Eating DOMINICAN CHINESE FOOD for the FIRST TIME in Portsmouth, Dominica!

People may not know it, but Caribbean cuisine has also been greatly influenced by, wait for it, Chinese food. Back in the 19th century, indentured servants from China brought their influences to the region. From Trinidad and Tobago, to Guyana, to right here in Dominica. That brings us to today. Driving along a coastal road, we pull up to a Chinese restaurant to explore the world of Chinese food in Dominica and the Caribbean. Let's go. What's up, guys? I'm here in the West Indies on the island of Dominica, and today I'm going to take you to eat some delicious Chinese food at one of the best Chinese restaurants on the island. It's right here. It's called Riverside International Restaurant and Bar. They have international menu, and they have a huge Chinese menu, right? So I've eaten Chinese food in the Caribbean a lot, in Trinidad and Guyana. So tonight, I'm going to see if it compares to either of those. Follow me inside. Let's meet with Chef Stephen. Let's go. Let's go straight to the kitchen. And so we're in the area called Picard, and that's a neighborhood in Portsmouth, right? It's where we're staying. How are you guys doing? You good? Good. Good. All right. Awesome. So they got a bar here, but you know what? Let's go straight into the kitchen. My friend, how are you doing? I'm well. How are you? Good. Good. Cynthia, right? Cynthia. Yes. Perfect. Cynthia. Thank you so much. Thank you for having us. And then over here, we have my boy, Steve. Chef Steve. Hi. So Steve, what are we doing tonight? Yeah, we do some spring rolls and noodles, homemade noodles. Okay. And lobster. And we do sweet and sour chicken also. Of course, dumplings also. Dumplings, of course, noodles, rice, lobster, chicken, beef, you name it, I eat it. So we have some ginger, huh? Yeah. For the lobster. So over here, we have spring rolls, some beautiful fresh noodles. Here we have vegetables. Yes, that's good. So you're going to fry up the lobster? Yeah. Fry up the lobster on this beautiful wok, huh? I love the wok. Nothing like the wok. Oh, what's that? Sweet and sour. I almost lost my microphone. Oh, yeah. Look at that. It's almost like flash frying really quick. It took him like one minute, even less. And right here, we have some of my favorite dumplings on the plane. They're called potstickers. Why are they called potstickers? Well, they stick to the pot. The best kind. The best kind. In China, the guy had like a huge thing, a billion. Amazing. All right, so what are we doing? Chow mein. Chow mein? The chef at work. Gotta clean it. Spicy, huh? This is spicy lobster. down there? Beef. That's good. That's like a spicy beef bowl. It's going to be hot. The peppers were hitting me as I was cooking it, right? Amazing. Look over there. They're making some rolls. Wow, I've never seen that. What did you do? You just put oil, like sizzling oil? I'm gonna enjoy this one. Where's your family from? Of course. Chicken? Chicken 500. Oh, sesame on top. Let's go. All right, guys. Thank you so much. Thank you. Thank you. All right. Hey guys, how you doing? You okay? This is our room? Private dining, huh? Look at this. So if you've never been to a Chinese restaurant, this is a table for family style, right? So you put all the dishes on here and just move it, right? Amazing. And look at this, guys. What a feast we have. So we have the potstickers. We have the chow mein. We have this spicy beef dish that's incredible Sichuan style. We have the sweet and sour chicken spring rolls right here. And then over here we have lobster. This is lobster with a creamy sauce. Got some rice here. We have some broccoli, carrots, and that's it, right? Passion fruit. This is a ginger rum. Yeah? Yeah, ginger root. Ginger root rum. Yeah. Try it. Fine. Okay. Awesome. Of course. Absolutely. So you drink it like that, a little shot? You drink it like this. Are you ready? I am beyond excited. This food looks incredible. I'm going to jump on this sweet and sour chicken first. Love this. Anywhere I go in the world, I'll get this dish. Fried chicken with sweet and sour sauce. It's sweet. A little sour. A little sesame seeds. Oh, wow. Next up, coming over here. Oh, yeah. Spring roll. So inside, I saw we've had a lot of vegetables, which they also put something else in here as well. And you always have this sauce. Basically, it's the same sauce as sweet and sour, right? Oh, yeah. So fresh. Very light. It's just tarantula with this. Has to go inside. I love Chinese food. Oh, wow. It's mind blowing. What do we have next? Pastikas. These are my favorite dumplings. Fried dumplings. Dip them into this sauce. Pretty sure this is soy sauce. So this