Barbados Excursion - Food Tour Lickrish Barbados Caribbean Cruise Excursion Review

When we arrived in Barbados we planned a food tour in Bridgetown as a way to explore the local food, find out a bit about the city and maybe find some hidden gems (we did!) Having never done a food tour I wasn't sure what it would include but I will definitely be doing others in the future.

We researched the options and found Lickrish Tours who had good reviews so we booked with them. (Click here to book your tickets) We received our tickets and details of where the tour would start in Bridgetown so felt we had all the information we needed but they also have a large FAQ section on their website if you have a query. We were a little early so we went to sit in Golden Square Freedom Park. There are some great art installations here and we found our first (of many) free-to-use water stations. It also had access to the free public access WiFi so we could get online and check what we wanted to (a high-speed connection).

When it got a little closer to the 10:30 am start time for our tour we moved over to Independence Square, just over the road, and found Paulette our guide for the morning. Once everyone arrived she told us the history of the area and explained about the tour and why it is named Lickrish. We went to 6 different places for food around the city so we were warned to pace ourselves, as the local food can be very filling!

We started the tour on the same street we had walked down to get to the park, and stopped outside an unassuming doorway, with an exchange shop next door with a small sign saying Tim's restaurant. We could have walked past this door a hundred times, and not even given it a second look. We walked up the stairs dodging friendly locals who were getting their lunch and made our way out to the balcony. I'm sure lots of the people walking below had no idea that the restaurant was even there.

At this first stop, we had fried Marlin, breadfruit, white sweet potato and pickles. Breadfruit is a staple for Bajans, and many families will have a breadfruit tree in their garden. It's a bit like a potato and can be prepared in different ways, so this was on my list of things I wanted to try. If you get the opportunity to try breadfruit, I recommend you do. It all tasted amazing and even though we had been warned how filling it could be, I ate it all! It was too good to waste any of it! It was well-cooked local food, exactly what we wanted to experience.

Our second stop was just around the corner, near where the Reggae buses drop you off from the West Coast, and was a little food truck selling fishcakes. Again, if you didn't know it was there, you could have easily walked passed it, as it was tucked away. Since we had already tried some fishcakes at the beach, I was ready for some more. They came in little paper bags and they had their own homemade pepper sauce to add to give them some Bajan zing. Again they all got eaten pretty quickly.

Our third stop was at Fran's bakery, one of the locals' favourites, and Paulette had to call ahead to make sure she saved our dishes for us or we would have been disappointed because the locals would have bought them all! Here we had Lentil patties (meat eaters had a different variety) and some sweetbread. We sat on the side of the street and tried to resist eating it all since we weren't even halfway through the tour yet. The lentil patties were nicely spiced but not overly spicy hot and I could have eaten quite a few more. The sweetbread is a dense cake and was a little drier than the cakes we have back home, but still equally delicious. I can imagine a slice with a cocktail in hand would have been great. I saved most of it for later, since I definitely wanted to try the rest of the food on the tour if the food so far had been anything to go by.

We walked through the hustle and bustle of the side streets with all of the sellers and their stalls (generally in front of a no-vending sign 😂) and went into a little mall with a fruit stand by the door. Here we got to try one of the local fruit drinks, Tamarind juice. This was something else that I had never heard of, so it was great to be able to sample it, as I probably wouldn't have tried it if I had just seen it on a menu whilst out and about. It was sweet and tart and a bit like apple juice, but different. Well worth trying if you see it while you are on your travels. We also got to have some slices of local Mango as it was in season.

Stop 5 was in another little mall that I wouldn't have even looked at normally for another traditional meal. We had Marlin with cornmeal cou-cou (similar to grits or polenta or a dense mashed potato) with okra mixed into it. Another great meal, simple but very tasty and something I would order again if I saw it on the menu. The photo below doesn't do it justice...it was delicious!

The final stop was at the Agapey Chocolate Factory for some of their gourmet ice cream. Agapey is a small artisan chocolate maker, with glass walls in the shop so you can see the process happening. Their homemade ice cream is made from coconut milk, so is Vegan, and has a slight coconut hint under the flavour. We tried the Chocolate and also the Rum Caramel, both were an excellent way to finish off the 'meal'.

Feeling very happy and full, Paulette walked us back to the starting point so we knew where we were. It had been an amazing morning (we finished at around 2:30 pm) and all the food had been great. Paulette has great knowledge of the area and was informative, fun and enthusiastic.

Overall thoughts

I had an amazing time on the tour and have visited Tim's, the fishcake stand and the ice cream factory many times since. Each time the food has been just as good as the first time and I know if I hadn't done the tour I wouldn't have found them or had the nerve to go into a 'local' restaurant. Each tour seems to do slightly different restaurants and they are set up so you can easily do the tour if you arrive on a cruise. I had never done a food tour before. But finding such amazing places, and trying things I would never have found otherwise, has convinced me to try them everywhere I can in the future. I recommend you try them too! Click here to book!