Where to stay

Anse Chastanet Clustered on a hillside around a fine strip of pretty volcanic sand down a rough track from Soufrière, Anse Chastanet has been going since 1974 and is the very essence of romantic resorts. This 243ha estate encompasses four restaurants, a dive school and an overgrown former plantation. It shirks the trend of luxury hotels with its low-tech mentality: if you want to swim, you’ll have to swim in the sea as there’s no pool, and TVs and radios are banned. Doubles from £211. Soufrière, 00 1 800 223 1108, www.ansechastanet.com

C’est la Vie Set on quiet Trouya Pointe but within each reach of Rodney Bay, this gorgeous property is a gingerbread-cute Caribbean idyll that retains an honest cosiness despite its large size. There’s a huge, lush tropical garden with a meandering swimming pool, and a choice of apartment, villa or cottage. An on-site chef serves up a blend of international cuisine and Creole soul food. Doubles from £256. Trouya Pointe, Gros Islet, 00 1 758 452 0933, www.villacestlavie.com

Cap Maison Set on the north coast, this 49-room address has whitewashed Spanish-style buildings, with preened gardens and views to Pigeon Island. Best of all is alfresco restaurant Cliff at Cap which has great views, a bar with an excellent spectrum of rums, and a top- class Mediterranean-Caribbean fusion menu from Craig Jones. Try ceviche of reef conch and crabmeat ravioli; razor clams and squid in coconut foam. Doubles from £275. Smugglers Cove Drive,
Cap Estate, 00 1 758 457 8670, www.capmaison.com

Jade Mountain Rising above Anse Chastanet with astonishing Pitons views, Jade Mountain is an adults-only hotel within a hotel and it’s an architectural statement, resembling a Bond villain’s pad in the tropical landscape. Each room has its own stone walkway and the hotel, which has a bewilderment of levels, is decorated with stone pillars that resemble Tibetan cairns, topped with ceramic art, and cascading koi pools. The suites are vast and have dispensed with the third wall, so you are at one with the elements. Most have private infinity pools inside… and the butler’s on speed dial. Doubles from £815. Soufrière, 00 1 758 459 4000, www.jademountain.com

The Landings Sprawling over a vast stretch of reclaimed land at Pigeon Island Causeway, this resort of luxury suites includes a harbour for yacht docking, a large Soleil Spa, a kids’ club, a beach club and multiple pools. Rooms are self-catering and there are also three restaurants, and an affiliation with the local St Lucia Golf & Country Club. £255. Pigeon Island Causeway, Rodney Bay, Gros Islet, 00 1 866 252-0689, www.thelandingsstlucia.com

Sugar Beach Snazzy Sugar Beach nestles between the Pitons themselves – a prime position indeed. Viceroy Resorts took over the old Jalousie Plantation and has spruced it up to the tune of £65 million with custom-made white furnishings, top-notch bathrooms with giant soakers, and every kind of high-tech accoutrement. Doubles from £495 (minimum seven-night stay). Val des Pitons, Soufrière,
00 1 758 456 8000, www.viceroyhotelsandresorts.co...

Travel Information

The currency of St Lucia is the Eastern Caribbean dollar, and time is four hours behind the UK. The best time to visit the island is between November and April, when the climate is generally at its driest and warmest. Flight time from the UK is usually about nine hours.

GETTING THERE

British Airways offers daily direct flights from London Gatwick to St Lucia’s Hewanorra International Airport. www.ba.com One-stop flights are also available into St Lucia’s Vigie airport.

RESOURCES

Saint Lucia Tourist Board is the official resource for information about the island. Find itineraries, accommodation options, tips and advice, and unmissable experiences at www.stlucia.org

FURTHER READING

Rum Justice by Jolien Harmsen (Macmillan Caribbean, £2.83)

The rich, dramatic, Creole-speaking world of St Lucia is the backdrop for Harmsen’s murky tale of crime and Caribbean intrigue.

The Great Mango Book by Allen Susser (Ten Speed Press, £9.47). Fans of the fruit will love this colourful compendium, which dissects the fruit’s many varieties. Learn how to cut and present them on the table and use in numerous recipes – from chutneys to cocktails.

The Poetry of Derek Walcott 1948-2013 (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, £18.26). This best-of collection from St Lucia’s most erudite son, a Nobel literary prize winner, touches on the island’s defining themes.

CARBON COUNTING

Return flights from London Gatwick to St Lucia produce 1.9 tonnes of CO2. To offset the emissions, visit www.climatecare.org. The cost for this trip is £14.23 and donations go towards supporting environmental projects around the world, from clean-energy schemes to rainforest restoration.

Where to eat

Prices are for three courses, excluding wine, unless otherwise stated.

