Island Flavours: Culinary Diversity and Shared Heritage in the Caribbean

Toronto, Ontario, Canada is known for more than Drake and the Toronto Raptors. It is a city celebrated for its cultural and ethnic diversity. Today, people are often surprised to discover just how many cultures coexist here without the pressure to assimilate. Of course, this wasn’t always the case. Historically, Indigenous peoples and immigrants of colour were pressured to assimilate into dominant White, Eurocentric norms of speech, dress, and Christian ideology as a condition of social acceptance. 

As a Toronto-born child of Jamaican immigrant parents, I grew up in a unique position: close enough to my heritage to feel rooted yet surrounded by communities whose culinary traditions echoed our own. For instance, it was not uncommon that, just as I was about to sink my teeth into a crispy fried Jamaican dumpling dipped in stewed chicken, I would glance across the table and catch my Filipino classmate eagerly unwrapping siomai, a delicate dumpling filled with seasoned pork, beef, or shrimp, while nearby my Trinidadian friend guarded their last double, a beloved snack of two soft bara flatbreads cradling curried chickpeas, as if it were something precious. At school and at work, opening our lunch bags often meant filling the room with the rich aromas of our cultures. We would compare dishes, trade bites, debate ingredients, and laugh over how similar foods - prepared across different Caribbean islands and countries - could take on such distinct personalities. Take rice and peas, for example. This typical dish, derived from West African dishes such as jollof rice, and brought to the Caribbean by enslaved Africans, appears across the region with subtle but meaningful variations. In Jamaica, it is made with kidney beans and coconut milk. In Barbados, St. Kitts, and Trinidad, pigeon peas take centre stage. In the Bahamas, the name is flipped entirely to “peas and rice.” These differences sparked spirited debates, but they ultimately reflected a shared sense of cultural pride and the deep connection that binds the Caribbean diaspora. 

Many of my fondest childhood memories revolve around food. While completing the positionality assignment for the course, Rethinking Anthropology from a Community Perspective course, at the University of Toronto Mississauga I noticed that my interlocutors shared this same sentiment - their voices lighting up as they described meals, kitchens, and family traditions from their early years. For me, it was helping my mother make black cake (fruit cake) and getting to lick the mixing bowl or travelling to Little Jamaica at Eglinton Avenue West and Oakwood Avenue for Jamaican patties. Food didn’t just nourish me; it shaped my identity and anchored me to my community. It also helped me understand my place within the wider Caribbean experience. Even today, certain foods evoke memories the moment I smell them, allowing me to savour both the flavour and the story behind it. That is the beauty of the human experience - how culture, memory, and taste intertwine to unite us, one shared meal at a time.

By Dione Mason