Latest news with #CaribbeanCuisine
CBS News
a day ago
- Business
- CBS News
Reading Terminal Market CEO says "devastating" SEPTA cuts threaten jobs, food access
At Careda's Caribbean Cuisine inside Reading Terminal Market, owner Careda Matthews says the recipes aren't the only thing she worries about these days. Though she drives to work each day, the rest of her employees depend on SEPTA to get to the restaurant, which is open daily. "It's going to cause undue burdens and stress," Matthews said. "I'm either going to have to get temporary help who can get in on time or they are going to have to find ways of getting here on time." Matthews' restaurant is one of 80 family-owned vendors inside the historic market, according to CEO Annie Allman. "Between my small housekeeping staff and all the merchants, we believe there are about 600 jobs immediately related to the market," Allman said. Allman estimates about half of those employees rely on SEPTA for their daily commute. That includes workers like Marcus Henderson, who serves up ice cream at Bassetts. "I do count on SEPTA a lot to get to work — and I don't have to pay for Ubers or anything, or get a car, because I work in the city," Henderson said. Allman says she's bracing for the significant cuts. "It's devastating. And it couldn't come at a worse year. We've got all the world coming to see Philadelphia for the semiquincentennial," she said. The market isn't just a hub for tourists. It is also Pennsylvania's largest SNAP and EBT redemption site, according to Allman, where thousands of residents rely on public transit to access affordable groceries. Destiny Maillard takes the El to the market to use her benefits. "It's going to really affect me a lot — from coming down here, getting fresh produce for my kids," Maillard said. "I live in West Philly, and we don't have a lot of places, markets that even offer fresh produce." As the deadline for SEPTA's service cuts approaches, Matthews says she worries about how wide-reaching these effects will be. "Putting more money out for Ubers or taxis, that's going to be an issue," she said. "Not everybody has a car." Meanwhile, she and many others are putting plans in place to handle the impact when the time comes.
New York Times
12-08-2025
- Business
- New York Times
Lélé Takes a Lush Approach to Caribbean and African Fare
Opening Lately, chefs with Caribbean roots and prestige on their resumes are giving luster to Caribbean menus, often from a French and African viewpoint, in locations leafy with palm fronds. The executive chef here is Rúnar Pierre Heriveaux, who is from Haiti with French training and is known for his food at ÓX in Reykjavik, Iceland. He is now serving jerk oyster mushrooms, Hamachi with piri piri, monkfish on the bone with red curry, goat in a yellow curry, oxtails with coffee and barbecue seasonings and Caribbean rum cake. Tropical fruits and rum define many of the drinks. The 150-seat restaurant covers three floors draped in velvet and decorated with scenes that evoke the tropics. 237 Madison Avenue (38th Street), 212-999-6476, With the terraced 16th-floor venue open since the spring, the Ink 48 Hotel is now ready to serve on its ground floor with the same chef, Samuel Drake-Jones, running the show. His street-level specialties include yeasted pasta with Sunburst tomatoes, seared steelhead with a tahini sauce, grilled cabbage with Indian spices and, for dessert, cross-channel choices of French chocolate mousse and Eton mess. The wood-accented room relies on warm tones and a swath of windows. Ink 48 Hotel, 653 Eleventh Avenue (48th Street), 917-960-9961, This new restaurant cafe and food market in the South Bronx is the work of the Oyate Group, a five-year-old local nonprofit with a mission to reduce poverty, with all profits going to the organization. The chef consultant, Travis Spear, has worked in cities across the United States, often in hotels; the chef is Juan Abad. Mr. Spear's approachable menu for the 50-seat dining room, with prices that are fairly moderate by today's standards (steak-frites topping it at $37, and a $19 shrimp cocktail), has touches of Mexico with ceviche, and avocado mousse alongside black bass. The cafe has salads and sandwiches, and the shop sells coffees, condiments and tinned fish. The restaurant will also provide training for local people hoping to find work in the hospitality sector. 141 Alexander Avenue (East 134th Street), Mott Haven, Bronx, 212-871-6155, Add this option for classic Italian fare, square Sicilian pizzas and panini to the thickening brew of Penn District restaurants. It's adjacent to Friedman's Restaurant from the same owners: Alan Philips, Jonah Philips and Marom Unger. (Thursday) 132 West 31st Street, 212-971-9400. This new gathering spot on the 9th floor of the Park South Hotel offers food like pizza and sliders, drinks both classic and inventive, and views both open air and weather protected. Park South hotel, 127 East 25th Street, 212-204-5222, Looking Ahead Ice cream provides an easy antidote to bad news and other disappointments. Now there's a new documentary with 84 minutes of gelato, much longer than it takes to finish a double scoop. The bright film about the career of Sergio Dondoli, a gelato master in San Gimignano, a Tuscan town known for its medieval towers, offers insights into his often uncommon flavors like blackberry and lavender, and saffron with pine nuts, and includes accolades from some of Italy's gastronomic greats like the butcher, Dario Cecchini. The film, directed by Jay Arnold and distributed by Breaking Glass Pictures, won awards at the 2025 New York East Village Film Festival and the 2025 Red Movie Awards. Worldwide streaming starts Aug. 19. Closed and Closing The restaurant that began Felipe Donnelly and Tamy Rofe's businesses (including Colonia Verde, Comparti and Paloa) has closed. Its most recent location was the Freehand hotel in the Flatiron district. Mr. Donnelly, the managing partner, said that in the post-pandemic restaurant climate, they couldn't resolve financial issues. Prospect Heights, Brooklyn, is shedding restaurants like maple leaves in autumn. The latest, this accommodating spot for eating in, taking out and shopping, most notably for sandwiches, has called it a day after 11 years. But it's not leaving a vacant storefront in its wake because come fall, Gertrude's nearby will move its sandwich shop, Gertie's, into the space. 602 Carlton Avenue (St. Marks Avenue), Prospect Heights, Brooklyn. This bistro serving French, Italian and American food, will say adieu on Aug. 16 after five years. The announcement is on the website. The space is for sale. 38 Driggs Avenue (Sutton Street), Greenpoint, Brooklyn, 718-389-0632, For more than 50 years, this reliable hangout for burgers and brunch, with omelets, main course salads and crepes on the menu, has been a West Village anchor. It will close on Sunday. The name derives from a location in London where there had been a pub called Enfanta de Castile with a name that got garbled and which was destroyed in World War II. 68 Greenwich Avenue (West 11th Street), 212-243-1401, Follow New York Times Cooking on Instagram, Facebook, YouTube, TikTok and Pinterest. Get regular updates from New York Times Cooking, with recipe suggestions, cooking tips and shopping advice.
