8 minute read
Savor the Island
from Range - Volume 7
by Ensemble
On a culinary journey across southern Martinique, our executive editor meets the passionate locals behind some of this French Caribbean isle’s most exciting flavors.
By Dominique Lamberton
In the warm, clear waters off the fishing village of Le Vauclin, on the east coast of Martinique, I’m about to get the ultimate introduction to the flavors of the island. Floating on my back in the shallows of a sandbank, the sea swirling gently around me, I’m suddenly summoned for a snack and a cocktail.
Hundreds of feet from shore, on a guided kayak excursion, I wasn’t expecting to sip local rum punch and taste island ingredients like smoked fish and caramelized plantains. But this is no ordinary kayak tour.
Marc Marie-Magdelaine is the founder of Fleurdo Éco-Excursion, which offers guided adventures aboard transparent kayaks along the coast between Pointe Chaudière and Petite Grenade. His goal is to immerse guests in the surrounding ecosystem and educate them about the biodiversity of Martinique. Marc’s homemade bites and beverages are just another way to engage participants in the environment. “The idea is to attract all kinds of people, so everyone can leave full of knowledge,” he says.
The outing begins on shore when Marc and his co-guide Gérard, an oceanologist, help us into our two-seater kayaks. At our first stop, just around the nearest point, they lead an interactive lesson, touching on everything from the importance of seagrass (its roots help stabilize beaches and reefs) to the reason for the hazy skies (it’s sand from the Sahara, which routinely blows across the Atlantic, bringing nutrients to ocean ecosystems and the Amazon rainforest).
From there, it’s a short paddle to the sandbank, where Marc begins preparing his banquet at sea, pulling containers of ceviche, shrimp and condiments from a cooler on his boat. Soon, he’s topping cassava crisps with mango-studded ceviche and small pieces of bread with smoked marlin and pineapple chutney. Marc finishes everything with grinds of fresh spices, then lines up bottles filled with vibrant orange and green juices on the side of his boat.
“My concept is to make new versions of the tastes you find in Martinique,” Marc says. For his cocktail, Soleil, he combines La Favorite rum with mango and ginger juices, which is different from the Ti’ Punch and Planter’s Punch most visitors will try at the island’s restaurants and hotels. “My favorite part is serving you all my recipes,” he says. “My restaurant is in the sea.”
Marc’s passion-fueled spread is only the beginning of what I’ll taste on my culinary journey across the southern half of this French island in the Caribbean’s Lesser Antilles. Known as “the Island of Flowers,” Martinique’s rich biodiversity plays an outsized role in its food-and-drink culture. From waters teeming with mahi-mahi, marlin and tuna to verdant fields of sugar cane swaying in the breeze, to markets filled with local nutmeg, cacao, cinnamon and vanilla, the island produces all sorts of flavors — and Martinicans know just how to use them.
POISSON (FISH)
Galanga Fish Bar is tucked behind an unassuming gate in a quiet residential area in the hills above Fortde-France, Martinique’s bustling capital. Though you can’t see the sea from here, you feel its influence: The ceiling of the open-air dining room is festooned with hanging decor inspired by traditional fishing traps, and the menu, which changes monthly, features a selection of the freshest catches from the island’s fishermen.
“There is a lot of richness on the island, and the fish are a part of that,” says Yadji Zami, Galanga’s chef and owner. In 2018, Yadji left his career as an optician and opened the 36-seat restaurant with a mission to share and celebrate Martinique’s diverse food culture, which draws from Indigenous, African, European, Indian and Creole influences. Yadji has relationships with fishermen on both the Caribbean and Atlantic sides of the island, who call him to report their catches, from yellowfin tuna to sea bream, so he can build his menu around them.
When I stop by for lunch, I start with a fresh passion-fruit juice blend, topped with currant and cacao powders and edible flowers from the restaurant’s garden. An amuse-bouche of tuna belly served with yam cream and herb pesto gives me a taste of what to expect for the main, for which there are two choices: marlin sashimi with crispy rice, or grilled kingfish with chimichurri and pumpkin dumplings. The latter, a species of mackerel, is hearty and mild-tasting, accompanied with bright vegetables and soft gnocchi-like dumplings.
