{"id":171477,"date":"2026-03-22T21:01:10","date_gmt":"2026-03-22T21:01:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/171477\/"},"modified":"2026-03-22T21:01:10","modified_gmt":"2026-03-22T21:01:10","slug":"how-caribbean-cuisine-is-lighting-up-n-y-c-s-fine-dining-scene-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/171477\/","title":{"rendered":"How Caribbean Cuisine Is Lighting Up N.Y.C.\u2019s Fine-Dining Scene"},"content":{"rendered":"

The city that never sleeps spends a lot of its waking hours eating. Within any 10-block radius in New York, you\u2019ll find just about every type of food. And while there have always been casual Caribbean restaurants and mom-and-pops sprinkled about\u2014until quite recently, fine dining from the region wasn\u2019t really a thing.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen I started cooking professionally, even in my own country, it wasn\u2019t even the food that was in restaurants,\u201d Barbados-born chef Paul Carmichael tells Robb Report. \u201cWhen I did Seiobo in 2015, I couldn\u2019t name a restaurant doing Caribbean food,\u201d he adds, referring to the lauded Sydney restaurant he helmed in collaboration with Momofuku\u2019s<\/a> David Chang. \u201cThere was damn sure not a Caribbean tasting menu anywhere.\u201d<\/p>\n

More from Robb Report<\/p>\n

\"Chef<\/p>\n

Chef Paul Carmichael in the kitchen at Kabawa.<\/p>\n

Today, that\u2019s practically what Carmichael is serving up at Kabawa<\/a> in the East Village. The restaurant, which opened early last year and has quickly gained culinary acclaim, serves a three-course prix fixe menu that allows guests to choose from starters like pepper shrimp\u2014a stylish take on a Jamaican street-food staple\u2014and mains including chuletas can can, a classic Puerto Rican pork dish. Carmichael, who prefers to see it as \u201cdining well\u201d rather than \u201cfine dining,\u201d is working to shine a light on the entire Caribbean, not just his home country, revealing how the region\u2019s history of colonization and slavery is present in its food.<\/p>\n

\"From<\/p>\n

From left: the restaurant\u2019s mosaic-tile wall depicting daily life across the Caribbean; Carmichael\u2019s elevated take on pepper shrimp.<\/p>\n

That\u2019s something chef Gregory Gourdet is also exploring at Printemps, the luxury French department store that opened on Wall Street last spring. Maison Passerelle<\/a>\u2014the jewel among his five concepts there\u2014harnesses his Haitian roots and, more broadly, the French diaspora. Think cane syrup\u2013glazed duck with tamarind jus and coffee-rubbed steak frites.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe cuisine, the concepts are all rooted in French history and French technique,\u201d Gourdet says. But he\u2019s also \u201ctapping into the flavors, the stories, the history of all those ingredients, and how a lot of these folks [in the diaspora] have taken French rule or colonialism or influence\u2014however you want to call it\u2014and made it their own.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"Chef<\/p>\n

Chef Gregory Gourdet of Maison Passerelle; his Pikliz martini, infused with the flavors of a traditional Haitian pickled-vegetable relish.<\/p>\n

Gourdet mastered the m\u00e9lange of Haitian cuisine and local ingredients when he opened his live-fire restaurant, Kann, in Portland, Ore., in 2022. The same year, Kwame Onwuachi set the stage for the explosion of Caribbean fine dining in New York City with Tatiana<\/a>, his upscale restaurant at Lincoln Center.<\/p>\n

But the inflection point came last summer, when India Doris cut the ribbon on Markette<\/a>. After working at the late James Kent\u2019s Michelin-starred restaurant Saga for eight years, she sees her own place as uniquely personal. Markette\u2019s menu draws on her experience growing up with a Jamaican mother and a Scottish father in London.<\/p>\n

\"Chef<\/p>\n

Chef India Doris in the dining room at Markette.<\/p>\n

Her path shares a through line with Gourdet\u2019s and Carmichael\u2019s: They spent years, even decades, cooking in other people\u2019s kitchens, learning from the best, and rising through the ranks. Now, they\u2019re in the enviable positions of leading their own restaurants. \u201cPeople are starting to feel more comfortable cooking their own food that they grew up eating,\u201d Doris says. But these talents are also experimenting with and exploring what the cuisine can be today. \u201cIt\u2019s important to be open-minded and not just think of Caribbean food as this very traditional thing,\u201d she adds. \u201cIt\u2019s O.K. to move it into different directions and different territory and see where we can take it and the flavors.\u201d Rock-shrimp linguine, for example, might show up at all sorts of restaurants in the city, but Doris infuses Markette\u2019s version with Scotch bonnets, an intensely hot staple of Caribbean cuisine.<\/p>\n

\"Markette<\/p>\n

Markette NYC dishes<\/p>\n

Still, chefs are wary of calling the rise of Caribbean fine dining a trend, as it risks diluting the restaurant scene with copycats trying to ride their tailwinds. \u201cThis isn\u2019t a concept; this is my culture,\u201d Carmichael explains. \u201cI want to share this [food] because this is important to me.\u201d And while all three chefs are interested in how Caribbean dishes intermingle with those from other regions, don\u2019t expect them to push it too far.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf one day I were to put burrata on the menu and I got guests complaining, and they\u2019re like, \u2018Why is this here?\u2019 \u201d Carmichael says, \u201cI\u2019d be like, \u2018Yes, fuckin\u2019 finally.\u2019 \u201d<\/p>\n

Best of Robb Report<\/p>\n

Sign up for RobbReports’s Newsletter<\/a>. For the latest news, follow us on Facebook<\/a>, Twitter<\/a>, and Instagram<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Click here to read the full article. <\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The city that never sleeps spends a lot of its waking hours eating. Within any 10-block radius in…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":171478,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[8570,70013,14994,12634,9,56,63,65,64,70012,9458,47637],"class_list":["post-171477","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-new-york-city","tag-caribbean","tag-caribbean-food","tag-fine-dining","tag-gregory-gourdet","tag-new-york","tag-ny","tag-nyc","tag-nyc-headlines","tag-nyc-news","tag-paul-carmichael","tag-robb-report","tag-the-city-that-never-sleeps"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/171477","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=171477"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/171477\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/171478"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=171477"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=171477"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=171477"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}