Dominica

Dominica eats straight from its steep volcanic slopes and rivers. The national dish is callaloo, a thick, creamy soup of dasheen leaves and okra simmered in coconut milk, often with crab or salt meat — bright green and comforting. Around it sits the everyday plate of 'provisions': boiled dasheen, yam, green banana and breadfruit, the starchy anchor beside fried river fish or saltfish and bakes. The pantry is Creole through and through — Indigenous Kalinago, African, French and English threads on one plate.

This is the Caribbean's last Kalinago stronghold, and their foodways live on in the Kalinago Territory, where cassava bread is still pressed and baked to the original recipe. Come in the October Creole season for land-crab-rich callaloo, and look out for seasonal titiwi accra, fritters of tiny translucent river fish. Wash it down with a spiced cocoa tea or a cold Kubuli by the water.