TRAVELWITHZOE

There are a lot of things I love about Trinidad, but the street food is definitely up there in the Top Three. It’s a vegan heaven AND it’s quite affordable compared to some other countries.

The most well known one is doubles. These cost $5TT (the equivalent of 50p in English money) and you can find them anywhere at pretty much any time of day/night (updating this article in 2023 – they are now $6TT). They consist of two things called ‘bara’ which look kind of like mini pancakes, but they’re basically soft flat fried dough, and then ‘channa’ between them. Channa is is the local word for chickpeas, but in this case it’s basically saucy curried chickpeas.

If you see a vendor by the road with a big wooden box and people standing around eating something messily with their hands off a piece of greaseproof paper, it’s probably a doubles vendor.

When you go up to them, you can tell them how many you want and how hot you want the pepper (no pepper, slight, medium or heavy), e.g. “Can I get two slight?”. If you ask for more than one, they’ll know it’s for takeaway, but if you want to eat there, just order them one at a time. Eat the first one (don’t pay yet) next to the vendor, and then tell them when you want another one and then pay when you’ve had enough.

As well as the pepper sauce, there are other sauces (usually a sweet sauce with tamarind, and sometimes a green sauce with shadow benny which is a local herb, sometimes coconut chutney etc).

By the way, ‘slight’ pepper in Trinidad is the equivalent of ‘a lot of pepper’ in England.

Personally if I eat three doubles, that’s equal to a whole meal, and one is a snack. This is what it looks like:

Another common street snack in Trinidad is pie. Pie in Trinidad not how I knew pie in England at all. It’s oval shaped but is also made from some kind of fried dough, and also costs $5TT, and is also usually sold out of a big wooden box. Pies can come with different fillings, and a common type is aloo pie which has a potato filling. Some people sell cheese pies, beef pies and any type of other ones they feel like making.

They cut it open and you can often have channa in it if you want (at no extra cost), and again you need to tell them how much pepper you want.

People who sell pie often also sell saheena which also has some kind of fried dough (surprise surprise), also costs $5TT, also can have channa added to it, and also requires you to choose an amount of pepper. Saheena is a bit more crispy than pies and doubles, and the dough contains bahji (spinach). I love it.

Something that’s I saw a bit less often on the street is pholourie. I was more often able to find it in little huts or roadside shops. It’s basically (guess what…) fried dough, but in little balls, and it’s made from split peas flour apparently, and they put it in a bag with sauce and then you shake it around so the sauce spreads over all the pholourie. Often they have a choice of sauces so you can pick one or choose to combine them.

You get about 5 balls for $1TT so when you order it, you need to tell them how many dollars worth you want, e.g. “Can I get a 3 dollar bag of pholourie?”. I would recommend getting between two and four dollars worth. This is a $4 bag I had:

In the night or at events, the main food available is fried chicken and chips, and corn soup. The corn soup is vegan and costs around $20TT (£2) for a big cup. Apart from corn, it contains dumplings made of flour, and some other vegan items like carrot and potato.

All this fried dough might sound unhealthy, but at least the snacks are freshly made by the vendor that morning so I guess it’s fresher than typical Western fast food, and the channa is probably quite healthy. I really enjoy these snacks but I do find them a little greasy so I try not to eat them every day. I’m really grateful that lots of the street food is vegan and that it can be found in so many places on the island!