Flying fish, and the island that claims the oldest rum

Barbadians sometimes call their island "the land of the flying fish," and it is one of the few national nicknames that is also, more or less, literally accurate. The waters around Barbados are unusually rich in exocoetidae, the family of fish that glide above the surface on wing-like fins to escape predators, and the flying fish has been caught, salted, steamed and fried on the island for long enough to have become its national dish, usually served alongside cou-cou, a cornmeal and okra dish with roots in West African cooking brought to the island during the slave trade.

A fish that outran its own rarity

Flying fish is not exotic in Barbados the way it might sound from a distance; it is closer to what cod is to the north of England, an everyday catch turned into a dish everyone recognises. Fishermen have worked these waters for it since at least the eighteenth century, and the dish built around it, fish and cou-cou, is served everywhere from roadside stalls to formal dining rooms. What makes it worth seeking out is not novelty but continuity: a food tradition that has barely changed while almost everything else about the island's economy has.

The rum house that started the category

Barbados also has a strong claim to a more contested title: the birthplace of rum itself. Sugar cane arrived on the island in the 1640s, and the by-products of processing it, molasses in particular, were being distilled into spirit within a few decades, making Barbados one of the earliest places anywhere to produce rum commercially. Mount Gay, which dates its origins to a property deed of 1703, is generally described as the oldest rum brand still in production, and it has been part of the island's economy for more than three centuries.

What distinguishes Barbadian rum from its neighbours is largely a matter of raw material and method rather than marketing. The island's relatively dry climate and coral limestone produce cane with a particular character, and most of the older distilleries still use pot stills, column stills or a blend of both, ageing the spirit in oak barrels, often ones previously used for bourbon, for anywhere from a few years to several decades.

Where the two meet

Fish and rum turn up together constantly, but rarely as a formal pairing; it is more that both are simply part of daily life on the island, sold from the same beach bars and market stalls, and both show up on cruise-ship excursions built around local food and drink. Several of the round-trip sailings that use Bridgetown as a base include shore time built loosely around this: a morning at a rum house, an afternoon at a beach where fish is grilled to order. The Island Rhythms and Blue Horizons cruise, a fortnight out of Bridgetown taking in Guadeloupe, Martinique, the British Virgin Islands, Antigua, Saint Lucia, Bonaire and Curaçao, gives a reasonable amount of free time on its Barbados days at either end for exactly this kind of unstructured exploring.

For a slightly different route through the region, and more time among the Dutch and southern islands where rum-making traditions differ from Barbados's own, the Caribbean Explorer: Tropical Isles sailing calls at Saint Vincent, Saint Lucia, Aruba, Curaçao, Bonaire, Guadeloupe, Antigua, Tortola and Sint Maarten across a fortnight from Bridgetown, which makes a useful comparison for anyone curious how the same crop produces such different spirits from island to island.

What not to expect

Barbadian food is not, on the whole, elaborate. It is built around what the sea and the cane fields have always produced, cooked simply and eaten without much ceremony, which is part of its appeal rather than a shortcoming. Anyone expecting the intricate, French-influenced cooking of Martinique or Guadeloupe should recalibrate: Barbados's culinary tradition is plainer, closer to its British and West African roots, and best approached on its own terms rather than measured against its neighbours.