Sint Maarten: Food and the National Dish

A small island with one distinctive local specialty

Sint Maarten, the Dutch side of an island split between the Netherlands and France, shares much of its everyday food with the wider Caribbean, but has one product it is especially known for: guavaberry, a wild fruit found on the island and turned into a rum liqueur closely associated with Sint Maarten.

The signature product: guavaberry liqueur

Guavaberry liqueur, made by infusing rum with the small, tart guavaberry fruit (not a guava, despite the name) and sweetening it, is Sint Maarten's most distinctive local food product. Guavaberry liqueur is especially associated with Christmas on the island, where it features in traditional Christmas songs, and is a seasonal tradition rather than only a tourist souvenir.

Rum, seafood and a genuinely shared Caribbean pantry

Fresh seafood, conch, saltfish, callaloo, goat and johnnycakes anchor much of everyday cooking on the Dutch side of the island, closely shared with the wider Caribbean and the neighbouring French side, with French, Dutch, Indian and Indonesian influences. Guavaberry, growing wild on the island, is the ingredient most closely associated with Sint Maarten itself.

History behind the berry

Guavaberry trees grow wild on Sint Maarten and on many other Caribbean islands. Colonists from Denmark and the Netherlands found that the fruit could flavour rum by infusion, much like an infused schnapps, and the liqueur became a Christmas drink on Sint Maarten and in the Virgin Islands. Today it is also made commercially in Philipsburg, and the guavaberry colada is a common island cocktail.

Dishes to know

Five more to recognise on Sint Maarten:

• Conch and dumplings — a conch broth served with dumplings, described

as the island's national dish.

• Johnnycake — a cornmeal flatbread, often fried, eaten across much of

the Caribbean.

• Saltfish — salted, preserved fish, usually cod, a long-standing

Caribbean staple.

• Callaloo soup — a soup of leafy callaloo greens.
• Curried goat — goat stewed in a curry sauce, one of the island's

everyday dishes.

Drinks

Guavaberry liqueur, especially around Christmas, is Sint Maarten's most distinctive drink. Local rums, Carib and Presidente beers and fresh tropical juices are the usual everyday drinks.

Eating as a traveller

Vegetarians will find rice, bean and vegetable-based dishes manageable, though seafood and saltfish are common across much of the island's cooking. Tap water on the Dutch side is desalinated and considered safe. Tasting guavaberry liqueur in Philipsburg is a genuine way to try the island's most distinctive product.

What to take from the table

Guavaberry liqueur, made from a wild fruit that grows on this small island, is the closest thing Sint Maarten has to a food identity fully its own, set apart from the wider shared Caribbean and Dutch cooking found on its plates.