Where is the Caymanian Food?

Seriously... We're in Cayman.

Walk through George Town hungry for home-cooked food and something strange happens. You can find Jamaican food. Thank God. Stew chicken. Curry goat. Oxtail. Escovitch. Rice and peas. Patties. Soup. There are Jamaican restaurants feeding people affordably every single day. But suppose I want Cayman food. Cayman-style beef. Conch. Fish cooked the way somebody's grandmother made it. Heavy cake. Something that tastes unmistakably like here.

Why, in the capital of the Cayman Islands, does that suddenly become a scavenger hunt? Seriously. Where are we?

Before anybody gets foolish: this isn't an attack on Jamaicans. I'm Jamaican by ethnicity. I love Jamaican food. And frankly, Jamaican food might be better. There. I said it. But eat anything often enough and eventually you want something else. What I'm interested in isn't why Jamaicans have restaurants. I'm interested in why Caymanians apparently haven't studied what they're doing right. Because they're doing something right. LOOK. LEARN. COPY.

One of our strangest habits is watching another community solve a problem and treating their success like scenery. Look closer. People pool money. They use partner/pardner-style savings systems. Families invest together. Friends go into business together. One person cooks. One person has capital. One knows operations. One knows somebody with a space. Resources get combined and suddenly there's a storefront. It isn't magic. It's cooperation. Meanwhile, Caymanians can be weirdly obsessed with doing everything individually. My business. My money. My idea. My risk. Then the startup cost is CI$80,000 and we conclude: "See? Caymanians can't afford to start businesses anymore." Okay.

Can four Caymanians afford it? Can eight? Can somebody provide the kitchen while somebody else provides the capital? Can the fisherman supply the fish? Can somebody's auntie who makes ridiculous Cayman-style beef own 20% instead of being hired for $12 an hour? Can we barter? Can we pool? Can we THINK? AND WHERE ARE THE CUSTOMERS? Because entrepreneurs aren't the only people I want to annoy. Us too. We say we want Caymanian businesses. Then lunchtime comes. Where does the money go? We faithfully support Jamaican restaurants. We support American franchises. We support fast food. We support imported concepts. Sometimes we'll give an international chain our money every week and then tell a Caymanian business their CI$12 lunch is "too expensive." Make it make sense. Supporting your own cannot just be something you post when a local business closes. Support is supposed to happen before the obituary.

AFFORDABLE DOESN'T HAVE TO MEAN FOREIGN

I also reject the idea that Caymanian food inherently has to be expensive. Not every Caymanian restaurant needs linen napkins, waterfront property and a CI$38 entrée. Where is the little takeaway counter? Where's today's $12 plate? Where's the Cayman beef with rice? Where's the fish special? Where's the Saturday soup? Where's the woman making incredible food at home who partners with three other people and turns it into an actual operation? Our food doesn't have to become fine dining before we're allowed to sell it. Jamaican restaurants understand this beautifully. Feed people. Feed them well. Charge something they can actually pay. Make them come back tomorrow. There's the business model.

STOP LOOKING DOWN. START LOOKING SIDEWAYS.

We're constantly told to look upward for answers. Government. Banks. Big companies. Investors. Maybe we need to start looking sideways. At the communities standing right beside us. Jamaicans know things we should learn. Filipinos know things we should learn. Indians know things we should learn. Every migrant community that has figured out how to pool resources, reduce costs, share information, build businesses and create opportunity inside an expensive country has something to teach us. Learning from somebody doesn't diminish you. Refusing to learn might. Take notes. Adapt them. Make them Caymanian. Then do something. Because here's what bothers me most -

This is Cayman. Our food shouldn't feel like a specialty item in Cayman. Our culture shouldn't survive primarily at heritage events, family kitchens and restaurants somewhere on the outskirts that you have to deliberately plan to visit. I want to leave work hungry, walk through George Town and have choices. Not one ceremonial "local" option. Choices. Competition. The Cayman beef place arguing with the Cayman fish place over who makes the better plate.

A young Caymanian chef opening across the street because they think both of them are doing it wrong. That's culture being alive. And there are Caymanians doing it. They're cooking. Selling. Experimenting. Opening businesses outside the centre of town. Finding audiences online. [INSERT CREATOR/RESTAURANT SPOTLIGHT HERE]

That's exactly why they deserve attention.

But I don't want one success story we can point at and congratulate ourselves over. I want twenty. Nobody is coming to preserve our economic place in our own country for us. Nobody is obligated to. And getting angry at other communities for succeeding would be an extraordinary waste of energy. Study them. If somebody turned lemons into lemonade in front of you, stop complaining about your lemons. Ask for the recipe. Then improve it. Maybe throw some lime in it. And for God's sake, somebody open a Caymanian lunch spot in town. I'm hungry.