At the edge of the world, tasting time on St Helena

The spoon carried a warmth that was immediately both familiar and strange. Sweet earth lingered first, then a smoky essence, faint yet somewhat elusive, drawn from a memory older than my own. What lay on the plate before me unfolded slowly into something layered, alive with echoes of dishes cooked long before I arrived on these shores.

It was a risotto, though not the kind I had known elsewhere. Here on St Helena Island, midway between Africa and South America, it carried within it the heart of the island’s pumpkin stew, folded into grains that seemingly worked their magic on the construct of time itself.

In that moment, I realised how best to read the soul of one of the most remote places on earth. Not through the stone walls of forts or the country lanes winding endlessly across volcanic cliffs, but through what was set before me at the table. After nearly a decade of longing to reach this faraway place, I was beginning to uncover her truths in ways no map or monument could have revealed.

My meanderings carried me into Half Tree Hollow, one of the island’s larger settlements, where Jaye Loosely had offered to make me a meal. I asked for plo. She seemed puzzled at first; for Saints, this meal is everyday fare, hardly a dish one would request. I wondered if, in my asking, I was exposing myself as an outsider, clumsy in my attempt to taste belonging. But I wanted to experience plo as it was meant to be, made slowly and at home.

Loosely’s kitchen filled with the familiar scent of onions and carrots as she built the one-pot recipe, layering rice, cabbage, potatoes, bacon and, at just the right moment, tuna. The dish took three unhurried hours to come to life as she shared stories of life on the island, and what things were like back in the day. When we sat down to enjoy it, a gentle rain tapping at the windows, the dish carried more than flavour. It carried her mother’s touch, echoes of Sunday gatherings and the patience of a place that refuses to rush.

I realised then that here, time is not something to be managed. On St Helena, it is its own ingredient.

Slices of memory

Later in Jamestown I met Helen Joshua. After years abroad she returned with her husband, building a family kitchen that grew into a catering business, a quiet anchor for gatherings across the island.

She offered me a fish cake, crisp at the edge, tender at the centre, touched with herbs and the faintest whisper of bacon. Each family guards their recipe, she told me, and most Saints don’t include breadcrumbs. The taste carried me instantly to memories of my Granny Iris’s kitchen back in South Africa and reminded me that it is often the simplest dishes that endure longest in the heart.

Helen also spoke of bread ’n dance – tomato paste spread on bread and carried to dances in village halls. I was to taste it at an old-folks’ dance I stumbled upon one Saturday evening at the Jamestown Community Hall. After a challenge for the card dance with a lady called Ivy did not end in our favour, a slice was handed to me, as if to say that on this island, belonging is not earned but shared. On St Helena, food is never just food. It is story, and it is the fabric of community.

On Wednesday evening the scent of frying fish mingled with salty air as the sky gave itself over to the fading hues of evening. The Yacht Club had become its usual gathering place, locals and visitors drawn together for the weekly fish fry. Chairs were pulled into easy circles, plates balanced on our laps, while the Atlantic pressed quietly against the quay and the evening unfolded around us.

I had joined Saints I’d met earlier in the week, and we talked as the sky softened. By the time the last of the light dissolved into the sea, I knew this too was part of the island’s rhythm: food binding new friends.

From fish fried at the ocean’s edge to a courtyard table in Jamestown, the thread of food carried me deeper into the island. Here I met Dan Flory, who had trained in some of Italy’s finest kitchens but began on St Helena with something simple: baking bread at home. Seven loaves became 40, and soon the grapevine carried word of the newcomer whose bread drew a quiet following. From that start grew a small deli, daily lunches and fortnightly pop-up dinners that now pulse through the rhythm of island life.

The evening I joined, the menu felt both familiar and renewed. He began with a risotto rooted in Saint soil: crown-prince squash, known locally as green pumpkin, puréed into a dish that echoed the island’s famed pumpkin stew. The main course, couscous with fresh tuna and romesco, carried the memory of Helen’s tomato paste; its sweetness and smoke translated into nuts and peppers. Dessert arrived as a brownie, dense and dark, echoing the island’s volcanic heart, finished with hazelnut cream.

Later, in the quiet courtyard of his restaurant, Flory spoke of flavours, textures and working with what the island could provide. “I learnt to use what was available here, and still craft something different,” he told me, his voice steady, his attention always circling back to the produce and the people who made it possible.

Where Loosley’s kitchen had given me patience and Joshua her memories, Flory offered another thread. A willingness to play. In his hands, tradition bends but does not break. It listens, adapts and makes space for new expression. On this remote outcrop where time itself lingers, the table can hold them all — memory, invention and the conversations that dance between them.

When I left the island, it wasn’t the dishes I carried so much as the impressions they left behind, stitched quietly into memory. My journey across St Helena returns to me now as fragments: rain on a kitchen window, a slice of bread pressed into my palm at a dance, conversation stretching into the night at the Yacht Club, the tang of tomato and smoke caught in a Jamestown courtyard.

This is one of her gifts: she does not rush you towards understanding, but leaves behind tastes that linger, and flavours and moments that unfurl long after you have gone.

_{Top image: Nestled between volcanic cliffs is Jamestown, where the mighty Atlantic meets one of the world’s most remote capitals. Picture: Ryan Enslin.}