By G. J. Giddings
Geoffrey Giddings, Ph.D. is a Guyanese American, educator, researcher, 2024 Fulbright U.S. Scholar, and a consultant on cuisine culture.
Region 1: Bunduri crabs and ground provisions
Food is a key resource for individual and community health and wealth but also serves as a source of national identity and pride. In fact, appreciating the bright prospects of Guyanese foodways or cuisine culture might counter the much-quoted Martin Carter suggestion that “… Guyanese society … transmutes that which is of value into base matter.” Such pessimism is understandable given our history of colonization, dictatorship, and corruption – legacies of colonization and our collective failure, so far, to forge an effective republic. However, Guyanese foodways offer optimistic stories of our history, unique environmental endowments, and related economic prospects. In fact, the 10% growth of visitors to Guyana between 2023 and 2024 means increasing and diverse demands for local cuisine hospitality, including more quality food, safe food, exciting food, and related business opportunities. It’s time to take steps toward intentionally developing a clear and comprehensive cuisine culture.
A national cuisine is a web of relationships shaped by changes or adaptations over time, and Guyanese cuisine culture, a creole unity of food traditions from at least 6 older cultures, is constantly responding to place, time, encounters, necessities, and creativity. We are an evolved fusion of contributions from Indigenous peoples, Africans, Indians, Chinese, Madeira Portuguese, and other Europeans (British, Dutch and French). Beyond our shared colonial history and our unique creole and regional languages, we are held together too by foodways which contribute cohesion and value to our one Guyanese national identity.
Indigenous communities inspire uses of many foods native to this geographical place, including cassava, Mauby, pine, all-spice, etc. African contributions include sorrel, tamarind, plantain, wooden mortar and pestle, and recipes like Conkie, Fufu, Cook-up, Metemgee, etc. Indian culinary traditions have shaped our use of Tawahs, Karahi pots, rice, Ayurvedic spices, curry, Saijan, and recipes like Seven Curry, Roti, Dhal Puri, Baiganee, Mithai, Gulab Jamun, Jalebi, etc. Madeira Portuguese influenced our fish cakes and garlic pork recipes. Although our European colonizer-ancestors, particularly the British, were minorities, they still influenced our recipes for Egg Ball, Black Pudding, Bakes, Patties, mince pies, mince balls, and spirits from sugar cane. And poised to make their own contributions to this historic cuisine are current Brazilian, Cuban, Venezuelan, and other immigrants.
Globally there are growing interests in food, foodways and cuisine, and many are happy to self-identify as “foodies.” In fact, many Guyanese seem to be natural foodies who are opinionated on the subject, although not surprisingly so, given the importance of food in our daily rituals as humans.
Our new fossil fuel based economy and ongoing globalization forces have brought to our shores foreign celebrity foodies such as Gordan Ramsay in 2020 and the globetrotting YouTuber “Davidsbeenhere” in 2023. These food explorers were hosted by some of our own popular foodies, including Delven Adams of Backyard Cafe, Stacy Rahaman of Visit Guyana, and even President of the Republic, Dr. Mohamed Irfaan Ali.
Even if one is not a foodie, food is an essential part of life, framing many of our earliest social memories. Some of my own fond food recollections are tied to growing up with my grandmother, Siso. She was an entrepreneurial seamstress while raising me and my siblings after our mom emigrated to New York way ahead of us. During our time with her, Siso purchased a small cottage in Bourda neighborhood with a tiny yard, but managed to maintain a mango tree, banana suckers, and even a few chickens. Our limited livestock was supplemented by Siso’s friend who raised a few pigs on her Plaisance village property and was ‘minding’ one for us. As the youngest child, and a homebody, I was always up under my beloved Siso even when she had company, provided I was seen and not heard. One male friend of Siso often visited and brought her Guiness Stout and he would fix me a sort of cocktail of Cola and Stout. To this day, my older brothers tantalize that Siso’s male friend was just lulling me to sleep and ensuring I would be out of the way!
