East Indian Cuisine From PG To Belize
From Punta Gorda, all the way to Belize City. This week’s Kolcha Tuesday dives into the world of East Indian cuisine. East Indians are concentrated in southern Belize, but also thrive in other areas as well. Like Annette Ramclam, who welcomed us into her kitchen to watch as she blends the spices she grew up with in her home with traditional Belizean meals. PG Kitchen, which celebrates its twentieth anniversary this month, has been dedicated to bringing East Indian culture to any Belizean with an appetite. Here’s News Five’s Britney Gordon with the story.
Annette Ramclam
Annette Ramclam, Owner, PG Kitchen
“I don’t go by measurement.”
Britney Gordon
“Just by the feeling.”
Annette Ramclam
“Yes, that’s how my mom teaches so I just keep it like that.”
PG Kitchen, located at the corner of St. Thomas Street and Freetown Road, has been in operation since 2004. The restaurant was started by Estell Ramclam who wanted to share her culture’s cuisine with others in Belize. It was later handed down to Annette Ramclam, one of her six daughters, with a love for cooking.
Annette Ramclam
“The reason why she opened the kitchen is because she wanted to introduce our cultural food and from then on it became a hit.”
Britney Gordon
“So this was originally your mother’s restaurant that you took over?”
Annette Ramclam
“It was. And then before she got sick. She had six daughters. Nobody else didn’t want to take it over. So I left from PG and came over and took it over.”
Britney Gordon
“How long have you been here?”
Annette Ramclam
“I’m here from 2007, but I originally took it over in 2009. From then on, it’s me one.”
Britney Gordon
“So you said that you prepare your culture’s cuisine. What kind of food do you make here?”
Annette Ramclam
“We do regular breakfast, which is Belizean breakfast, but when it comes to the lunch, then we try to introduce our food, which is yellow ginger and our culture. We call it takari. We do different types of greens. We do pumpkin, whatever greens we could get to them at the market. Pumpkin, calaloo, serosi, a lot of people don’t know about serosi, which is something really good. I love it.”
Ramclam explained that she tries to keep the menu rotating with different items everyday so that patrons can get a taste of something different from her East Indian culture on any given day.
Annette Ramclam
“That’s why people come. I never put out a menu for the same reason. Because people think, oh, they got to have this today, they got to have that. When they come, they don’t know what they’ll be getting something different every day, every day. And every day I have to try got at least three or four different meats. Today I will be having regular Belizean cuisine, rice and beans, stewed beans, white rice, stewed chicken, and stewed pork, beef liver, but the special will be yellow ginger chicken with green beans. In our culture, we don’t say green beans, we say yard beans because it’s like a whole yard. This is how it look like. it’s longer than this. So I just cut it up and then we’ll put it in the chicken along with the other condiments and what we’ve done. You could eat it with white rice, but Belizean people love their rice and beans So it’s their choice whichever they want it with.”
Alongside the takari chicken, Ramclam prepared an East Indian side known as Tomato Choka, which is made by roasting tomatoes on an open flame, before chopping and mixing with onions, colantro and pepper and salt. She explained that this side could be eaten with plain white rice and is a delicious meat alternative for vegetarians.
Annette Ramclam
“Majority of our food you don’t have to have food to get a meal. You don’t have to have meat at all.”
Britney Gordon
“Especially with the beans that go into it, because that’s full of protein.”
Annette Ramclam
“Yes and we do the calaloo as well. We do calaloo, we do the pumpkin. Some of the time I would mix the pumpkin in the chicken like that or the pork meat but then other times, I would just fry it down on the side. Because you have a lot of people that doesn’t eat meat.”
Ramclam explained that while she took it upon herself to expand and renovate her business, the Belize City Council reached out to her to rebuild her establishment from the ground up as part of a rejuvenation project with the BTB. She hopes will begin construction soon but until then, she remains grateful for her business as it is, and just hopes to continue sharing her love for cooking and her culture with other Belizeans.
Annette Ramclam
“I won’t complain because in all business you have good days and you have bad days. So I always look forward for the day which is not good, the day which is good, we save what they call a rainy day. The good days, we save for the bad days.”
Britney Gordon for News Five.
