You Can Savor Some of the Caribbean’s Best Street Food in a Beach Town in Guadeloupe
Doubles. Roti. Poulet boucané. Corn soup. Cook up. They’re some of the most delicious things you can eat in the Caribbean, and they’re all typically served in some form of food truck, street cart or roadside tent. But when it comes to the region’s greatest street food, I’m partial to something else: bokit.
It’s called bokit, and it’s a delicacy that comes from the French Caribbean department of Guadeloupe, where food trucks and small eateries called “snacks” abound with a kind of fried-dough sandwich (akin to the bake you encounter in southern Caribbean spots like Barbados and Trinidad), cooked in a wok-style pan, filled with all manner of delights, from spicy shredded codfish to Moroccan-style merguez (lamb sausage to the uninitiated).
Guadeloupe has several bokit epicenters, including the food-truck capital of Sainte Anne.
But for me, it’s all about one particular food truck, in the heart of the main beachfront square in the town of Gosier: It’s called Fialize, and it serves up some of the most delicious food you’ll ever savor in the Caribbean.
Bokit master Elyse is the star of the show, serving up freshly-fried bokit, sizzling steak, fish and pork with a host of dynamic sauces.
I always like to go for the spicy pimenté, but you can’t go wrong with any of her choices.
You get the bokit handed to you in a simple paper bag, the juices of the dough slowly oozing through the surface. Elyse has a few metal tables she opens up after the sun goes down, but I prefer to stand, walk around Gosier’s town-square-style park, and peer out to the sea. A bokit just so happens to go very well with another local delicacy: the ti’ punch (white rhum agricole, cane sugar, lime).
You understand the region in a different way when you immerse yourself in the culture of street food; for a moment you’re a local, shedding artifice and pomp and diving right into the real thing.
And for me, eating a bokit in Gosier is one of the great delights in Caribbean travel. Especially if you have one from Elyse.
