Trini Cuisine With
Fashion's Queen

Trini Cuisine With Fashion's Queen

Amanda Murray is a NYC-based creative consultant and stylist. For unfiltered takes on fashion and culture at large, subscribe to her Substack, Only Saying It Once.

I was born in the Caribbean, in Trinidad and Tobago. My mom was a chief steward on a ship for many years so I mainly grew up with my grandparents and spent the weekends with her. My mom eventually moved to Lyon, France to study the culinary arts and become a chef.  I didn't want to go to France—as a kid you're thinking, oh my gosh, I’d have to learn a new language. Eventually she moved to South London, and I moved there when she did. I was about 11 years old.

In the Caribbean, particularly in Trinidad and Tobago, we’re all sort of cooking the same things. On Saturdays, the entire island cooks soup. And the soups are amazing. They’re heavily seasoned with herbs, with lots of corn and vegetables, and dumplings. During the week we cook something called Pelau, which comes from when the island was colonized by the Spaniards. They have Pelau in Spain but ours is a little bit different, it has more of a Caribbean spin with our spices. Peas, rice, chicken, sometimes we do beef. My grandparents would make that on Mondays or Wednesdays.

On Sundays, we did macaroni pie, a spin on macaroni and cheese. We bake it, and it tastes way better that way. There's lots of cheese on top of it. And we'll do that with callaloo, which is similar to spinach, blended with coconut milk and okra. We'll do baked chicken or something like that as an addition with red beans and potato salad. I never thought about it in this way; that almost every household does a variation of those meals on those days. 

I'm not trying to shade any of the other Caribbean islands, but I truly feel that Trinidad & Tobago has the best food.

My mom was a chef in London. She worked with Gordon Ramsey. She also did a lot of catering. She'd cater for Harrods Food Hall and also red carpet events. She did a lot of Thai food at home because that’s her personal favorite cuisine. And Thai is a little similar to the Caribbean in terms of the herbs we use to cook food. So lots of Thai fusion in our home kitchen. 

When it comes to takeaway, I really loved Nando's. I loved, loved, loved Nando's. And I always had fish and chips. I remember my first time having it, I thought it was a bit bland but eventually I got used to, and appreciated, the simplicity of it. There's a place in South London that sells fried chicken called Morley's, it’s very popular. In Brixton at the time, there were a lot of smaller Jamaican restaurants that I would stop at for a quick bite. Caribbean households are really not that big on eating out at restaurants unless it's for a very special location, so my mom always made it a point to cook at home.

Every time I go home to visit my mom in the Caribbean now, I request that she makes curry crab with curry conchs and dumplings. I’ve tried to have that meal here at Sugar Cane, which is a Trinidadian restaurant not too far from me in Flatbush, and it's good. But the crab in the Caribbean is different. It has more flavor. Likely because it's fresher. 

I was just in Queens a few weeks ago spending a week with my uncle and I ordered from Trinciti a lot. They do a Bake and Shark with pineapple and it's amazing and so flavorful. Sometimes I order it here in Brooklyn and it takes two hours to get here and it's almost $50. I don't know why I do that to myself. I would never tell my mom that because it's just insane for one sandwich. But I need it. I also order the curry shrimp roti from Trinciti. And a coconut Bake and Saltfish with currant rolls from Allan's bakery in Flatbush. 

It was very hard for me to find good Trinidadian food in London, which is kind of strange because Trinidadians have settled there since the war. My granddad lived in London during the war. If anyone knows of any spots, please let me know. I’m overdue for a trip.

Where's Amanda eating?