Food · Saint Helena

Saint Helena: Food and the National Dish

Plo, tuna fishcakes and one of the world's most expensive coffees, from the remote South Atlantic island where Napoleon spent his final exile

By Worldlore Editorial · 30 September 2026

A historic market building on a town street
The 1865 market building in the centre of Jamestown, Saint Helena's capital. (Kevstan / Wikimedia Commons · CC BY-SA 4.0)

A remote island of fish, coffee and home cooking

Saint Helena, one of the most remote islands in the world, has no official national dish. Its food is largely British-style home cooking with local touches, most local recipes being variations of dishes brought by travellers, shaped by the ocean around it and one small but internationally known export crop.

Fishcakes and the island's tuna

Plo, a spiced pilau of rice cooked with curry, similar to the Indian pulao, is often described as the island's signature dish. Fishcakes in the St Helena style, made with local tuna, bound with egg and spiced with chilli, are just as familiar. Saint Helena's small fishing industry lands mostly tuna, which appears across the island's home cooking, while much other food is imported from South Africa and the UK.

Dishes to know

What is actually eaten on Saint Helena:

  • Plo — a spiced, curried rice dish, the island's best-known

home-cooked meal.

  • Fishcakes — made from local tuna, with egg binding and chilli.
  • Fresh tuna — the main catch of the island's fishing boats, eaten in

many forms.

  • Pumpkin fritters — a familiar local staple.
  • Black pudding — a British-style staple of island home cooking.

Drinks

Saint Helena coffee, grown on small farms including Rosemary Plain, is the island's most distinctive drink, exported in small quantities as one of the most expensive coffees in the world. The island's distillery makes Tungi Spirit from the fruit of the prickly pear, along with coffee liqueur, gin and rum.

A gate leading to rows of coffee plants
The gate to a Saint Helena coffee farm at Rosemary Plain, growing Green Tipped Bourbon coffee. (Kevstan / Wikimedia Commons)

Eating as a traveller

Saint Helena receives very few visitors given its remoteness, and dining options in Jamestown are limited, and much of the island's larder arrives by cargo ship. Trying a fishcake, a plate of plo and a cup of Saint Helena coffee in Jamestown is a low-key way to taste what the island actually produces itself.

What to take from the table

Saint Helena's food story is shaped almost entirely by its isolation: plo and tuna fishcakes at home, and one of the world's most expensive coffees from a handful of small hillside farms.

Explore the destination