is fresh passion fruit, right? Fresh. Fresh. I only get fresh. Everything else is fake, right? Thank you so much. Enjoy. Thank you. I'm going to jump on this passion fruit. I need to cool down. After that super strong drink, this is a great palate cleanser. All right, now we're going to sit down and we're going to try the other three dishes. And for the first time on the trip, Nate is joining me for a meal. What's up, guys? I think so, right? How we doing? I'm here. Let's do this. Let's do this. I can't wait. So we have the incredible lobster, right? Lobster's so good. Here, Nate, grab some. Grab some of that. Let's see. Maybe this is the knife. Sorry, the fork. Just grab what you need. Just like this. Just whatever you want. Hey man, stop taking all my lobster. You still got three quarters of my plate. Oh, it's a lot, huh? I think my boy needs to try this. This is so good, Nate. You'll love this. The sweet and sour chicken. So I'm going to pass some to you. Let's try. Is this any hot or is it good? You need to try the sweet and sour, bro. Sweet and sour. Yeah, really good. Rice, did you bring any of that? Oh, I spilled it everywhere. Sorry about that, guys. So you're a fork guy or chopstick guy? I'm more of a fork person, sadly. I'm sure my significant other would be not happy to hear me say that. Yeah, that's amazing. Oh, wow. Yeah, that's good. That lobster literally falls apart, man. Wow. It's actually pretty meaty. Super meaty. It's not like lazy sauce, right? Yeah, what kind of lobster is this, actually? Atlantic. Yeah, it's really good. Yeah, because it's very meaty. Whoa, bro. This is good stuff. I personally love Chinese food. Me too. It's like the best. One of my favorites. It's got to be in the top five. Probably a top five. Have you been to China before? I've not been to Japan. Oh, man. I need to do some more Asia travels, man. Oh, man. One day. One day you go to China. Yeah. China. Jingbing. I can't wait. I've always wanted to go to the Great Wall of China, especially and check out that stuff. The history, the Forbidden City. There's so much, man. Yeah. It's a continent. I've only been to one, two, three, four, five cities, but they're all unique, all different, so much food. Yeah. I mean, most of the stuff doesn't even exist over there, you know? Yeah. Because this is just like a fraction of what they got. Dude, I just destroyed the lobster. Yeah, me too. It's so tasty. Me too. Let me try this back. Try it. You know what? Let me get my, let me get the other stuff. Oh, yeah. Oh, wow. What? What? I'm moving to the side. I got myself. I'll tell you. Yeah. It's definitely up there with Guyana and Trinidad, bro. Is it? Is it? I don't know, man. I don't know. I don't know. It's hard. It's hard. You know, obviously for me, it's hard to compare these because first off, we're not eating at the exact same time, right? We're not actually sitting down eating both. But I'll say this is good fresh food. Everything has been delicious. I mean, Steve was a kind of a ninja back there with all this stuff. Oh, man. You gotta try these noodles. Give me a minute on the noodles. Yeah. Where's the fork? Where's your drink? Where's your drink? Where's my drink? Right here. Right here. No, that's not it. Yours is over there? Watch, watch, watch, guys. I'll put it up here for him. Get it, get it, get it. That's the beauty right there. That's why we like this, huh? That's big brain right there. Thank you, pal. No problem. So we'll have another little glass. It's a ginger. I think it's a ginger rum. Ginger rum. It's strong. These people like their their bush rums. Oh, that's actually really good. It's good. That's actually maybe the best we've had so far. It's medicinal no matter what. It was very like the aftertaste wasn't too too rough on the palate there. Oh, yeah. But you need these beautiful noodles and these I'm pretty sure they do them here. Yeah. Right. They look like they're homemade. Yeah. Let's do it. Ready? Yeah. He's doing the Italian way. I'm doing the Asian way. Just like that, bro. I love it. Yeah. Let's go with the broccoli. If I'm talking about Chinese food, I'm not talking about New York. I'm talking about California, my friend. No. The best Chinese is in the Bay Area like California. It's just closer, you know, really good Chinese food over there. So he's from North Cal. San Francisco has the oldest Chinatown. That's correct. In America. I've been there. Amazing food. It's amazing. And especially like they have that that heritage they brought over and it's like a very it's almost like a little nation in there, you know, and they created that Chinatown created the fortune cookie. Oh, is that true? Dude. And they have a fortune cookie