Caribbean Catering

Caribbean is a region, not a kitchen. Trinidad cooks curry, Puerto Rico cooks sofrito, Haiti cooks citrus and pork, Barbados cooks fish. A single order can hold all four.

Build a cross-island plate:

• Something stewed. Trinidadian curry goat, Puerto Rican pernil, or Haitian griot: pork shoulder in citrus, braised then fried.
• Something fried. Bajan flying fish, snapper, or brown stew chicken.
• A starch, decided next.
• Plantains, cooked both ways.

Tostones are the green plantain, twice fried and flattened. Maduros are the ripe one, caramelized and close to dessert. One fruit, two foods.

Jerk is Jamaica’s signature and lives on the Jamaican page. Cuban catering is separate again. One Chicago partner cooks Garifuna and Belizean food.

Roti is the handheld. A soft dhalpuri folded around curry goat, curry chicken, or curried channa is a finished lunch with no plate, no fork, and no serving line. Doubles do it smaller: curried chickpeas between two pieces of fried bara.

Rice and peas is the tray answer, and it is not one recipe. A Jamaican kitchen simmers kidney beans in coconut milk. A Puerto Rican one builds arroz con gandules on pigeon peas and sofrito. Trinidadian pelau browns the rice with the meat. Pick the one that matches your stewed dish.

Roti is wheat, so a celiac guest runs on the rice side.

The reputation runs hotter than the plate. Curry goat, pernil, griot, and brown stew chicken are built on allspice, thyme, garlic, and citrus. Aromatic, not hot. A room braced for a burn does not get one.

Scotch bonnet reaches the table on its own, as a pepper sauce, and half a teaspoon rebuilds a plate. Ask for it in small containers with a card in front, never stirred through a dish.

Do not ask the kitchen to cook everything mild. Seasoning is not heat here, and a cook who hears mild pulls the spice profile back with the pepper.

Doubles and a channa roti are vegan as cooked, not as a substitution. Callaloo, a stewed leafy green, is the third, though many kitchens finish it with crab or salt pork. Rice and peas earns the same question: some cooks start the pot with salt beef.

Curry goat and curry chicken arrived with Indo-Caribbean cooks, which is why Trinidadian and Guyanese kitchens often carry halal meat. That makes it worth asking, nothing more. How far to take it across the room is a halal catering decision, not a Caribbean one.

Goat costs more than chicken, and that is the one line that moves a Caribbean quote. CaterAi carries the vegan count through from the first prompt. What else earns a rotation slot sits under every regional kitchen we deliver from.