NYC Guide for Vegan Caribbean Cuisine
We intend to explore cuisine and restaurants of the Little Caribbean community in Brooklyn, NY: recognizing food as a form of resistance, healing, and expression of identity. These spaces comfort through traditional dishes while promoting veganism with other healthy options, via Caribbean cuisine to a historically underserved Black community.
By creating an interactive map of Caribbean-owned spaces, we aim to increase their visibility and accessibility. The Google Maps link is on the website’s ‘Interactive Map’ page.
Three key aspects underlie the importance of amplifying these restaurants.
These restaurants act as resistance to gentrification. They fight against the abundance of unhealthy food options outside of Caribbean cuisine. Spaces with traditional Caribbean cuisine fight appropriation by having a space that fosters cultural memory through meals/ingredients, preparation style and aesthetics.
Free Black people in 1838 established the neighborhood Weeksville, now in Crown Heights. Named after founder James Weeks, it provided economic and political opportunities for Black people to thrive.
The restaurants in this haven strive to create spaces to provide people cultural education and promote well-being. Thus, this corner of NYC now centers the long-standing legacy of Black communities as refuge.
Refuge manifests in the outlined Black and female owned businesses providing third space to underserved community. Providing options connecting to and serving the area’s Caribbean population circumvents the impact of the abundance of mostly fast and deli food.
Circumvention connects back to the community impact of The Black Panther Party. “Liberation schools” with the Free Breakfast for Schoolchildren program reflect upon food justice as a vessel for cultural education. History thus rhymes between The Black Panthers and the businesses the map further outlines.