The Guardian
25-06-2025
- The Guardian
Not just rice and peas: lifting the lid on the radical roots of Caribbean cuisine
Hello and welcome to The Long Wave. This week, I dived into Caribe, a remarkable Caribbean cookbook that is simultaneously history, memoir and visual masterpiece. I spoke to the author, Keshia Sakarah, about how she came to write such a special book. Caribe is not only a recipe book of Caribbean dishes, it is also a homage to family as well as an account of history and migration. That history is both short and long: it charts Sakarah's Caribbean community in her home city of Leicester, England, and of each individual country in which the recipes originated. And there is another layer of history: that of the dishes and ingredients – how they came about and how far they travelled on the tides of colonialism and immigration. This was the most edifying part for me, as it revealed the expanse of cuisine around the world and its commonalities. For instance, I had no idea that kibbeh, a meatball rolled in bulgur – that I only understood as a niche Levantine dish – exists in the Dominican Republic as kipes or quipes. It was brought to the Caribbean by immigrants from the Middle East in the late 19th century. Who knew? Sakarah did. She discovered that fact during a multiyear research odyssey across the islands. Sakarah's love for cooking, and the culture behind it, comes from early exposure. She is an only child of Barbudan and Montserratian descent and spent much of her childhood with her retired grandparents, who were 'enjoying life, cooking and eating. I would go to the allotment and the market with them. That planted that seed.' The result was a fascination with Caribbean food that flourished in adulthood, when Sakarah decided to be a chef and an archiver of Caribbean cuisine. On her travels, she found her passion mirrored by those she engaged with. 'I would just have conversations with people about food,' she says. 'People wanted to tell stories and were excited that I was interested.' The process of on-the-ground research was 'covert and natural' because locals sensed her curiosity wasn't 'extractive'. Crops, colonisers and resistance 'The linking of the history was quite surprising to a lot of people,' Sakarah says, 'because they had never considered it. Especially in our community, we have no idea why we eat what we eat.' In one particularly enlightening section of the book, Sakarah details how sweet potatoes, cassavas and maize were unfamiliar to Spanish colonisers in the Dominican Republic in the late 1400s. When they established their first settlement, these colonisers relied on the farming capabilities of the Indigenous Taíno people, who were skilled in crop generation. In an act of resistance, the Taíno refused to plant the crops, leading to the starvation of the Spanish. However, they returned in subsequent settlements better prepared. The Spanish brought crops and livestock familiar to them in a mass movement of species known as the Columbian exchange, which Sakarah says 'changed the face of flora and fauna across the globe'. Caribe is full of such eye-opening vignettes on how the region's food carries a historical legacy. Two things struck me as I read the book: I had never seen a single written recipe growing up, and I had not a single idea about where the food I grew up eating came from. Even the recipes handed down to me are not quantifiable by measurements – they are a pinch of this and a dash of that. Everything is assimilated but never recorded. Sakarah wanted to make that record because 'when an elder passes, they go with all their knowledge, so it's important to archive things for the purposes of preservation'. She wanted the work to feel like an intimate passing on of information, using language, imagery and references that were not that of the outsider looking in. The pictures that accompany the recipes were almost painfully resonant, ones of Black hands casually drawn in a pinching action after scooping up a morsel. One recipe for dal shows an implement that I had only ever seen in Sudan, a wooden rod with a bifurcated bottom, spun in the pot to loosen the grain. Sign up to The Long Wave Nesrine Malik and Jason Okundaye deliver your weekly dose of Black life and culture from around the world after newsletter promotion A culinary reminder of home I say to Sakarah that the longer I am removed from home, the more food plays a complex rooting role in my life, where I hold on to random meals or ingredients from childhood: fava beans, okra, salty goat's cheese. Food plays a similar role for her, in ways that she didn't even realise. Because she grew up with her first-generation grandparents, Sakarah says she feels more Caribbean than British, which shows up in very confusing ways. Researching the book has enabled her 'to come to terms with that, because I see the layers in it, and also the beauty of the diaspora'. One of the main motivations of this book, which represents the various islands in separate chapters, was to show the shared yet diverse expanse of Caribbean food that is often wrongly collapsed as only 'Jamaican'. Nor was Sakarah interested in presenting regional dishes as a victim of imperialism, but rather a product of overlapping histories. By doing so, she removed shame and did not attempt to assert identity through cuisine. Sakarah has pulled off a remarkable feat – the book is quietly radical in its presentation of food as something that is not political, but a product of politics. It is simply what everyone eats. 'Food isn't always celebratory and fun and joyful,' she says. Nor is it always an act of cultural resistance: 'It just is.' Caribe by Keshia Sakarah is published by Penguin Books. To support the Guardian, order your copy at Delivery charges may apply. To receive the complete version of The Long Wave in your inbox every Wednesday, please subscribe here.