factory. They have a fortune cookie this year. Yeah. I mean, it's a hole in the wall. Yeah. But it's cool. It's cool. That is really cool. That actually nice Bay Area. Rock on. Thank you. New York is a huge Chinese. I know I have had some. Well, it's moved to Flushing. Yeah. It's basically in Flushing. The other Chinatown in Manhattan is not the same thing. That's like you're in a mix between like Lower East Side and Tribeca. So the one thing I will say that is really good in New York Chinese food is the dumplings, though. I do feel like there's some I want to say it's like Joe's or something. It's like there's a bunch of really good dumplings, dumpling spots down there that are still pretty, pretty good. Also, in Brooklyn, there's a few that are pretty worth it, though, worth it at least once. OK, so this is an incredible Sichuan beef dish. Look how rich it is. It's like full of different spices. If we have that Sichuan pepper, you have that numbing. It's going to mix this in a little more beef. And then it's like this, watch. Well, right away, it smacks you in the face, actually in the lips. It's so good. Nice, tender beef. The cabbage is still very crunchy. At the same time, very moist because of that broth. I'm going to try. It's not too spicy. No, it doesn't look like it. That's a level I can do. Ready for the heat? Yeah, that's a nice Sichuan pepper. Oh, wow. It's enjoyable, right? It's really good. So it's not spice. It's not. Yeah, that's not crazy. It's a flavorful spice. Amazing broth. Amazing. Wow. A little bit of ginger. It's everything you don't. It's everything you want and nothing you don't. As they say. Wow. When you made this dish, it was skillful, too. And that was really special. I mean, dude, if you don't mind, I'll just drink. Yeah. Oh, my God. The broth of the gods. Oh, this is like having a ramen bowl, you know? Oh, yeah. At the very end, you just drink. Oh, the ginger. Would you like more? I need a beef. I need a beef, too. We've been eating a lot of salt fish and bakes here. Yeah. Spice, huh? There's a pot sticker, guys. Love pot stickers. See, I would put some of this Sichuan heat on my pot sticker and break it up a little bit. Oh, yeah. I get in there. Amazing. I personally like this a lot. That was nice. Yeah. Yeah. Keep going for that. No, it is. It's such a rich broth. So many things in it. Clear me out. I know. I know, man. You know, I definitely want some of these noodles. That's the king. The king. Yeah. They're like finely cut, right? Yeah. They're actually thick. I was going to say it's a different style. It's a different style. I've seen this style in Shanghai. Oh, really? Yeah. It reminds me of like Thai noodles in a way. Thai noodles. What they do is they basically have it frozen, pull it out, and then they cut it with a knife and it comes out perfectly thin or the shape you want it, right? The thickness you want it. I feel good. I love it. I've seen some food ranger videos that are pretty crazy. Oh, yeah? The noodle making. Oh, yeah. Trevor does it right. He does a good noodle making. He went deep into China, man. Yeah. So when you speak Mandarin, it's like my boy Xiao. Xiao in Just stuffed myself with noodles, guys. Oh, yeah. This is not lo mein. No. This is lo mein heaven. It's good, right? It is. It is. Oh, what else do we got? I'm going to try to try to... Once labor was abolished, they had to start bringing in venture labor. That's what they call it. Venture labor. So once they started bringing in venture labor, it was like a mix between India, China, and then Suriname had Indonesian. So that's how these different influences started. And usually what you do is you go to a Chinese restaurant in Guyana, Trinidad here, and the people are from this country or from those countries, but they're like third or fourth generation Chinese. Oh, really? Third or fourth generation? Yeah. Like their grandparents were born here or something, you know? Yeah. So they've been here a long time. They still have the influence, but obviously they're using the ingredients from the land, right? So most of the stuff I'm sure we get the beef from... So everything's fresh, right? And this is my jam right now. It's all you, bro. It's all me. It was incredible, though. So guys, I hope you enjoyed this video. Have you ever tried Chinese Caribbean food? Where? Guyana, Trinidad, any other of these island nations? Let me know in the comments below. And if you liked the video, thumbs up, subscribe to my channel, and we'll see you in the next one. Oh, wait. I think we should ask one other question. Where do you think the best Chinese food is in the Caribbean? Trinidad? Guyana? I don't know. Dominica? Let us know in the comments below.