How would I describe my response to being told that Baxters Road was no longer the preferred spot in Barbados for eating fried fish? Wary is the word that leaps to mind. Nobody was claiming that the fish fryers had abandoned their positions on Baxters Road. Instead, we were being told that in recent years it had become customary for both tourists and Bajans to patronize fish fryers gathered at a fishing port called Oistins, on the south coast, and that Baxters Road had, in the meantime, become what the concierge at the hotel called "a bit rowdy." I remembered Baxters Road as being on the ragged side of raffish even in 1986. Its commercial establishments ran heavily to bars that, particularly late on a weekend evening, were patronized by Bajans in a celebratory mood.
What made me wary was that Oistins sounded suspiciously like a cleaned-up version of Baxters Road, the culinary equivalent of those tidy programs of native ceremonies that a hotel in the South Pacific might put together for Americans visiting on package tours. In any number of places at any number of times, I have resisted suggestions that I might have a more enjoyable meal in a somewhat better neighborhood. On our second night in Barbados, a Tuesday, Alice and I headed for Baxters Road.
I had to admit that it appeared somewhat the worse for wear. Several of the business establishments were shuttered. A couple of people were sleeping on the sidewalk. Although there were two conventional supermarkets, two or three other stores were arranged in a way that put both the merchandise and the salesclerk within what amounted to a cage. Enid's, to my monumental sadness, no longer existed. But even though we had arrived early in the week and early in the evening, there were four or five fish fryers in the usual spot. In fact, a couple of them had stalls that seemed much more elaborate than I remembered, and the fish was being served not in paper bags but in polystyrene containers with hinged covers, accompanied by plastic forks and paper napkins. The amenities of Baxters Road still didn't include any place to sit.
We bought some fried tuna from a stand called Sandra's and walked a few yards away to eat in the light emerging from the Pink Star, a bar that was offering liver cutters as a special that night. The tuna came with what's called in Barbados macaroni pie. It looks like traditional macaroni and cheese, served in a pale loaf that's shaped like a generous helping of lasagne, but, like Bajan fish cakes or Bajan fried fish, it's likely to be slightly spicy even before it's doused with pepper sauce. It tastes, in other words, like macaroni and cheese made by your mother on a day she had a little devilment in her, the source of which was probably not the sort of thing she would reveal to the children.
Sandra put out an acceptable version of macaroni pie—a cheering reminder of all the side dishes to come. Sandra's tuna was simply magnificent. The fish itself was moist and flavorful. The batter was thin, with no resemblance at all to what Chicken Betty used to refer to contemptuously as plaster-cast batter. From what I've read, Sandra's little secret might have included lime and pepper and chives and ginger and cloves. Fortunately, we got two plastic forks with the one order of tuna. Fried tuna! I thought of people across the United States ordering tuna in those trendy joints I think of as sleepy-time restaurants, because everything is served on a bed of something else. The waiter is informing them, in a slightly patronizing tone, that the tuna is seared and absolutely always served pink in the middle, on a bed of lentils. I felt sorry for those people, even though they presumably didn't have to eat standing up.
I had no intention of rejecting the Oistins fish fry out of hand. In fact, I was looking forward to it, particularly after a wide-ranging discussion of the fish-eating landscape with two Bajan men who had been shooting the breeze at a closed filling station in Bridgetown when we stopped to ask directions to Baxters Road. Their enthusiasm for an establishment at Oistins called the Fish Net, which actually grills rather than fries its fish, was among some strong indications I'd received that the Oistins fish feed could not be dismissed as a sanitized mock-up of the real article. We had already arranged to go on the next Friday with some friends who happened to be on the island. Although it's possible to find fish at Oistins just about every night, the operation goes into high gear on the weekends, particularly Friday nights. We were already armed not only with instructions from the filling-station kibitzers but also with a crude map of the Oistins fish stalls, provided by a friend in New York who had called the marlin at one a transformational experience.
In the days we waited for the Oistins fish fry, I began to develop an improbable craving for macaroni pie shortly after breakfast every morning—a craving that the Freudians would presumably trace to having been brought up by someone who early on ceded her macaroni and cheese responsibilities to the Kraft corporation. One morning I held out until almost eleven before I bought my first helping of macaroni pie, and found myself boasting to Alice about my willpower. Once I had my macaroni pie fix, I was usually ready for a cutter. I had flying-fish cutters everywhere from the expensive hotels on the west coast to the bars and beach restaurants on the windy and sparsely populated and breathtakingly beautiful east coast. I had stewed salt fish cutters and fish cake cutters. Given the dough content of a Bajan fish cake, a fish cake cutter could be thought of as something approaching a bread sandwich, an observation I offer without a trace of criticism.
Pinterest
