With fresh ingredients within easy reach, St. Lucia blends its history with its food
Tour guide Jahrod Alcindor smells a bottle of spiced rum for sale at Castries Market. (Lori Rackl / Chicago Tribune)
A vendor at Castries Market selling green fig and saltfish, the national dish of St. Lucia. (Lori Rackl/For Chicago Tribune)
Tour guide Jahrod Alcindor harvests green bananas to boil in his callaloo. (Lori Rackl / Chicago Tribune)
Grilled lobster is a popular dish at Capella Marigot Bay resort’s main restaurant. (Lori Rackl / Chicago Tribune)
The “rum cave” at Capella Marigot Bay resort. (Lori Rackl / Chicago Tribune)
The pool at Capella overlooking Marigot Bay, reportedly dubbed the most beautiful bay in the Caribbean by novelist James Michener. (Lori Rackl / Chicago Tribune)
People dig into the food for sale at Gros Islet’s Friday night street party. (Lori Rackl / Chicago Tribune)
Tour guide Jahrod Alcindor cuts up freshly picked vegetables to make callaloo in a mountainous area near the town of Soufriere. (Lori Rackl / Chicago Tribune)
Jahrod Alcindor ladles the callaloo into a calabash bowl. (Lori Rackl / Chicago Tribune)
Capella resort senior sous-chef Klent Abel cooks a dish called shrimp souskaille, a colorful blend of seafood and peppers that’s popular in his native hometown, Soufriere. (Lori Rackl / Chicago Tribune)
A Hotel Chocolat worker, left, shows a British tourist how to graft a cocoa plant during the Tree to Bar Tour, offered daily. (Lori Rackl / Chicago Tribune)
A coconut vendor at Castries Market uses a machete to open one of the green fruits, whose clear water is a popular drink on the island. (Lori Rackl / Chicago Tribune)
Rum tastings are held at Capella’s “rum cave,” where guests can buy spices and use them to infuse their own bottle to take home. (Lori Rackl / Chicago Tribune)
St. Lucia’s volcanic spires, the Pitons, come into view while traveling by boat down the west coast of the island. (Lori Rackl / Chicago Tribune)
