The Caribbean Melting Pot Makes Room for Crown Heights Newcomers
CROWN HEIGHTS—Trinidadian native Kimmey Lexx usually waits until she travels home to eat Caribbean food. But she makes an exception for the house special ($8) at Trinidad Golden Palace: a quarter of a chicken, fried rice, lo mein and chow mein comprise a heaping portion of Caribbean and Chinese flavors.
For Lexx, this is fusion done right.
Trinidad Golden Palace makes no attempt to win over skeptics. A line of people filled the smoky parlor waiting for baked goods, Trinidadian-Chinese food and other West Indian staples. A sign in the window advertises legal fees for divorces ($349 plus a $335 court fee — “Call Joe for details”).
Nostrand Avenue is dotted with restaurants like Trinidad Golden Palace that cater to Caribbean natives — no frills, straightforward, authentic. But changing demographics in Crown Heights present a dilemma to these mainstays: appeal to neighborhood newcomers or risk being pushed out. Two upstart Caribbean restaurants — The Food Sermon and Glady’s — have cracked the code by tweaking menus, mindset and atmosphere.
At first blush, The Food Sermon seems like a well-reasoned attempt to make Caribbean food more palatable to outsiders. Owner and chef Rawlston Williams says it was anything but. Initially started as a catering company, the restaurant launched in response to enthusiastic community support.
“When I opened, I didn’t know who would show up,” says Williams. His restaurant began taking orders in February 2015 following a demographic tidal wave. The number of white residents in Crown Heights swelled 270 percent between 2000 and 2014. Nearly two years into running the restaurant, Williams readily admits that most of the clientele are white. As a business owner, he’s just happy people are showing up—regardless of where they’re from.
“We don’t consider ourselves traditional,” says Williams, who hails from St. Vincent and the Grenadines. “Tradition is our starting point.”
The same could be said of Glady’s, which has become a fixture on Franklin Avenue, home to the area’s most competitive strip of restaurants. While the founder and owner, Michael Jacober, was born and raised in Rhode Island, his restaurant doesn’t skimp on authenticity: Imported Jamaican wood chars the jerk dishes. Janiela Roachford, a manager at Glady’s, was born in St. Vincent and the Grenadines and says that the food closely approximates the home-cooked stuff.
But there are differences, substantial ones, between Glady’s and the old-school competition. Take the menu, which narrows the choices and highlights common foods (four varieties of jerk, curry goat, oxtail stew) along with a curveball or two (whole fish, Guyanese chow mein).
At The Food Sermon, eaters build their own “island bowl” with a familiar formula of starches, proteins, sauces and extras. Williams believes that choices empower the customer. He knows that Caribbean restaurants can be intimidating. There’s often a flow that customers must abide by, a way of acting and ordering, and menus can read like a foreign language to the uninitiated.
Mary Adeogua is sitting at the window of The Food Sermon, eating an island bowl and working at her computer. She calls the bowl a “digestible introduction” to Caribbean food, not overwhelming in the way that roti and doubles can be. Adeogua is in the fashion industry and it’s the holiday season, so she needed a place to work. When she’s not filling orders, she likes coming here with friends to enjoy the communal atmosphere and a high level of service.
Glady’s, too, makes a case for diners through upscale furnishings and service. The prices, which range from $10–$20 per entree, are roughly on par with the area’s dine-in restaurants.
When pricing the menu, Williams initially imitated restaurants in his corner of southern Crown Heights. “I was losing money,” he says, mainly as a result of sourcing. He wanted high-quality ingredients, especially meat, but halal chicken comes at a premium.
The Food Sermon, which has prices similar to Glady’s, made a list of “best cheap eats” in New York Magazine. Whether the restaurants are reasonable or pricey depends on whom you ask — and high income inequality in Crown Heights means that opinions are split on this point. Around 28 percent of families in Crown Heights fall below the poverty line; meanwhile, 25 percent of residents earn over $75,000 a year.
Williams hopes the food eventually reaches everyone, regardless of income. He’s seen his share of backlash. There were traditionalists who, following a glowing review in The New York Times, said that Williams had sold out. “Some people get annoyed,” Williams says. “Others don’t mind stepping out of the box.”
It’s impossible to please everyone, Williams has found. “People ask all the time if the fish is wild caught.” It isn’t, and Williams struggles to explain the intricacies of price and seasonal availability to demanding customers. “They never ask if my chicken was wild caught,” he laughs. “I’m doing the best I can do.”
Roachford has witnessed restaurant regulars move out of the neighborhood during her tenure at Glady’s. She thinks this is due to tenants refusing to renew their lease when faced with higher rents. New faces have come in to replace the old. “We get a lot of Yelpers,” she says.
For both restaurants, the nontraditional approach is paying off. Glady’s will be opening a second location in Brooklyn next year, and The Food Sermon will join the Building 77 Project in the Brooklyn Naval Yards alongside the likes of Russ & Daughters and Brooklyn Brewery.
As for the fate of no-frills, authentic Caribbean dining in Crown Heights, the future is anything but bleak. There have been closures, but openings abound.
As Mary Adeogua finishes her meal at The Food Sermon, she thinks culture will stay strong. Adeogua didn’t grown up on Caribbean food, but she sees parallels with the Nigerian food of her childhood. She thinks others can similarly be won over by the Caribbean’s singular ability to amalgamate influences and synthesize them into wholly original dishes.
Adeogua points to Gloria’s, a Crown Heights hallmark that has found adherents among Caribbean natives and newcomers alike. The family-owned restaurant is headed by Bryan Cumberbatch, grandson to the original Gloria. “Gloria’s is the reference point,” Adeogua says.
Alicia Villarosa, who lives in neighboring Prospect Heights, knows not to come to Gloria’s on Sundays, when the after-church crowd fills the restaurant to its limits. This Sunday, she’s here anyway. The promise of bone-in chicken roti ($6.50) tempted her out of the cold.
Villarosa is Peruvian, but her Trinidadian friends introduced her to the joys of island fare long ago. “When you want this, you want this,” she says. Gloria’s isn’t fancy, but prices are reasonable and the food is excellent. “Gloria’s is probably always going to be okay,” she says.
Adeogua is likewise hopeful. “I think we can have the best of both worlds.”
