Top Caribbean Restaurants in St. Louis, Missouri

“I said: Doctor!  Is there nothing I can take to relieve this bellyache?” He said: “Put de lime in the coconut and mix it all together, put de lime in the coconut and drink it all up…”

Maybe singer/songwriter Harry Nilsson had just eaten at a Caribbean restaurant before he wrote the lyrics to the above song, because the food can get a tad bit spicy, but the stomach can deal with that later, just let me get my taste buds around that jerk chicken.

Since the forced arrival of slaves from Africa to the Caribbean in the sixteenth century, the basic ingredients of those original African dishes form the foundation of all Caribbean cooking. These foods are cassava, corn meal, sweet potatoes, yams, plantains, and bananas. Conkie is a slightly sweet dish containing corn meal or sweet potato and is cooked in plantain or banana leaves. Bambula cake, or bammie, popular in the Caribbean Islands, is the original cassava bread of Africa. Jerk pork was introduced by the Cormantee slaves from West Africa. They were hunters who traveled over great distances and cooked their pork over hot coals to preserve it. A lot of the time all of the ingredients were simmered slowly in a giant pot over a fire and each house in the village would contribute. Sort of a communal cooking pot, so to speak.

If you want to spice it up a little this winter, put on your straw hat, sunglasses, tropical shirt, shorts, and sandals and head out to a  couple of the best Caribbean restaurants in the St. Louis area: