Where to buy Caribbean groceries in Toronto: scotch bonnet, ackee, saltfish and more

The Caribbean and West Indian grocery shops across Toronto, what to buy at each kind, and how to stock a Caribbean kitchen without guessing. Every shop with its own phone number.

If you cook Caribbean food at home, the supermarket chain will get you about halfway and then leave you stranded. Scotch bonnet peppers, fresh ackee, good saltfish, hardo bread, green bananas that are actually green: for those you want a West Indian grocery, and Toronto has them in every borough that has a Caribbean community, which is most of them.

This is a guide to what those shops carry and how to shop them well. Most are family-run, most keep their own hours, and the phone number on each page is theirs, so a call before a long drive is never wasted.

What to buy, and where it lives in the shop

A West Indian grocery is laid out by habit, not by signage. Knowing what you are after makes it quick.

• Scotch bonnet peppers are the heat and the perfume of the food, not interchangeable with a habanero even though they look close. Buy them by the handful, red and yellow, and freeze what you do not use.
• Saltfish is salted cod, sold dry in slabs or boxes. The thicker the piece the better it rehydrates. It is the other half of ackee, and the base of a fritter.
• Ackee is almost always tinned here, and tinned is correct unless you have a tree. It is delicate, so it goes in at the end.
• Hardo bread and coco bread sit near the till, often baked locally. Hardo is the dense sandwich loaf. Coco bread is the soft fold you put a patty inside.
• Ground provisions, meaning yam, dasheen, eddoe, green banana and cassava, are in the bins by the door. Green means unripe and starchy, which is what you want for boiling.
• Cornmeal, split peas, gungo (pigeon) peas, and rice are the pantry. A shop that stocks cornmeal for turn cornmeal and pigeon peas for rice and peas is a shop that knows its customers.

The shops, by borough

These are the Caribbean, West Indian and African-Caribbean grocery shops in the directory. Many carry African staples too, so if you are after egusi or garri as well as saltfish, ask.

Etobicoke and the west end

North York

Scarborough

York and the Eglinton West strip

How to shop a West Indian grocery well

Go with a plan and a back-up. These shops turn over fresh stock fast and sell out of the good stuff, so the ackee you wanted on Saturday afternoon may be gone. Buy your dry goods and your peppers when you see them, not when you need them. Ask what came in that morning. And if you are new to it, tell the person behind the counter what you are cooking. On a strip like this that is not a bother, it is the whole point of a shop that is not a chain.

Before you go

Ring first. Hours on a family grocery move with the family, and the smaller shops close earlier than a supermarket. The number on each page is the shop's own, so you are asking the people who stocked the shelves.

Written by See The Six · kept current from the directory, last checked 2026-08-24