As I linger over dessert, Yadji pops over to ask how everything was. All I can manage is an effusive nod, my mouth full of tangy passion-fruit meringue tart. “Everything you ate today is from the hills and the sea and made with love,” he says.
RHUM (RUM)
Driving through southern Martinique, fields of the island’s top crops — sugar cane and banana — roll over the landscape, coming right up to the roadside.
Today, Martinique’s sugar cane, which was introduced by European colonizers in the 17th century, is primarily used to produce rum. While most of the world’s rum is made with molasses, a byproduct of sugar production, rhum agricole, as it’s known in Martinique, is made from sugar-cane juice, a process that’s protected by an Appellation d’Origine Contrôlée (AOC), like champagne and Roquefort cheese.
Braud & Quennesson is both the southernmost and newest rum distillery in Martinique. As I turn into the property in Le Marin, driving up a long road lined with towering palm trees, a massive herd of resident cattle is on the move. Formerly a sugar-cane plantation and factory founded in 1866, the 7,000-acre estate was reborn as a distillery in 2022, its fields full of sugar cane once more. Two years in, the rum is already winning awards.
In the tasting room — a refurbished Creole house built in 1650 with stately window shutters and black-and-white floor tiles — I sample Braud & Quennesson’s lineup of six rums. The aromatic Rhum Blanc Agricole 55°, which earned a gold medal at the 2023 Spirits Selection by Concours Mondial de Bruxelles, is my favorite. “The notes of lime and orange blossoms are clear, bringing suppleness with a gentle hint of the aromas of our sugar cane,” Lyse tells me. “I like to drink it with a bit of sugar and lemon or, as we used to do in Cambodia, with an ice cube of mango juice.”
CHOCOLAT (CHOCOLATE)
As my time — and tasting — on the island winds down, there’s one more stop to make: Monde des Épices. This spice boutique in Le Lamentin is one of the best places to find local nutmeg, cinnamon and the French Caribbean spice blend Colombo (a mix of cumin, turmeric, coriander and more), not to mention chocolate.
Bénédicte Huyghues Despointes and her husband, Victor, recently acquired the longtime business, which acts as a sister shop to Bénédicte’s burgeoning chocolate venture, Bénédicte Chocolats. On the floor above the spice shop is a chocolate factory where she handcrafts her bonbons and bars, and hosts workshops.
Bénédicte uses Martinican ingredients like sugar, vanilla and rum in her confections, and she’s just launched a product using the island’s cacao. Growing up with two cacao trees in her garden, she knows firsthand what sets Martinique’s cacao apart. “Here, every cacao tree is surrounded by fruit trees — bananas, oranges, apricots — and because of that, our cacao takes on different flavors; it’s something very special.”
It’s also rare — for now. Once a dominant industry on the island, cacao plantations disappeared in favor of agricultural heavyweights sugar cane and bananas. But a group of producers is on a mission to change that: Valcaco is a cooperative of roughly 40 producers across Martinique working to revive the industry. Earlier this year, producer Jean-Michel Marie won gold at the international Cacao of Excellence Awards for the “superior quality and flavor diversity of their cacao.”
Bénédicte will soon be sourcing cacao from Valcaco for her new chocolate squares (for her first batches, she used cacao from her family’s garden). She designed the squares to showcase the complex and fruity flavor of Martinique cacao. “They are small bites of chocolate without anything inside,” she says. “You want to eat it and be able to taste the cacao behind it.”
Later, when I board my flight, I inhale one last breath of tropical air, relieved that I’ll still be able to savor the island’s flavors at home. Balancing atop my carry-on is a bag loaded with purchases from Fort-de-France’s covered market, Monde des Épices and duty-free: a box of Bénédicte’s bonbons, candied mango, vanilla, Colombo spice and a bottle of rhum agricole.
