French Guiana: Food and the National Dish

Amazon rainforest meets a French department

French Guiana is a French overseas territory on the northeast coast of South America, and its food reflects that unusual position directly: Amazonian rainforest ingredients and Amerindian and Maroon traditions sit alongside French bakery staples and European supermarket goods, all within a Creole culinary culture shaped further by Surinamese, Brazilian, Haitian, Chinese and Hmong communities who have settled here.

The national dish: bouillon d'awara

Bouillon d'awara, a rich, dark stew made from the pulp of the awara (or aouara) palm fruit cooked down and combined with smoked and salted meats, fish, and a long list of vegetables and spices, is often considered French Guiana's national dish and a symbol of Guianan identity. Traditionally prepared for Easter and Pentecost, the dish can take a day or more to cook properly and is treated as much as a family and community occasion as a meal.

Cassava, fruit and the Amazonian pantry

Cassava, prepared in forms including couac, a coarse toasted cassava flour used across the territory's Creole, Maroon and Amerindian kitchens, underpins much of the territory's everyday starch. Tropical fruit — pineapple, papaya, pitaya and many others — is abundant and sold fresh at markets across the territory, while game meat, river fish and coastal seafood round out a pantry that owes as much to the Amazon as to France.

A territory of distinct food communities

French Guiana's population includes a substantial Hmong community, whose families resettled here as refugees from Laos from 1977 and established market-garden villages, notably Cacao, that today supply fruit and vegetables to the territory's markets and are known for their own distinct Hmong cooking. Along the rivers of the interior, Amerindian and Maroon communities maintain long-established food traditions built on cassava, game and fish, the Amerindian ones far older than French settlement, while Cayenne and the coast lean toward Creole and French cooking.

Dishes to know

Five more to recognise across French Guiana:

• Couac — coarse, toasted cassava flour, a staple of Amerindian and

Maroon cooking along the territory's rivers.

• Colombo — a curry-style stew of meat and vegetables such as potato and

green beans, shared across the French Caribbean.

• Gibier — game meat such as agouti, a traditional part of Guianan

Creole cooking.

• Blaff — fish or chicken poached in a broth of onions, garlic, celery

and basil.

• Pimentade — a fish or chicken court-bouillon cooked in a tomato-based

sauce.

Drinks

Ti punch, a simple mix of rhum agricole, lime and cane syrup shared across the French Caribbean, is the territory's most characteristic drink, and locally grown tropical fruit goes into a wide range of fresh juices. As French Guiana is part of France, French wine is easy to find in supermarkets and restaurants.

Eating as a traveller

Vegetarians will find fresh produce widely available, thanks especially to Hmong market gardens, though meat and fish dominate most traditional Creole and Amerindian dishes. Tap water is safe in Cayenne and Kourou. Visiting during the Easter period, when bouillon d'awara is cooked across the territory, offers a rare chance to see the dish's full, day-long preparation in person.

What to take from the table

Bouillon d'awara, cooked for Easter and worth planning a visit around, is the dish that best captures French Guiana's food identity — Amazonian at its base, and shaped further by every community that has settled here since.