfort of the surroundings. This is the personal home of a local man and his American wife, and you really do feel like you're personal house guests. Good value, and makes a nice change when you get a little fed up with fresh fruit breakfasts and want a bit of cholesterol.

The Kariwak Hotel at Crown Point also does a great Sunday breakfast buffet with fruit, cereals, yoghurts, omelettes and fresh local fish, with coffee, tea and hot chocolate.
Tel: 001 868 639-8545; Fax: 001 868 639-8441; E-mail kariwak@tstt.net.tt

These are just some of Tobago's restaurants. There are a lot more, but we've been to all the above and can recommend them all. Check out up to date menu examples below.

Doing it Yourself

If you’re self-catering, there are some good supermarkets open lateish, selling a good range of foodstuffs and beers and wine. Roadside stalls sell fresh fruit and veg - very cheap. And fresh fish can be bought just caught, at several spots around the island, in particular at Mount Irvine on a daily basis. Ask the locals where you can get fresh fish from, or just keep your eyes open.

You can't get any fresher fish

Supermarkets include Penny Savers. There’s one near the Crown Point end of the island, on the main road to Scarborough. There’s another near Carnbee, in between Mount Irvine and Lambeau.

There’s also an excellent gourmet supermarket - R.T.Morshead - off the Shirvan Road at Mount Pleasant. Here you can get hot roasted chickens, European cheeses, curry & pasta sauces, dairy products & cakes.
Tel: 001 868 639 8855 ; Fax: 001 868 639 7529 ;
E-mail: j-morshead@trinidad.net

A well stocked small supermarket is next to the Crown Point Hotel. Francis Supermarket has pharmaceuticals, food stuffs, souvenir maps, postcards, reading material & alcohol. Open Mon - Fri 9.00am-5.00pm, Sat 9.00am-12.00pm. Closed Sundays & Public Holidays. Tel/Fax: 001 868 639 8440

Fresh fish will cost you pence from the beach or roadside, minutes after the fishermen have brought their catch in. Dolphin fish (not the dolphin mammal), king fish, barracuda, and snapper are all readily available and easy to cook. Supermarkets sell frozen chicken, beef , pork and fish, rice, tinned goods and bread. Fruit and veg stalls are usually outside the supermarkets by the roadside. All are usually open late. Fruit and veg available include cabbage, carrots, onions, melon, pineapple, oranges, bananas, breadfruit, paw paw, tomatoes, cucumber, avocado and potatoes.

We've done self-catering too and can highly recommend it in Tobago. The fresh local produce is delicious and cheap. It was in Tobago that we discovered how beef is really supposed to taste.

Drink

You'll drink endless Caribs - the local beer - and rum punch. Carib is priced differently where ever you go. If you're in a hotel, you'll pay about the same as you would for a bottled beer at home. If you're self-catering, you can buy your Carib from the local bars for about 5 TT dollars - 50p - or even cheaper at the supermarket. The bars and supermarkets will give you money back on the bottles as well. Excellent local rum and Angostura bitters are used to make rum punch, and the staff don’t hold back on the measures! Wine can be expensive in Tobago. A cheap bottle from a supermarket will set you back at least £7.

Bottled water is readily available in the shops if you’re cautious about drinking the tap water.

If you’re one of those people who can’t live without their cup of tea or coffee - Typhoo and Nescafe are all there…...

Local restaurants like D’Coal Pot serve superb local dishes at really sensible prices.

Examples:
Macaroni Pie, Beef Sauteed in Vegetables, Callalloo and Pigeon peas, Chicken Corn Soup, Lamb Stew, Baked Chicken, Beef Jambalaya, Fish Creole, Cow Heel Soup, Salad, fresh local veg and vegetable rice.

For takeaway or sit down by the beach picnic style at Store Bay , you can’t beat the choice from ladies like Miss Esme , who serve up giant portions of local food - chicken, fish, beef, salad and rice and Caribbean vegetables for less than £3.50.