(Updated with additional photos.) Judutu has two chief components; at this church event, it also entails a sharp division of labor along gender lines.
Judutu — sometimes spelled hudutu, as it's pronounced, and also called machuca — features a wad of pounded plantain and a bowl of coconut-based soup. For this event the kitchen prepared two versions, one golden and more coconutty, the other in the guise of a thin brown gravy. My bowl of the latter (shown below, $15) was bolstered with shrimp, conch, bluefish, and, ultimately, the plantain. At this church gathering, everyone I observed ate with a spoon, but reportedly judutu is also eaten by hand, much like the African plantain-cassava paste called fufu. For that you'd want a wad that wasn't so chunky.
The Garifuna people, also known as the Garinagu, have their own personal connection to Africa. In a series of tribulations, their ancestors were abducted into slavery, shipwrecked in the Caribbean, maltreated by the Caribs, and — after generations of intermarriage between Africans and the local population — exiled, in 1797, to coastal Central America. Most of the attendees at this gathering seemed to be from Honduras, as suggested by the church's mural of the diaspora (detail shown below).
At this and a previous event, judutu was the only savory dish, but one table was entirely dedicated to sweets ($1 to $2 each), some labeled in both Garifuna and Spanish. Shown below: banana cake, being sliced; dabuledu, a coconut-ginger crisp; beteta (pan de camote), a sweet potato cake also touched with ginger; bimekakule (arroz dulce); and bownú (pan dulce).
At bottom, from my first visit: a percussion-heavy lineup of musicians that began to play as the food service wound down, in early-mid afternoon. They were accompanied by a single wind instrument — a king helmet, held to the lips by the man standing at center left — and by a keyboardist and two female singers. The repetitive-sounding vocals, not that I understood a word, seemed very familiar to most of the audience; several ladies standing up front sang along while slowly turning 'round, one hand raised, eyes closed.
Garifuna Day
Evangelical Garifuna Council of Churches, 344 Brook Ave. (141st-142nd Sts.), Mott Haven, Bronx
(The 2017 event was held on April 8)
