Tunapuna eats like a university town on a Caribbean corridor: big flavors, small prices, and food that has to satisfy students, travelers, and market crowds all at once. This is some of the best-value eating in Trinidad.
Published by LocalAxys Editorial Team ·
Tunapuna eats like a university town on a Caribbean corridor: big flavors, small prices, and food that has to satisfy students, travelers, and market crowds all at once. This is some of the best-value eating in Trinidad.
The doubles worth the drive
Tunapuna is a doubles town, and the names are verified by people who've eaten their way across the whole island. Sauce Doubles — the Original Sauce & Sons operation — is consistently rated among the best doubles in Trinidad. Just up the road in St. Augustine, Franks Doubles holds its own loyal following. And near Curepe Junction, the Sauce brand shows up again on the Southern Main Road.
The order is the national one: "two with everything, slight pepper." The standard here is high — when the whole island's food writers put your town's doubles on their best-of lists, you don't get to have an off day.
The market
The Tunapuna Market sits right on the Eastern Main Road and runs from early morning into the afternoon, with produce, spices, crafts, and prepared food — doubles, roti, bake and shark. The variety is best on weekends, when the whole corridor comes to shop. Go hungry, bring cash, and work the stalls.
Student food
The UWI St. Augustine campus shapes how this area eats. Thousands of students need feeding three times a day, which means the streets around the campus run on affordable, filling, excellent food: roti shops, doubles vendors, fried-chicken spots, juice stands, and the lunch counters where a full meal costs less than a coffee in Port of Spain.
This is the place to eat like a student even if you graduated decades ago. Nobody will judge your budget. They'll judge your pepper tolerance.
The corridor menu
Along the Eastern Main Road through Tunapuna, the full Trini lineup is on offer:
Roti shops — dhalpuri and paratha, curry chicken, goat, beef, shrimp, pumpkin and bodi.
Bake and shark — the beach classic, available without the drive to Maracas.
Pholourie, saheena, aloo pie — the fried-snack lineup.
Corn soup — thick, peppery, restorative.
Fresh juice — sorrel, mauby, soursop, passion fruit.
The rules
Eat near the campus for the best prices on the corridor.
Weekends are for the market. Go early.
Sauce Doubles is the name to know. There will be a line. Join it.
"Slight pepper" is a complete sentence.
Tunapuna doesn't do white tablecloths. It does the food that fuels the island's brain and feeds its front door — fast, cheap, and very, very good. Stop on your way in. Stop on your way out.