Arima eats like a market town that also happens to love a day at the races. The food here is unpretentious, generous, and built around the market — with a race-day scene all its own.
Published by LocalAxys Editorial Team ·
Arima eats like a market town that also happens to love a day at the races. The food here is unpretentious, generous, and built around the market — with a race-day scene all its own.
The market
The Arima Market is one of the biggest in the country, with around 400 vendors on a busy day. This is where the east does its weekly shopping: mounds of mangoes and citrus in season, dasheen and cassava, plantain, christophene, fresh herbs, and spice sellers with curry powder and masala ground that morning.
Go in the morning, when the produce is freshest and the vendors are in full voice. Bring cash and a bag — you'll need both. The market is also an unofficial stop on the Asa Wright Nature Centre day tours, so you'll see birders stocking up on fruit before heading into the valley.
Doubles by the Dial
Morning in Arima starts the same as everywhere in Trinidad: doubles. The vendors set up around the market and the Arima Dial from early morning, and the regulars have their spots. The order is the national one — "two with everything, slight pepper" — and the rule is the same everywhere: eat them standing up, immediately, with your hands.
Arima doesn't claim the best doubles in Trinidad (that argument belongs to other towns). It just makes very good ones, very early, for people on their way to work.
The main-road crawl
Working outward from the Dial, Arima's food streets run the full Trini lineup:
Roti shops doing dhalpuri and paratha with curry chicken, goat, beef, shrimp, or pumpkin and bodi.
Pholourie and saheena vendors — fried snacks in paper bags with tamarind chutney.
Corn soup carts — thick, savory, peppery, the unofficial national medicine.
Fresh juice stands — sorrel, mauby, soursop, passion fruit.
Race-day food
Santa Rosa Park has its own food culture. On race days the vendors around the track do a roaring trade: corn soup, roti, doubles, fried fish, and cold drinks for the long afternoon. Eating trackside — program in one hand, corn soup in the other — is one of the great Arima experiences. If you go, pace yourself on both the betting and the pepper.
Sweets
The Indian sweets shops in Arima hold their own against anywhere in the country: kurma, barfi, gulab jamoon, jalebi, parsad. During Divali season the cases empty by evening. The rest of the year, they're the quiet pride of the borough.
The evening lime
When the market closes, the bars open. The east limes hard — chutney, soca, and steelpan from the speakers, cutters (grilled meats, fried snacks) on the tables, and a cold Carib or Stag in hand. Find a spot near the music. In Arima, nobody eats alone for long — someone will pull up a chair.
How to eat in Arima
Market in the morning, doubles first, questions later.
"Slight pepper" is a valid and respected order. Use it.
Race days: bring small bills and sunscreen.
If there's a line at a doubles vendor, join it. The line is the review.
Arima's food won't win any plating competitions. It will feed you well, cheaply, and early — the way a working borough has always eaten.