Where to Eat and Drink in Barbados

At the Fish Pot, right on the water on the northwest coast outside of Speightstown, grilled lobster and seafood platters are as fresh as you’d expect. The ambiance is one of wicker chairs in an old stone fort house with wooden floors and shutters and lime-colored wooden railings on the terrace.

Lemon Arbour began as just another one of the many rum shops that can be found all over Barbados, but as its reputation for spectacular local dishes grew, so did the actual shop. Now, Lemon Arbor has become the place to go on Saturdays for an extended lunch of souse, fried pork, and other pork dishes, plus cheap Banks beers and rum. Locals often spend all day Saturday limin and meeting up with friends over good food and inexpensive drinks… And you could too, for a real taste of Bajan culture.

There’s simply no better place to get Caribbean spiny lobster on Barbados than Lobster Alive. Fact. Why? Because practically every lobster sold in every restaurant on the island comes through this one unassuming location. The problem is that due to Barbados’ natural shoreline topography, there are no quality lobster habitats – the waters surrounding the island are too deep to support lobsters in large enough quantities to meet the tastes and demands of locals and visitors. This means that all the islands lobsters need to be imported and that’s all done by one man: Art Taylor, an Australian with an airplane who realized long ago that the best way to get fresh lobster in Barbados was to go off-island and get it himself. Each week, he flies twice to Bequia in the Grenadines and loads his small single-engine Cherokee airplane with a good 700 pounds of the spiny treats. Yum!

Friday is fish day in the Caribbean, and the village of Oistins, on Barbados’s southern coast, hosts its famous Oistins Fish Fry. During the week, market stalls sell fresh dorado, barracuda, swordfish and more. Come Friday night, locals, dressed in their finest, along with tourists drink beer and rum and enjoy heaping plates of grilled fish, fish cakes and lobster. Stalls sell crafts, and everyone dances to live music from the band shell.

Located on the island’s unassuming south coast, down a street that doesn’t even have a name (which isn’t uncommon in Barbados) sits a little beach bar called the Carib. Wander up to the wood deck and smile at the Bajan waitress pulling double-duty behind the Mt. Gay Rum-lined bar, as she waves her hand at you, the universal sign for “just sit anywhere.” Pull up a non-luxurious plastic chair and soon you’ll find a cold Banks in your hand (the local brew - about the color of a Bud Light but with much more flavor) and a plate of steaming Bajan food on its way. The Carib, which I eat at almost daily during my time in Barbados (I’ve been to the island seven times), has the best flying fish on the island. Order yours platter or sandwich style, with sides of cou cou (a local dish about the consistency of mashed potatoes) and salad. Be sure and start your meal with a basket of pipping hot fish cakes - also the best on the island. Luckily when you’re done with lunch and ready for a nap, the beach is a few steps away. Grab a chair and an umbrella for $10 U.S. for the entire day. You probably have the beach to yourself, until school gets out when the local youth will stop by for a dip in the ocean and maybe a game of cricket.

Enormously popular, the Cliff Restaurant indeed sits right over the sea in Saint James Parish, and all of the tables on its two levels afford fine views. Many of the seafood dishes, such as curry mussels and chargrilled swordfish, are Asian influenced. At night, the outdoor seating area is illuminated by torchlight, revealing the stingrays swimming below.