Friday Fish Fry

This week’s adventure took us to the tiny fishing village of Anse La Raye for the popular Seafood Friday or Friday night fish fry. It’s a quaint fishing village with fishing nets hanging to dry and brightly coloured boats bobbing in the harbour. It’s a 45 minute drive to get there from home through a twisty mountain road. We usually drive between 40 to 45 miles an hour (less around the hair pin curves) but we went a lot slower for part of the trip because we were following someone who was learning to drive. It’s got to be a painful experience learning to drive on some of these narrow roads and passing isn’t usually a good idea. We weren’t in a hurry so we took our time crawling at 20 mph or less for at least 15 minutes before the new driver finally pulled off to the side to let us by.



The houses in Anse La Raye are tiny and built close together along very narrow streets. Many of them are more than 100 years old. There are some great examples of French and English colonial architecture. Some of the houses look like nothing more than little shacks and it seems a little surprising to us that people actually live in some of them.

The local residents started doing a Friday night fish fry as a way to entice tourists to their area. People start showing up at about 7:00 and even though we only stayed until 10:00, the festivities go on until 3 in the morning. It’s quite the street party with loud music, lots of fish and beer and people dancing.

There are booths lining both sides of the street for several blocks. The locals cook up the fish that was caught during the week. They boil, fry, grill, bake it or add it to a sauce. There’s coconut or Creole shrimp, sea food pizza, etc. This vendor was grilling red snapper wrapped in foil. There’s also a small fish they call a boxfish. It’s about six inches long and was stuffed with some kind of bread stuffing and baked directly on the grill. It can be much bigger but they were only offering up the smaller box fish on the night we were there.

There's also a big selection of local lobster. We didn’t try one but we’ve been told they’re similar in taste to the ones at home although they don’t have claws. We’re not convinced. It’s pretty hard to beat Bay of Fundy lobster.

And it wouldn’t be a regular St. Lucian experience if I didn’t tell you about the dogs. My previous post talked about all the dogs we run across when we walk from our house to the road. The Friday night fish fry was no exception. There were a lot of dogs roaming the streets but they were quite timid and well behaved. The vendors must have trained them to stay away from the picnic tables because they stayed clear of where the food was.

We ran across several locals who were really friendly and wanted to give us information about the fish fry, the kinds of fish, the best cooks, etc. Most of these types end their friendly chatter with a request for some cash. One of these jovial sorts this evening was an elderly gentleman on crutches. We prefer to give food over cash so we bought him a snack. He was a little disappointed because he said he needed the money to buy a “coffee”. Once he got his food, he hobbled off to this shack, his home. Shortly after that we hobbled to ours.

The weather is still hot, always around 30 degrees during the day. The coolest we’ve been able to get our bedroom at night is 28. We’re anxiously waiting for the cooler nights in December that we’ve been promised but the picture of our backyard at home after the first snowfall on November 11th helps keep things in perspective for us. Yes it could be cooler, but at least we’re not shovelling any snow