Apsara East Indian-Caribbean fusion restaurant that’s part of Anse Chastanet resort. It celebrates historic ties between St Lucia and the Subcontinent, so head here to feast on dishes like goat vindaloo and prawn jhinga, while enjoying the charming setting on the beach. £37. Soufrière, 00 1 800 223 1108,www.ansechastanet.com

Bayside Restaurant Chef Jacques Chretien’s menu specialises in Latin-Creole fusion, including inventive ceviches like Mexican-inspired mahi mahi, kingfish in Peruvian tiger’s milk, and yellow fin tuna with oriental flavours. It’s part of Sugar Beach resort, which also has the Great Room for fine dining, ramping up local ingredients in dishes like rack of tuna with foie gras, or lobster emulsion with passionfruit. Mangos, tamarinds, papayas are made into chutneys; mahi mahi, tuna and kingfish gently smoked for carpaccio. £45. Val des Pitons, Soufrière, 00 1 758 456 8000, www.viceroyhotelsandresorts.co...

Boucan A hotel and restaurant set among the cocoa groves of the renowned Rabot Estate. The dishes here make the most of the product, from cacao Bellinis to cocoa-infused curries. £70. Rabot Estate, Soufrière, 00 1 758 572 9600, hotelchocolat.com

Creole Grill This brightly decked out but low-key restaurant in the Coco Palm resort does a good line in well-executed, classic St Lucian Creole numbers such as lamb chowder, curried lamb, stewed saltfish with green fig and plantain, and sides of steamed ground provisions, red bean rice, fried ripe plantain and cornmeal dumplings. The puddings are unrepentantly Caribbean, and include banana fritters, pineapple upside- down cake and fruitcake rum baba. £25. Rodney Bay Village, 00 758 456 2800, www.coco-resorts.com/dining.ph...

Flavours of the Grill A brightly hued wooden house, where they make quality home-style Creole food, from shrimp in Creole sauce, to steak with bone marrow and grilled snapper with sweet potato mash. £15. Marie Therese Street, Gros Islet, 00 1 758 450 9722, www.grillflavours.com

Jambe de Bois Horizontally laid-back restaurant right on water at Pigeon Island with driftwood-carved furniture serving local fare such as curried lamb, fresh kingfish and seafood lasagne. Live music on weekend nights. £15. Pigeon Island, 00 1 758 452 0321

Orlando’s Restaurant Chef Orlando Satchell’s ethos is ‘Share the Love’ – by that he means to bring authentic Caribbean-style cooking to the market, and to use only freshly caught fish and meat and veg from local farmers. £15. 00 1 758 572 6613; Bridge Street, Soufrière

Food Glossary

Food and Travel Review

It’s 7am at Castries market and the trestle tables heave with produce. There are christophenes (squash-like savoury fruit) and copious breadfruit, plantains, dasheen, yams and sweet potatoes, which, en masse, St Lucians refer to as ‘ground provisions’. There are okra and Scotch bonnets, pumpkins and kale, fat cucumbers, clouds of callaloo for bouyon (a soupy stew), vast limes, misshapen soursops, papayas, sweet plums, ackee and more. I’ve never tried ackee before and my face registers surprise at the sweetness; they all laugh merrily as if I am a baby being weaned for the first time. There are so many mango varieties, and the people who we’re with – staff from the charming villa C’est La Vie on Trouya Pointe where we’re staying – argue about which are sweeter and juicier. The Julie mango is toothsome, tangy and satisfyingly smooth, with no fibrousness. A sparkly septuagenarian sells home-made spiced rum enriched with cinnamon bark, aniseed, nutmeg, sea moss and bay leaf.

It contains a local tree bark called ‘bois bandé’, meaning ‘hard wood’. To get this across she flexes her biceps, and the way she’s smirking, I get the picture this isn’t the muscle she’s referring to. She also sells the garlic, cinnamon, nutmeg, cocoa, parsley, cloves and allspice brought by the Indian-influenced British and the East Indians.

A dilapidated truck is piled high with coconuts; vendors are chopping off the tops with machetes and inserting straws so locals can partake of coconut water, their favourite drink. Crowds queue for Saturday soul food: ‘pepper pot’ (a bubbling richness of garlic, crab meat, scallions, hot peppers, yam and callaloo), black pudding and bakes. Apparently, nothing says St Lucia like a saltfish bake, so I go for it. It’s a crunchy, savoury doughnut packed with spicy saltfish, Scotch bonnet, pepper salad and shredded cucumber. It’s delightfully warming. ‘Bakes’, which are everywhere in St Lucia, are simple spheres of plain flour dough either baked or fried, served as a side dish or filled. When baked, they’re satisfyingly chewy, like a tough bagel; when fried, they become ‘floats’, sinful but delicious. The most famous float is ‘Shark and Bake’, an earthy stew of fish and vegetables.

