Through Ahsan Washington
December 22, 2025
Consider these dishes food for thought.
Holiday meals in the African diaspora serve as vessels of history, memory and community.
From simmering pots to sweetly wrapped packets, these dishes allow people to discuss culture, recipes and shared identity. Each dish tells a historical story that connects Blackness across geography and time. For generations, these festive foods have nourished families and friends, kept traditions alive, and contributed to a diasporic, global Black experience rooted in African traditions.
Pepperpot
The slow-cooked Guyanese Pepperpot is a rich meat stew made from beef, pork and mutton, along with cassareep, cinnamon, cloves and Scotch bonnet peppers. Pepperpot yes a traditional holiday dish in Guyana that unites the Indo-Guyanese and Afro-Guyanese cultures around the festive table. Best known as a Christmas morning meal, the dish is started late on Christmas Eve and served at sunrise. Guyana’s national dish serves as a culinary link between the Guyanese diaspora and its cultural heritage and community stories.
Black cake
This rich and moist dessert combines dried fruit with rum and wine through a slow baking process. The cake, which has a special place on English-speaking Caribbean islands as a traditional Christmas and end-of-year treat is the Caribbean adaptation of British plum pudding. Instead of cognac, Coke used rum, which was readily available in the region and symbolizes strength and celebration.
Pastel colors
People from Trinidad & Tobago eagerly await this holiday dish, which consists of cornmeal dough and seasoned meat or vegetarian filling wrapped in banana leaves. The pastelle steaming process is a community social event that unites communities at Christmas. The dish represents the combined efforts of Trinidadian traditions with Spanish culinary influences.
Duckanoo
The Caribbean Duckanoo dessert is also known as Blue Draws and Tie-a-Leaf. The sweet, cooked dumpling contains cornmeal and sweet potato, coconut, brown sugar and spices, and is wrapped in banana leaves. The dessert has special significance in Jamaica, Haiti, Antigua and Barbuda, Belize and other Caribbean islands, where it is enjoyed during Christmas and other cultural celebrations. The dish combines Mesoamerican tamale traditions with African and Caribbean flavors and techniques.
Griot
This Haitian dish consists of marinated pork, deep-fried and served with spicy pikliz, along with rice or plantains. Haitians consider this a festive main dish served during post-Christmas celebrations. But Griot is most popular during the holidays, when its bright flavors and communal food traditions showcase the festive spirit of the Haitian diaspora.
Chaka
The Haitian stew combines hominy, beans, squash and pork into a filling dish requires several hours of preparation and several chefs. But it has great cultural and historical value for Haitians.
Hoppin John
Rice with beans seasoned with herbs and spices and smoked meats is popular among Caribbean people, African Americans and Latin American communities. The dish is believed to bring luck and wealth to those who eat it during New Year celebrations. Southern Hoppin’ John originated in South Carolina and Georgia, but is drunk in Kingston and Port-au-Prince. This dish blends West Africa’s culinary heritage of rice and legumes with New World cooking traditions to create a comforting, symbolic diaspora meal.
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