Belize Cuisine:
Caldo, Chimole, Relleno...

ABOVE: Typical Belizean fast-food for those on the go or on a budget is usually a chunk of chicken or beef barbeque served on a couple of hot flour tortillas.

Other typical Belizean dishes associated with specific cultures include the Mayan caldo, which is chicken (or other meat) cooked in a caldo sauce (a specific type of seasoning) and eaten with corn tortillas. Other dishes, generally associated with Maya-Mestizo culture but which generally are available if not daily then on special menu days in many restaurants include chimole and relleno (both often referred to locally as black dinner because of the distinctive black color of the seasoning which leads to a soup in which chicken and ground pork are cooked). These are eaten with corn tortillas. And, speaking of soup-like dishes, we cannot leave without mentioning split-pea soup, eaten with white rice and baked or fried plantains. Variations include curried split peas and stewed split peas, the latter generally accompanied by dumplings (boiled flour balls) pigtail and fish or other meat.

There is so much more we can give you to eat – sorry, to read! But by now you must have gotten a good taste of what Belizean food is all about. Traditional Belizean food that is! And, as alluded to in the opening, with tourism now accounting for 25% of very Belizean dollar, a variety of international dishes are readily available in many of the restaurants located in tourist destinations like San Pedro Ambergris Caye or Placencia, and at many of restaurants in the bigger hotels in Belize City. But, of course, many of these dishes use basic Belizean seasonings, vegetables, seafood and meats.

As an example, the 2004 menu for the Secretary’s Day lunch buffet at one restaurant was fully European in cuisine, offering choices of Russian Salad, French Garden Salad, Italian Pasta Salad, Belgian Stewed Chicken, Portuguese Marinated Vegetables, French Bouillabaisse, Italian Risotto, Roast Beef with English Mustard, Banana Éclairs and Spanish Flan. With the tourist trade, too, has seen deli offerings including pizza (vegetarian, meat and seafood varieties), and the ubiquitous hot dog and burger with fries are now as common as rice-and-beans and tacos. Chinese cuisine is also very popular, and Chinese restaurants abound, offering as well the quick fry chicken (in portions ranging from $1.00 up!) San Pedro Ambergris Caye also boasts of restaurants offering specific Thai cuisine, Italian cuisine and other exotic (from a tropical perspective that is!) offerings, while a couple restaurants in Belize City are strictly Indian cuisine but of all these, it is Chinese cuisine that has, to date, become part and parcel of what is now offered up as Belizean cuisine. Indeed, chow mien and shrimp fried rice is as much an everyday choice as is rice-and-beans, which some of the Chinese restaurants now offer on their menus, further cementing the place of rice-and-beans as truly the staple of Belizean cuisine!

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