Emerging like a volcanic fang from the glittering Caribbean, St Lucia and her Pitons are the poster girls for the ultimate West Indian honeymoon, but this resort image belies a rich culture reflected in the cuisine. Each Caribbean society is a melting pot, each with its unique blend. St Lucia combines native Arawak and Carib, West African, European and East Indian (this last group were brought as indentured workers after Abolition). It was swapped between the French and the British 14 times, during which period foreign ingredients and habits melded with the imported richness of the African slaves. To boot, modern-day Creole food is now heavily influenced by the 21st-century luxury-hotel lifestyle that has internationalised the culinary scene and in many ways, dulled it.

This heady infusion has resulted in powerful, earthy, unpretentious and hearty food – strong broths, stews and soups proliferate, packed with vegetables, fish and local meat. A long history of poverty and West African influences point to why, in St Lucia, the whole of the animal is eaten and there is no slaughterhouse squeamishness. Meats (and seafood) are often stewed and browned over time, in coconut milk or water, to produce bouyon. Ground provisions, such as plantain, banana, dasheen, ground yam and dumplings, form the base. Potato, onions, thyme, celery, fiery Scotch bonnet, flour and cornmeal bulk things up. These slow-cooking methods are enhanced by the use of a St Lucia coalpot, a simple, foot-long, charcoal-fired clay barbecue topped with a lid, used in the West Indies for generations. The heat is subdued enough to lend itself to deep, rich flavours, allowing the nutrients to shine though. The results are earthier and richer than you can imagine. We’re in the warm, ebullient company of chef Julio, a fan of coalpot cooking on the beach, who was born and raised on this patch and is now filling bellies at C’est La Vie. On the way back from the market we stop at a tiny fishing community at Marisule Beach. Julio’s friends have landed some goatfish, red fish and butter fish, which he picks up for our lunch.

Julio’s stream of Creole soul food is endless but my favourite is his simple breakfast: swordfish salad, golden apple juice from the tree outside my window, sinful dumplings, and rich, warm, spiced cocoa tea with cinnamon, bay leaf, cocoa pods and specks of freshly ground cocoa. Second favourite is his ‘Exoctupus’ – braised octopus with fried kale, and a coriander and mango dressing, and the rich, thick and utterly delicious callaloo soup that is so frequently eaten here, made from the smoky, spinach-like plant.

Seafood is key, and includes langouste, lambi (conch), barracuda, grouper, crab, mahi-mahi and snapper. It’s often eaten as a bouyon. The best place to eat it is at a street fish fry. On Friday night, the unassuming fishing village of Anse La Raye comes alive. Conch, octopus and bakes, fried or roasted breadfruit, and fish in broths are sold from alfresco stalls. My snapper in broth, cooked in foil and accompanied by a bake, is one of the best things I eat here, rich with a spicy bite. It is liming night and the streets are colonised by sound systems and locals enjoying a spot of rum.

You’d think seafood would be in abundance in the Caribbean, but there’s a genuine supply problem in St Lucia. Langouste is seasonal, prawns aren’t cultivated and overfishing is an issue. Julio takes us to the Union Aquaculture Facility, set up as a joint venture with the Taiwanese government to farm freshwater tilapia and shrimp. Tilapia, which has a crab-like flavour, good flesh and can be found in the rivers of St Lucia, is the absolute number one with Asians.

Lack of fish is not the only food problem St Lucia faces. This is a region that spends billions of pounds a year on food imports. Farms are minute in St Lucia, where anything over two hectares is classed as ‘big’. Once a major producer of bananas, known as ‘green gold’ in the fifties, the island was dealt a body blow in 1999 when the US, which operates facilities with dirt-cheap labour in South America, won a long-running trade war against the European Union’s banana import regime, ending an agreement that favoured the Caribbean. Production became unviable, opening the door to the drugs industry. However, pride in local produce is resurgent, with an ‘Eat What You Grow’ mentality on the rise, and a renewed interest in classic Caribbean root vegetable crops.

Julio takes us to the 17ha Sir Arthur Lewis College farm, where Tyrone Sankar, a college professor, introduces students to the practical application of agriculture. It’s a great place to see local produce in the raw, from apples (golden, wax and love), pineapples, dragon fruit, starfruit, cantaloupe, mango and cucumber, to eggplants and watermelons (all sold at the gate from 7am-4pm), plus goats, chickens, a small tilapia farm and an immaculate pigpen. Encouraging efficient, small-scale farming is a struggle, says Sankar.

Farming is still frowned upon, associated with poverty and even the stigma of slavery. Subsistence farming remains a fact: ‘Mostly, you see people with garden forks and machetes,’ he says. ‘The most high-tech piece of equipment on the farm is a tractor, which shows how behind we are.’ Sankar is working with the Ministry of Agriculture to change attitudes and grant young people better access to land, but it’s a frustratingly slow process.

