A culinary revolution is underway in the Cayman Islands—here's why it matters

Curled ribbons of long beans lay in a tangled heap. They’re competing for space with a pile of glossy aubergines, each shaped like a crescent moon. On an adjacent stall, there’s a box of speckled, avocado-shaped fruits I don’t recognise.

“This is a June plum,” says Luigi Moxam, picking one up and cutting me a slice. “They’re from Southeast Asia.” It’s unexpectedly tart, a curious cross between a mango and a starfruit.

I could be at a food market in Bangkok or Barcelona. The only sign that we’re in the Caribbean are the bunches of plantain hanging from the ceiling. Those, and the traffic cone-coloured scotch bonnets that Luigi makes a beeline for. “How you doing today, Miss Joy?” He greets the vibrantly dressed woman manning the stall while grabbing the last two bags of the fiery, fruity peppers.

Sporting aviator shades and cargo shorts, Luigi bounces between vendors, addressing each one with a warm familiarity. A local restaurant owner and Grand Cayman native — his Italian-inflected name is due to his father’s admiration for footballer Luigi Riva — he’s proud of how local agriculture has exploded on the island in the last decade. “There’s a lot of diversity in what’s able to be grown here now, and it’s exciting to see,” he says.

This agricultural variety is hard-earned. Arable land in the Cayman Islands is severely limited, so more than 90% of produce is brought in from overseas. Despite this, a growing number of farmers and chefs are harnessing the resources at their disposal to create a genuine local food movement.

The bustling Hamlin Stephenson Market, where we’re standing, is a direct result of this burgeoning movement. Established in 2019, this central George Town institution brings together dozens of the Caymans’ independent food sellers, plus artisans selling jewellery and traditional crafts.

After collecting an armful of ingredients he’ll be cooking up later — pimento peppers, just-ripe coconuts, bags of grassy callalloo — Luigi invites us to lunch at one of his restaurants. We drive towards the port area, past pastel-splashed shops and idle cruise ships, until we reach Cayman Cabana. Set right on the water, this is Luigi’s farm-to-table ode to Caymanian cuisine, where ingredients are sourced locally whenever possible.

“Everything I do is about celebrating the Caymans,” Luigi says as we take a seat on the capacious overwater terrace. The midday sun is warm and the port is quiet, with only the waves as a soundtrack. It’s not long before our appetiser lands on the table — coconut ceviche, made entirely with fruit sourced from the market we just visited. The coconut is remarkably meaty, with a chewy, scallop-like texture and lashings of citrus. I scoop it up with crisps made of breadfruit — a starchy vegetable that’s a fixture of local diets — as Luigi tells me his story. He was born in the rural centre of Grand Cayman and recalls a wild childhood hiding in bushes and plucking cerasee (a bitter melon fruit grown around the Caribbean) from the branches.

“I remember the school bus had to stop for the cows,” he reflects, a small smile forming. In adulthood, Luigi ran a local fashion brand before meeting his wife, Christina, a Canadian working in local media on the island. Inspired by the Caymans’ growing agricultural community, they decided to open Cayman Cabana in 2012, despite having no restaurant experience. It took off, and a few years ago they opened their second outpost, Thatch & Barrel, on the cliffside grounds of Pedro St James. Once a plantation Great House, it’s one of the oldest surviving stone structures on the island.

The conversation drifts back to the present as our mains arrive — stew conch, drenched in fragrant coconut milk and flanked by fresh, pull-apart fritters and fried plantain. This chewy mollusc is central to Caymanian cuisine, and it’s most often served this way, the fresh-pressed coconut milk stained golden-brown from paprika and speckled with black pepper. We also dig into a tidy pile of ackee and saltfish — another signature dish, deliciously briny with a subtly creamy texture.

It’s a veritable feast, but Luigi explains that this abundance is fragile. “A single hurricane can sweep it all away, and it can take a long time before these ingredients are available on the island again.”

Due to these precarious conditions, local farmers have had to get creative, experimenting with protective cages, hardy crops and clever irrigation to make the soil yield the most stubborn harvests.

Farming in a fragile paradise

The following day, I travel to visit one of these farmers, driving deep into the undeveloped island interior of Luigi’s childhood. The large resorts along the highway fall away, traded for swaying palms and candy-coloured houses trimmed with wrought-iron porches. Between them, I catch electric-blue flashes of the sea.

