How to Visit St. Lucia Like Nina Compton, Cooking Food From the Market and Dining Out

The roads in St. Lucia — windy, jostling stretches that run up and down hills, and through tightly packed towns — are not for the faint of heart. But everywhere you look, the landscape explodes with color. Homes painted in bright colors of aqua and tangerine are punctuated by bursts of fuchsia bougainvillea and golden trumpet tree blossoms. A rainbow casts casually over the ocean. A cluster of small white butterflies hovers around a bunch of dark pink amaranth springing up alongside a road littered with ripe mangoes. 

Located on the furthest edges of the Caribbean Sea, St. Lucia draws visitors with its gorgeous beaches, tropical foliage, eye-popping waterfalls, and steep roads that open up to extraordinary views. But it’s also home to a distinct and delicious culinary culture — one I am lucky to get a taste of on a trip to the island with 2017 F&W Best New Chef Nina Compton. 

I am traveling with Rêverie, a new woman-owned boutique travel agency, the brainchild of Julie Belcher and chef Lisa Marie Donovan. (As of January 2025, Donovan is no longer with the company, but led this St. Lucia excursion.) They met when Donovan brought Belcher on for an artist retreat in Toulouse, where so many people clamored to join them in the kitchen that they decided to create a culinary travel company, offering trips where guests would get to hang out and eat with some of the best cooks in the world. They focus on destinations that are rooted in history and rich in culture. Those places are not necessarily cheap or easy and often require effort to get to know. But the experiences that result from that deeper dive can be so much more rewarding and immersive, especially with a chef like Compton as your guide. 

For those in the U.S., Compton is perhaps best known for appearing on Bravo’s Top Chef and her award-winning restaurants, including Compère Lapin in New Orleans. In St. Lucia, where she was born and raised, she’s a legend — as is her entire family. Her father, Sir John George Melvin Compton, was a beloved Prime Minister who served three terms. Her sister, Fiona, is a renowned artist and historian. When it comes to telling the story of St. Lucia through food, there’s no better narrator.

And indeed, the itinerary for this adventure is the stuff of dreams for food-lovers. We begin at The Villa at Cosmos St. Lucia, an eco lodge tucked into the side of a mountain looking out on the iconic twin spires of the Piton mountains and the sea. We’re greeted with the island’s signature rum punch, heavy on the grenadine and bright pink, as well as spiced nuts, tamarind candy, and crispy fried red snapper nuggets served with a remoulade and mango salsa. Rêverie tours are intentionally intimate, currently topping out at about 20 people, and this group gels immediately. Guava cocktails help to lubricate, but conversation and laughter come easy as it becomes clear how excited folks are to eat and hang out with the chefs.

Compton shares the stories and recipes that connect her to this place with warmth and enthusiasm, starting with a nourishing, homey, and deeply personal meal. The first course is Trinidadian corn and pumpkin soup, golden-hued and flavored with seasoning peppers (also known as ají dulce), ginger, and onions, brimming with fresh corn, callaloo greens, pumpkin, and spinner dumplings. Next, there’s curry chicken, an island staple, served with coconut rice. To finish Compton makes a dessert inspired by her mother, Janice: coconut pie topped with soursop whipped cream, which gives the rich custardy dessert a subtle funky sourness. “My mom was a baker,” she says. “Whether she was making guava jam or soursop mousse or coconut pie, it was all about celebrating the seasons.” 

At the end of the day, we retire to our rooms, each of which opens up to the sea. We sleep behind curtains of gossamer netting that protect us from various fluttering bugs until the ocean gently coaxes us awake. 

The next morning, after a light breakfast we head to Castries Market. Founded in 1891 and recently renovated, it’s an exuberant expression of the island’s abundance. Compton is welcomed like an absolute star, with fans flagging her down as we shop the market. She greets passersby with a warm and inviting smile, asking, “How you doin’? You good?” and chatting with them as if they were all her neighbors. 

Dozens of merchants hawk their wares in the open air, familiar items such as coconuts, mangos, avocados, bananas, and fresh herbs. But Compton directs our attention to local treasures, pointing out sugar apples (baseball-sized fruits resembling gray dragon eggs with seedy, creamy vermilion flesh) and guineps (also known as ackee, a small, green-skinned fruit with a sweet, tangy pink flesh surrounding a large round pit). Individually packaged spices arranged in rows; bottles filled with cinnamon bark and other herbs for making spiced rum; homemade pepper sauce; and gorgeous woven home goods are also for sale. Fishers set up on the corner just outside the market with a dozen or so varieties of fish: marlin, tuna, barracuda, mahi mahi, wahoo, kingfish, snappers, and needlefish. Our arms grow heavy with the weight of the island’s bounty.

The day’s haul forms the foundation for the next five days of meals. Getting back from the market, Compton gives her first workshop, using the chadon beni (also known as culantro), scallions, and bell peppers we picked up to make accra, an iconic saltfish fritter found across the Caribbean and Latin America. At the onset of colonization, saltfish — heavily salted, preserved cod — was brought to the region to feed enslaved people and settlers alike. Today, saltfish is a beloved local ingredient that’s often used to add a salty pungency that binds salty and sweet elements, or tempers richness — similar to fish sauce in Southeast Asian cuisines or anchovies in Italian cooking. Its firm flesh flakes easily, making it an ideal ingredient for the doughy fritters and fresh salads of St. Lucia. 