You can’t talk about St Lucian food now without acknowledging the power of the hotels, where the fusion of world and Caribbean food often first hits the cauldron. At The Landings, an upmarket resort in Rodney Bay, over a meal dreamed up by executive chef Frederic Cougnon – a local tomato coulis, conch, snapper ceviche and wakame rice paper wrap, and a lobster bisque infused with garden-grown lemongrass – we talk to general manager Kashmie Ali. He jokes that what keeps authentic St Lucian food off the menu are bones and fish heads: they come a cropper with Health and Safety as choking hazards. Goodbye chicken-feet soup, chicken backs and fish heads. Instead, at the resort’s Beach Club, a familiar Euro-Caribbean fusion dominates: upmarket ground-provision chips, saltfish fritters, jerk-chicken Caesar, tropical crab-meat pitta pockets, local rotis and chutneys, and blackened mahi-mahi burger.

The general manager of Cap Maison, Ross Stevenson, tells me, over breadfruit balls with a curried mango dip and langouste tossed in pumpkin seeds and jerk, that when guests request unreconstructed St Lucian food, he introduces them to his staff-canteen chef, Owen (whose given name is ‘Keep It Sweet’). Owen’s split yellow-pea soups, cow-heel soups and saltfish bakes receive no complaints.

The Landings’ Kashmie Ali argues that a decade ago, hotel food was down-market and supply was a huge issue. ‘Now, ingredients and supply are easier both nationally and internationally, and many hotels have their own gardens and are exploring the farm-to-table concept,’ he says. ‘Home-grown chefs are also coming up. There’s no need to import foreign chefs any more.’

It’s a view echoed by Karolin Troubetzkoy, co-owner of Jade Mountain and Anse Chastanet, who cites the success of St Lucia’s Nina Compton as runner-up on US TV’s Top Chef as having inspired a new generation of chefs. The emotional credence of her being the daughter of former prime minster John Compton, who led the country to independence, is key, too, says Troubetzkoy. ‘She’s changed the way everyone thinks about food, and encouraged the art of being a chef to catch on in St Lucia.’

Troubetzkoy and her husband Nick have established an off-site organic farm, the Emerald Estate, in the Soufriere Hills. We join a tour led by the dynamic Pawan Srivastava, who’s upping the ante on production – the farm already grows leaves, herbs and vegetables for the restaurants at Jade Mountain and Anse Chastanet. It has a thousand cocoa trees, wild vanilla, cinnamon, turmeric, soursop, papaya, wax apple and bananas, plus all kinds of mint and basil, fruits such as pineapple, cherry and starfruit, numerous vegetables including celery, okra and baby corn, and many varieties of mango.

Bananas and cocoa were once the lifeblood of St Lucia and some people are bent on their revival. At the Boucan Hotel & Restaurant in the hills above Soufriere Bay (the hotel and restaurant has connections with the British brand Hotel Chocolat), guide Kurt Régis delivers the Tree-to-Bar tour, showing us which plants are mature and which have been ransacked by rats. He explains just how temperamental cocoa plants are: sensitive to waterlogging, drought and too much sun, they will only grow 20° either side of the Equator. A few years ago, rats were eating 50 per cent of the crop. Now, after a four-year project that has resulted in 10,000 rats being caught, the damage is limited at eight per cent. They love the sweet, mucilaginous pulp, which looks like an alien’s brain, inside the cocoa pod’s rough and leathery rind. St Lucians love it, too: it can be sucked like a kind of ‘jungle M&M’, Kurt tells me. The estate pools the supply of about 160 St Lucian farmers, who buy saplings from its expert grafters and bring back the finished product to be shipped to England for chocolate production, along with cocoa from their Ghanaian estate. The next plan is to build a chocolate factory on St Lucia and bring the whole process home. There has been a cocoa plantation on this site since 1745, and 20 hectares are planted with a mixture of Criollo (which has an intense, complex flower but is a fragile tree), Forastero (the hardiest and most common) and Trinitario (a colonial-era hybrid created by Trinidadian farmers to protect their crops).

At the end of tour, we gather around to make our own chocolate, using elbow grease and a pestle and mortar to emulsify 50g of cacao nibs (the antioxidant-rich remains from inside the crispy shell of the cocoa bean after it’s been roasted), 10g of cocoa butter and 22.5g of refined sugar. We pour it into a mould and it cools in the fridge while we eat lunch. It is then served for pudding. You’d think after a lunch that included cacao pesto, chocolate butter and chocolate-and-balsamic-infused drizzling sauces, I’d refuse, but I think I’m addicted to the serotonin highs.

Lydia Bell and Gary Latham travelled courtesy of Saint Lucia Tourist Board. For more details, visit www.stlucia.org