Traditional food of Dominica: 12 dishes to know

Dominica's food is Creole cooking built on dasheen leaves, coconut milk, saltfish, ground provisions such as tannia, yams and plantains, and stews browned into a dark sauce. It mixes Kalinago, African, French and English roots. The most emblematic dishes are callaloo, the national dish since 2013, saltfish and bakes, green fig and saltfish and goat water.

Updated 2026-10-124 min read

What Dominica food is built on

Dominica's cuisine is rooted in Caribbean Creole techniques and local produce flavoured with spices grown on the island. It mixes the cooking of the Indigenous Kalinago with African, French and English influences, and it is close to the food of Saint Lucia and Trinidad.

The everyday staples are plantains, tannia (a root vegetable), yams, potatoes, rice and peas. Chicken is the most popular meat, along with beef and fish, usually stewed with onion, carrot, garlic, ginger and thyme. The browning method, in which meat and vegetables are browned hard before stewing, gives many dishes their rich dark sauce.

Breakfast is an important meal: it typically includes saltfish and bakes, fried dough, and cocoa tea is commonly served with it.

Roadside stands and small-town restaurants typically serve fried chicken, fish and chips and tasty bakes, fried dough made with flour, water and sugar or salt, with cold drinks. Mangoes, pineapples, passion fruit and papayas appear in salads, sauces and desserts.

Callaloo, crab and the national dish story

Callaloo replaced mountain chicken as the national dish of Dominica, and the full story of that vote is there.

• Callaloo — A soup of young dasheen leaves with okra and coconut milk, sometimes with salted meat or crab, blended or swizzled until thick and creamy. It is usually eaten with rice, dumplings or breadfruit. Spinach, tannia leaves or water spinach can replace the dasheen, and some cooks add pumpkin for sweetness. It was approved as the national dish in 2013 after a four-part survey of adults and children, which it won by a wide margin.
• Mountain chicken — Fried legs of the crapaud, a giant frog found only on Dominica and Montserrat. It was the island's unofficial national dish until the frog collapsed under hunting and a fungal disease; it is now a protected, critically endangered species, so the dish has left legal menus. Its population fell by at least 80% between 1995 and 2004, and the chytrid fungus caused the most recent collapse. The frog once lived on several islands of the Lesser Antilles but now survives only on Dominica and Montserrat. Copper keeps the recipe as a record, for farmed frog legs only.
• Crab backs — Land crab meat picked, seasoned with lime, herbs and pepper, packed back into the cleaned shell under breadcrumbs and browned in a hot oven for 12 to 15 minutes. Copper files this recipe under the name "crab and dumplings", but the method is a crab back; crab is also a common addition to Dominican callaloo.

Saltfish, stews and everyday plates

• Saltfish and bakes — Salted cod with fried dough. It is a breakfast dish, but street vendors also sell it as a snack all day, alongside fried chicken, fish and fruit smoothies.
• Green fig and saltfish — Green bananas boiled and served with salt cod seasoned with onion, peppers and garlic, often with boiled eggs or avocado. It is a traditional meal shared with neighbouring Saint Lucia.
• Stew chicken with rice and peas — Chicken browned and stewed into a dark sauce, served with rice cooked with peas. Stewed beef and stewed fish are made the same way.
• Fish broth — A hearty soup of seafood and vegetables, filled with dumplings, carrots and ground provisions. Dominicans make many versions of these broths.
• Goat water — A stew of goat meat, breadfruit, green papaya and dumplings in a tomato-based broth, best known as the national dish of Montserrat and in Saint Kitts and Nevis, and also cooked in Dominica. Curried goat and pelau, a one-pot rice dish, are just as popular.
• Souse — Pickled meat, usually pork or chicken, flavoured with lime juice, onions and hot peppers, eaten as a snack or starter.

Wild meats, breakfast and drinks

At Christmas, Dominicans brew sorrel, a drink made by boiling the red calyces of the roselle plant. Juices are pressed from limes, passion fruit, grapefruit, oranges, tamarind and guava, and the local beer is brewed under the Kubuli label. Rum punch, smoothies, and rum with coconut water are popular too.

Many of the island's bush teas trace back to the Kalinago, the island's first people, and Dominica's tea culture has a long history. For home cooks, the classic reference is A Taste of Nature Island Cooking (1998), written with the Dominican historian Lennox Honeychurch.

• Stewed agouti and manicou — The agouti is a forest rodent and manicou a local opossum. Both are stewed and considered delicacies on the island.
• Cornmeal porridge — Fine cornmeal cooked with milk or condensed milk and sweetened with sugar, a common breakfast alongside saltfish and bakes.
• Cocoa tea — Local cocoa sticks boiled with cinnamon and bay leaves into a drink close to hot chocolate, served at breakfast. It is the most popular of Dominica's many teas, next to bush teas brewed from local plants and herbs.

Cook Dominican food at home

Copper has full recipes for callaloo, crab backs and mountain chicken on our page about the food of Dominica, part of our collection of Caribbean recipes.

Critics of the 2013 choice pointed out that other islands make callaloo too. The National Emblems Committee's answer was that Dominica's version is its own: a soup rather than a stew, built on dasheen leaves, with coconut milk as a required ingredient.

Our callaloo recipe follows the Dominican method: young leaves only, okra as the thickener, coconut milk at the end, and a wooden swizzle stick rather than a blender, so some texture remains.

Saint Lucia, the next island south, shares green fig and saltfish, callaloo and bakes with Dominica. See the traditional food of Saint Lucia to compare.

The recipes

• Callaloo soup🇩🇲 Dominica · 2 hours and 5 minutes
• Crab and dumplings🇩🇲 Dominica · 1 hour and 15 minutes
• Mountain chicken🇩🇲 Dominica · 4 hours and 35 minutes

Questions people ask

Keep reading

• What is the national dish of Dominica?
• Traditional food of Antigua and Barbuda: 11 dishes to know
• Traditional food of the Bahamas: 12 dishes to know
• Traditional food of Barbados: 12 dishes to know
• Traditional food of Cuba: 12 dishes to know
• Traditional food of the Dominican Republic: 12 dishes to know

Sources

1. Dominica cuisine — Wikipedia
2. Culture of Dominica — Wikipedia
3. Callaloo! — The Sun Dominica
4. Callaloo — Wikipedia
5. Goat water — Wikipedia

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