Bermuda: Food and the National Dish

A small island shaped by the sea and the British table

Bermuda's food blends British and Portuguese cooking with preparations of local seafood, with further influences from North America and the West Indies. Fish and other seafood, drawn from the reefs and deep water surrounding the island, sit at the centre of most of what is considered distinctly Bermudian, alongside a handful of dishes tied so closely to specific days of the year that they are almost appointments rather than recipes.

The national dish: Bermuda fish chowder

Bermuda fish chowder is the dish most closely identified with the island: a rich, tomato-based soup built on local fish stock, vegetables and seasoning, traditionally finished tableside with a splash of dark Bermudian rum and a few drops of sherry peppers sauce, a local hot condiment. The combination of rum and pepper sauce stirred in at the last moment is widely treated as essential rather than optional.

Dishes tied to a day of the year

Bermudian food is unusually calendar-bound. Good Friday means codfish cakes — pan-fried patties of salt cod and potato — served with hot cross buns. Sunday mornings traditionally call for a codfish breakfast: boiled salt cod and potatoes served with banana, hard-boiled egg and either a tomato-onion sauce or a butter or olive oil sauce. And Christmas belongs to cassava pie, a sweet-and-savoury pie of grated cassava root with butter, eggs and sugar, layered with chicken or pork and baked until firm.

Dishes to know

Five more to recognise in Bermuda:

• Codfish cakes with hot cross buns — salt cod and potato patties, a Good

Friday tradition.

• Codfish and potatoes — boiled salt cod with potatoes, banana, egg and a

tomato or olive oil sauce, a classic Sunday breakfast.

• Cassava pie — grated cassava layered with meat and egg, baked for

Christmas.

• Hoppin' John — rice cooked with black-eyed peas, a Bermudian speciality

shared with the American South.

• Bermuda spiny lobster — a local delicacy in season from September to

March.

Rum and a trademarked cocktail

Rum swizzle, a sweeter mix of rum, fruit juices and a sweetener, is often called Bermuda's national drink and is associated above all with the Swizzle Inn of Bailey's Bay, whose motto is "Swizzle Inn, Swagger Out".

Eating as a traveller

Seafood, especially the chowder and in-season spiny lobster, is the highlight and reliably fresh. Vegetarians will find the island's calendar dishes challenging, since most are built around fish or meat, though standard international vegetarian options are available in restaurants aimed at visitors. With no rivers or freshwater lakes, the island relies largely on rainwater, which every household is required by law to collect from its roof. Bermuda is an expensive place to eat by almost any standard, reflecting its cost of living generally.

What to take from the table

A proper bowl of Bermuda fish chowder, rum and sherry peppers stirred in at the table, is the one dish every visitor should have — and for anyone on the island at Easter, Good Friday's codfish cakes with hot cross buns are worth timing a trip around.