But I rarely missed the magic Siso made in our little kitchen. She turned simple ingredients like our own creole eggs, condensed and evaporated milk, and nutmeg into Baked Custard. She put the mixture into a water bath, then into a large square black metal box of an oven atop our two-burner kerosene stove, which was way out of my short reach, but at which I stared with amazement while anticipating the emergence of the sweet treat. Also from Siso’s kitchen came cornmeal Cou-Cou which she always served with stewed fish, and her plantain Foo-Foo pounded in a hand carved wooden mortar & pestle, on which I fixated as if witnessing a sacred act. Also, after completing my Saturday chores which included taking lunch to Siso’s amputee “Cousin Roland”, on the way back I always purchased what I thought was the most delicious plantain chips from a roadside vendor, relishing the taste and the whole Saturday ritual orchestrated by my Siso and me. Our late national griot Dave Martins affirms such rituals by urging us in song to “…remember black pudding by the corner every Saturday, garlic pork at Christmas, ice cream on Sunday …”
My family’s ties to Guyanese food did not end when my siblings and I emigrated to New York, because my parents, and many other Guyanese emigrants, carried their food memories, desires, and skills resiliently into the diaspora. Like Siso, my mom was an entrepreneurial seamstress in Guyana, which laid the foundation for her post-retirement New York catering service which specialized in Guyanese Pholourie, Chowmein, Black Pudding, Fried Rice, and Fishcake. Such dishes and a plethora of pastries became familiar even to subsequent generations of Guyanese born in the diaspora, and for whom such seeming sacrosanct rituals as Christmas breakfast pepperpot, became a key to claiming a Guyanese identity.
Because of increasing global interests in Guyana’s extractive resources, more persons including re-patriots, can experience Guyanese cuisine at the source. This should motivate local food enterprises to prepare for more patrons who expect or demand high quality and creative Guyanese food. Already, programs like “Gordon Ramsay: Unchartered” and “Davidsbeenhere” have broadcast the good news of Guyanese cuisine and even sparked some useful food discourse. For instance, Gordan Ramsay’s search for the “DNA of Guyanese … somewhat unknown cuisine” sparked a local social media row over Delven Adams’ agreement with Ramsay that pepperpot can be made with chicken. Perhaps the purists were just shielding against Ramsay’s outsider status, because certainly innovation is a natural feature of cuisine culture. Besides, a few Warau folks I interviewed recently in Region #1 reported that they regularly cook and enjoy chicken pepperpot, in both the Cassareep and cassava water (Tuma Pot) variations.
Also contributing to our cuisine landscape are more and more foreign chains including Starbucks Coffee, Marriott (Terra Mare), Pegasus (Fusion), Aiden by Best Western (Mosiac), and P.F. Chang. While some might view P.F. Chang as a threat to our beloved Guyanese “Chiney” food tradition (in local parlance), others might welcome the opportunity to constructively debate how some local establishments can step up their game. Also new are several efforts of Guyanese re-patriots who are seizing the new opportunities to deliver more diverse, creative, and high quality dining options. These include Fresh Cafe, Lydia Valladares Vegan, Nikkei, Scotty’s Smokehouse, and Backyard Cafe.
Obviously, most of our Guyanese food stories are set geographically in the most populous areas, along the coast of the Atlantic, including Georgetown, and both banks of the lower Demerara River; however, our rural regions complete the story of our cuisine’s roots, diversity, dynamism, challenges, and potential. After visiting Rewa Village, Upper Rupununi in Region 9, Gordon Ramsay declared that Guyana’s “… jungle is filled with some of the most exciting foods anywhere on the planet.” I too can testify, from my research in Region 1, that the Warau communities of Imbotero and Smith Creek offer key contributions to the Guyanese cuisine story. Many in these communities are skilled farmers of bountiful and organic sweet cassava, bitter cassava, varieties of coconut, plantain, eddo, ginger, turmeric, peppers, boulanger, limes, etc., and foragers and hunters of crabs, bush meats, and fish from our remarkable Barima-Waini riverine mangrove forests. Although some of the large farmers are humbugged by crabs which they view as pests destroying their essential drainage dams, interest in crabbing persists and you can still see quakes of Bunduri crabs every week at the Kumaka Village market, although they are increasingly expensive. Also in these communities, women entrepreneurs are growing and manufacturing dried hot peppers with support from the Guyana Marine Conservation Society. Members of rural communities like Morawhanna, Imbotero and Smith Creek aspire to subsist as well as to profit from Guyana’s growing food appetites.
Our expanding economy with implications for cuisine hospitality is an opportunity to forge a national cuisine culture, or cuisine brand, rooted in Guyana’s unique traditions and endowments. What we urgently need is much more public discourse about food, including reviews and critiques of our many food enterprises, promoting public policies such as Protected Geographical Indication (PGI) and Protected Destination of Origin (PDO) legislation, and more innovative pedagogies like the agricultural and entrepreneurial program at Johanna Cecilia Secondary School. We are perfectly capable of telling our own stories and could seize this opportunity to define our cuisine and ourselves in the same way. I for one would welcome any feedback which assists my ongoing work to better define a comprehensive Guyanese cuisine, including its rural components or foundations.
As the nation faces seismic economic changes, we should take heed of the pessimism of Martin Carter’s popular quote, and seek to reverse that legacy through our creative energies and collective efforts. We would do well to be inspired by the mythological “philosopher’s stone” which alchemists believed could transmute ordinary metals into precious ones like gold. In other words, let us have faith in our own ability to start the practices and build the cultural foundations for an effective and prideful republic.
