The basis of any Creole meal is rice and beans , and this features heavily in smaller restaurants. In many cases it means just that, with the rice and beans cooked together in coconut oil and flavoured with recado (a mild ground pepper) and often with a chunk of salted pork thrown in for extra taste, but usually it's served with chicken, fish or beef, and backed up by some kind of sauce. Vegetables are scarce in Creole food but there's often a side dish of potato salad and fried plantains, and sometimes flour tortillas (the maize tortillas so common in Guatemala and some other Central American countries are rarely served here). At its best Creole food is delicious, taking the best from the sea and blending it with coconut and spices. But all too often what you get is a stodgy mass, with little in the way of flavour.

Vegetarians will find the pickings slim. There are no specifically vegetarian restaurants, but in the main tourist resorts there's often a meat-free choice on the menu. Otherwise, you're likely to be offered chicken or ham if you say you don't eat meat. The fruit is good and there are some locally produced vegetables, but they're rarely served in restaurants. Your best bet outside the main tourist areas will be a Chinese restaurant.

Seafood is almost always excellent. Red snapper or grouper is invariably fantastic, and you might also try a barracuda steak, conch fritters or a plate of fresh (though usually farmed) shrimp . In San Pedro, Caye Caulker and Placencia the food can be exceptional, and the only concern is that you might get bored with lobster , which is served in an amazing range of dishes: pasta with lobster sauce, lobster and scrambled eggs, lobster chow mein or even lobster curry. The closed season for lobster is from February to June. Turtle is still on the menu in a few places, in theory only during the short open season, but note that this is a threatened species, and by even tasting it - or any other wild animal - you'll be contributing to its extinction.

Chinese food will probably turn out to be an important part of your trip, and when there's little else on offer Belize's many Chinese restaurants are usually a safe bet. Other Belizean ethnic minorities are now starting to break into the restaurant trade: there's a good Lebanese restaurant in Belize City and excellent Sri Lankan and Indian restaurants in San Ignacio.