A long dirt road crunches under the tyres until Beacon Farms comes into view. Opened in 2017, it’s one of a handful of ‘backyard farms’ — so-called because their production is below industrial levels — now in operation on the island. I’m greeted by the senior supervisor, Obed Powery, dressed in a neon-green T-shirt, scuffed jeans and work boots. Though he’s primarily out in the fields, he also gives weekly public tours. Today, he’s my guide and welcomes me with a thick Caymanian drawl.

It’s blisteringly hot, so we drift to a shaded patch next to a grand-looking house. The farm is partially on the grounds of a plantation-style estate, and this pile — with its white-stone columns and wraparound verandahs — houses the farm staff.

Most of Beacon Farm’s employees are recovering from drug and alcohol addiction, including Obed himself. “I’m currently 14 years clean,” he says, explaining that the farm was established in partnership with a local halfway house in order to give participants a structured work environment. “Society is hard here in the Cayman Islands, but I’m so grateful to be a part of this programme,” he remarks, moving us away from the shade and through a row of banana trees, their long, bushy fronds almost kissing the ground.

We walk through a clearing — the yellow, sun-bleached ground dotted with tufts of grass — until we come to what Obed calls the “research garden”, where staff experiment with what can be grown in the Caymans’ nutrient-deficient, alkaline soil. There are rows and rows of crops in varying stages of growth — shaggy okra plants crowned with delicate white flowers; small trees dangling with stubby, just-sprouting aubergines; and bushes of sorrel, their dart-shaped leaves concealing the scarlet petals that are lauded as a health elixir across the Caribbean. The team at the farm try to use as few non-organic inputs as possible, though Obed admits that they’ll “never get it 100%” due to uncontrollable factors like air pollution and salt carried inland on sea spray.

Obed points to a blue tractor nearby which has a heavy attachment on it with massive, rotating teeth peeking from its undercarriage. “This is our stone crusher,” he says, explaining that it pulverises the top layer of rocks on the farm’s non-arable land. This transforms it into manageable soil, instantly spitting the new ground back out so it’s ready for cultivation. It’s what’s allowed them to grow some of the other crops I see, such as papaya, each spindly plant locked in a specially designed cage to protect it from the hungry peacocks that roam the farm.

Standing here in the field, I feel the sun beating on my back and sweat gathering at my hairline. Obed notices and steers us towards a line of coconut trees, their ripe fruit littering the ground. In the shade, he talks about the importance of food security in this hurricane-prone island nation. “With Hurricane Ivan [in 2004], we had to rely on imports,” he recalls. The storm was devastating to the Caymans — around 95% of buildings were damaged or destroyed, and most local food production was wiped out. He believes it’s this history that drives producers like Beacon Farms to not just grow food, but to protect a way of farming that can endure every season and whatever comes next.

Fresh from field to fork

The next day, the midday heat is as relentless as it was on Beacon Farms. There’s only one place to go in this sweltering weather: Seven Mile Beach, the island’s most popular strip of sand. Set among the mammoth hotels and luxury developments that line the beach is Bonny Moon Beach Club, a popular see-and-be-seen spot that’s part-restaurant, part-nightclub. When I arrive, house music is being pumped through the speakers and the lunch crowd is gathered at tables set under twirling disco balls affixed to the thatched roof.

I head out the back, where rows of terracotta lounge beds are shaded with mint-green umbrellas. My bare feet sink into the pillow-soft sand on the walk across the beach, the warm, crystal-clear sea lapping at my heels.

Once settled on a lounger, a platter of fresh fruit arrives from sous chef Charlène Dion. Chunks of mango are crowned with mint, slices of pineapple fan out in a row and ruby-skinned dragon fruits are cut in half, their seed-speckled insides sliced into tidy cubes.

Most of what’s on my plate is sourced from Beacon Farms, I learn. “Absolutely everything is homemade here, and we try to use as much local food as we can,” Charlène explains. Working at a locavore restaurant in a place where crops can be so unpredictable is tough, but she insists it’s worth it. “It’s important because it makes our dishes taste far better, and we can also help the people who work here on the island develop their businesses.”

Our conversation winds down just as the sun sinks below the horizon, painting the sky in pinks and purples. Dinner follows: sushi, stuffed with locally grown mushrooms and doused in a spicy ponzu mayo, and oysters that leave a faint taste of the Atlantic on my tongue. It may not be a typically Caymanian spread, but the fact that these ingredients were so hard-won makes every mouthful taste that little bit sweeter. It’s clear that every meal here is a small reminder of resilience — of farmers coaxing crops from stubborn soil, of chefs celebrating local flavours and of a community determined to keep its culinary traditions alive, no matter the storms.