CBC
19-05-2025
- General
- CBC
Callaloo crop brings Jamaican farm workers a taste of home
Social Sharing In a greenhouse at Foster's Family Farm in North Gower, about 45 kilometres south of Parliament Hill, juvenile tomatoes, broccoli, peppers, romaine and other traditional seedlings wait to be transplanted in nearby fields. Among the shoots are also plug trays full of delicate callaloo (pronounced kah-lah-loo) plants. Callaloo is a leafy green vegetable common in Caribbean dishes. It's especially popular in Jamaica, where it's often steamed with salted cod and spices, sometimes with garlic, onions and tomatoes added. Despite its reputation as a flavourful and nutritious superfood, fresh callaloo isn't easy to find in Canada, though major grocery chains and specialty stores do carry the canned variety. The seasonal agricultural workers who return to Mel Foster's farm each year were missing this familiar taste of home, so a few years ago they suggested he try growing it. Foster agreed. "With new Canadians coming, it's always a topic of what new vegetables we can grow from their home country that they're familiar with," he said. This spring, Foster's farm is raising some 14,000 callaloo plants from seeds harvested from last year's crop. Donovan Carridice is the worker who planted the callaloo seeds this spring. "It compares to spinach, but it's more juicy and [has] more texture to it," said Carridice, who also extolled the vegetable's health benefits. "When I was a kid … this would make you run and climb the trees." Foster hadn't even heard of callalloo until the Jamaican workers started singing its praises. At first he was doubtful because of its similarity to redroot pigweed, another member of the amaranth family. But when he attended the annual Ontario Fruit and Vegetable Convention in Niagara Falls, he realized many Ontario growers were experimenting with non-traditional crops, and decided to give callaloo a try. "Because it gets … an early start in the greenhouse, it takes off well," he said. "Sometimes we wait until the first of June just to be careful." Foster said he's also relying on the knowledge of his employees. "We've got the Jamaicans here to tend to it and care for it, and they have the expertise to to grow it," he said. Carridice also had his doubts that callaloo would grow in eastern Ontario's relatively harsh climate. "We tried it one year and see that it come," he said, eyeing this year's crop, which will be harvested around Canada Day. "Can't wait to have some." Carridice has even shared pictures of the callaloo crop with his family back home, and said they were also amazed it could grow here. Howard Ricketts has been coming from Jamaica for seasonal agricultural work for 16 years. He used to help his father grow callaloo back home, and said he missed it when he first arrived in Canada. Now it's like a taste of home, he said. "I don't miss Jamaica … because I'm eating the callaloo." "It's a very healthy vegetable to eat," enthused Carlington Graham, also from Jamaica. "It's rich in iron and vitamin A." It also happens to be delicious, he said. "It has a rich taste. To me, it has a better taste than spinach." Graham remembers his mother preparing callaloo and salted cod for a Sunday meal, and said the crop grown at Foster's farm measures up. "It still has the taste that I remember back in the day," he said. "I still remember that delicious taste." Like Carridice, Graham likes to send pictures of the Canadian callaloo to his family in Jamaica. "They say, 'Wow, that's surprising, I didn't know you grow callaloo in Canada.' And I say, 'Yes, and it's just like our callaloo back home." Back when the crop was just getting started, Foster approached the Caribbean diplomatic community to help spread the word. "They talked to some of their people, and then we started getting people calling … and we're selling more and more," he said. Now some stores in the Ottawa area are buying his harvest, and the farm sells callaloo at its roadside stands and market stalls. While he's pleased for his employees, Foster said he hasn't yet developed the same appreciation for callaloo. "To be honest, if it didn't have the onions, the garlic and the tomatoes, I probably wouldn't eat it again," he said.