As the week goes on, our time in St. Lucia quickly develops a rhythm around cooking and eating. Mornings are for breads: Creole bread made with coconut milk baked in a wood-fire oven, cassava bread, and the island’s signature bakes (also known as frybread). Lunches are leisurely, with plates upon plates of mouthwatering dishes. In the evenings, Compton and Rêverie’s chefs pull out all the stops. One night, there’s a St. Lucian-style grill party, with smoky jerk chicken, fire-kissed corn, pineapple, and peppers served with eggplant fritters, avocado salsa, and chilled watermelon for dessert, all washed down with soursop daiquiris. Another evening, we have snapper in Creole sauce, pickled shrimp with local celery, fried green plantain tostones, callaloo empanadas, and a carambola (or star fruit) and avocado salad. 

The meals aren’t all on Compton — they’re a team effort. Donovan and chef Anne Churchill are with Compton in the kitchen every day, alongside Cosmos General Manager Shermika Lawrence and other amazing local cooks, at times creating new, exciting dishes à la minute. In stark contrast to the all-inclusive, buffet-style food offerings often associated with Caribbean resorts and cruise experiences, Rêverie’s approach prioritizes fresh ingredients, invests in local economies, and is rooted in sustainability. (For example, a dinner of leftover snapper was later transformed into a fish curry, and remaining pickled shrimp and salads served cold for lunch on a boat cruise up and down the island’s west coast.) Rêverie’s approach aligns well with Lucian culture, which while rooted in tradition is deeply adaptable, changing and evolving based on chef’s tastes, what’s growing, and the weather systems that ebb and flow with the seasons. 

“When we arrive in a place we are the visitors,” Rêverie co-founder Julie Belcher says. “We’re bringing a group to a place to experience the culture and meet the makers, and approach every event with a certain reverence.” From Compton’s perspective, it’s an ideal experience. “The focus on local fishermen, farmers, restaurants — even the taxi drivers were like our tour guides,” she says. 

On our final day, we take our appetites on the road, visiting one of Compton’s favorite island restaurants. At Martha’s Tables, a small open-air restaurant in Soufrière helmed by a mother-daughter team, we have saltfish and breadfruit fritters, sticky guava chicken wings, seasoned pork chops, grilled chicken, fresh roasted mahi mahi in a tomato Creole sauce, eggplant lentil salad, a dasheen (taro) puree, and much more. I taste everything, especially savoring dishes I recognize from my Puerto Rican upbringing: creamy potato salad, mashed root vegetables, fried sweet plantains, grilled fresh fish and meat, tropical fruit sauces. The food exemplifies what some would call farm to table. According to Compton, in St. Lucia, that’s just the way you cook. 

Bellies full, we sojourn at Sugar Beach Resort, which was formerly an 18th-century sugar plantation tucked between the Pitons. All beaches in St. Lucia are public, so it’s a popular spot for tourists and families alike, and faces west. There’s no better place to have a cocktail brought to your cabana at sunset. 

Upon our return to Cosmos, we enjoy Compton’s finale feast: There’s grilled mahi mahi and big eye snapper; grilled conch marinated in ginger, sour oranges, and Baron’s hot sauce; pickled conch salad with green mango, lime, peppers, onions, and cucumbers topped with flamboyant blossoms; and Creole bread baked by members of the group earlier that day. “Cooking back home is special,” Compton says. “Fish from fishermen, whole breadfruit from the market, ginger and turmeric in its purest form. This is a way of life in the Caribbean.”

I have traveled to many beautiful islands, including in the Caribbean, and the time I spent on St. Lucia with Rêverie feels different: dreamy, evocative, like I’ve been let in on a secret. In a time when traveling, especially to island communities, can be fraught with concerns around cost, climate change, and the impacts on local communities, the path charted by Rêverie shows us a new way, down a path that is both transformational and generative; one that gives more back than is taken away. 

Where to eat in St. Lucia 

Castries Market

For the best examples of Lucian traditional dishes, go no further than Castries Market, in the island’s capital, for island staples like cow heel soup and bouyon. (Opens daily by 7:30 a.m., though seasonal hours are subject to change.)

Coal Pot 

Founded in 1978, Coal Pot is among chef Nina Compton’s favorites on the island. Daily menus are presented to tables on chalkboards, with standout dishes including crab backs, saltfish and green fig (young bananas), mahi mahi in coconut curry, callaloo soup with potatoes and okra, sweet plantains, red beans and rice, and seafood chowder.

Treetop Restaurant

Treetop Restaurant’s beautiful mountaintop panorama is matched only by its eclectic, savory Indian-Caribbean fusion dishes.

Martha’s Tables

A mother-daughter team serves seasonal, locally sourced traditional dishes in a casual open-air restaurant in Soufrière. Order the catch of the day, and fresh juices from the bar.

Things to do in St. Lucia

St. Lucia’s landscape is awe-inspiring, the hilly roads giving way to seemingly countless panoramas and opportunities to gaze at beauty. The Diamond Falls Botanical Gardens & Mineral Baths sit on property that was granted by French King Louis XIV in 1740 and today holds varieties of all the island’s endemic plant species. For a deep, cleansing experience, the Sulphur Springs Mud Baths will detoxify your skin and your spirit.

Rêverie

To book a trip with Rêverie, visit the website for information about upcoming tours. Offerings in the summer and fall of 2025 include itineraries in France, among them an exploration of Toulouse and a week in the Loire Valley.

Where to stay in St. Lucia

St. Lucia is brimming with stunning stays, geared toward ecotourists who are also looking for luxury. Cosmos Eco Villa (rooms from $1,350) is intimate, just 10 rooms, with a communal vibe that is particularly good for groups, with an infinity pool that feels like the edge of the earth looking out on the Pitons. Nearby Anse Chastanet (rooms from $655) is a dream for honeymooners, as is Jade Mountain (rooms from $296 per person, per night). For those interested in an immersive cultural experience, locally owned Fond Doux Eco Resort (rooms from $394) is tucked into a working cacao farm, complete with plenty of delicious chocolate, and a stellar restaurant and bar.