Chef Kennedy cracks a coconut and strains the milk by hand. The kitchen is his own: a private home in the hills above St. George’s, Grenada, a short drive from the island’s five-star resorts. He spent 23 years teaching public health at St. George’s University before he ever cooked for a stranger. Now travelers are adding a seat at his table to their resort stay where he makes the island’s national dish from scratch.
At Kennedy’s home, you help with the prep and walk the garden where much of the meal grew. The chef narrates the whole time: what goes into the pot, and why. Partway through, he teaches you his rum punch, mixed by the old Grenadian ratio, before everyone sits down to eat. Tea and dessert come after.
A country people now pick for the food
A growing share of travelers now choose where to go by the food. In a 2026 survey of food travelers, the average respondent rated food and drink’s importance in that decision at 8.2 out of 10, and 66% said it matters more to them now than five years ago. Grenada is a quieter choice than the Caribbean’s better-known islands, with direct flights from several US hubs.
One pot, unpacked on the table
The dish is oil down, named for how the coconut milk cooks down into a rich base. Home Hospitality, Chef Kennedy’s operation, builds it from scratch: fresh coconut milk, a green herb seasoning blended to order, then breadfruit, dumplings, taro leaves and whatever is fresh from the garden that day, layered into a single pot and cooked down for a little over an hour. At the end, instead of ladling the stew out, he unpacks the pot, setting every component on the table so you can see exactly what goes into it.
The diplomat who learned to cook
Before the garden and the stove, he worked as a diplomat and a university lecturer. Grenada posted him to its embassy in Cuba as a commercial attaché, a young man abroad while Maurice Bishop’s revolutionary government leaned hard toward Havana. By his account, Bishop was a father figure, and he says he also met Fidel Castro. He came home, taught for decades, and only a few years ago began welcoming travelers into his own kitchen.
What you take home
There’s a vegetarian oil down too, made with chickpeas instead of meat; locals say a meatless version of the dish has long been part of the tradition. Callaloo and carrot fritters too: the grated carrot keeps them crisp even after they cool, when most fritters go soft. He points out everything growing in the garden as you go: cinnamon trees, lemongrass and the shado beni and broadleaf thyme that go into his green seasoning. The meal ends with a rum punch mixed to a rhyming ratio: “one of sour, two of sweet, three of strong, four of weak.” Dessert is mango sorbet finished with fresh-grated nutmeg. You leave having helped cook everything on the table.
Why the timing favors the home kitchen
Grenada drew 11,299 arrivals during this year’s Spicemas festival, a 20% jump from the year before, with non-national arrivals up 24%, according to the Grenada Tourism Authority. Chef Kennedy says Silversands is among the resorts that have started referring guests to his table this year.
Food now factors into travel decisions more than it did five years ago, and Grenada’s tourism board is working to route hotel guests directly to Home Hospitality rather than keep them inside resort gates. The harder work ahead is finding enough home kitchens willing to open their doors to meet the demand.
Mandy is a luxury travel, fine dining and bucket-list-adventure journalist with expert insight from 47 countries. She uncovers unforgettable experiences around the world and brings them to life through immersive storytelling that blends indulgence, culture and discovery, and shares them with a global audience as co-founder of Food Drink Life. Her articles appear on MSN and through the Associated Press wire in major U.S. outlets, including NBC, the Daily News, Boston Herald, the Chicago Sun-Times and many more.