Just this past May, a Caribbean restaurant in New York City was named the best restaurant in the city. Prompting tons of people to head to Google and search “what is Caribbean food?”
The restaurant making headlines is Kabawa. With Barbadian chef Paul Carmichael in the East Village, The New York Times named it number 1 on its 2026 list after co-chief critic Ligaya Mishan spent right around a year eating across all five boroughs. According to her, the three-course prix fixe was a parade of “gutsy pleasures” and noted flavors like sorrel powder, tamarind, allspice, and scotch bonnet peppers.
The funny thing about this whole thing is the confusion that followed it.
As a person of Jamaican and Cuban descent, I grew up eating this food my whole life. I remember when my mom would be cooking and the house would smell like sofrito for hours. On the Jamaican side, my uncle Tony was one of the best cooks in the family. Over the years he ended up opening his own restaurants in South Florida. Stopping by his house on random days just to get a plate of food is something I miss more than I realized. All of this was so natural to me, that I never realized that not everyone ate like this.
Most people I know have eaten Caribbean food at some point. Whether it be at a restaurant or eating with my family. The gap between eating something and knowing where it comes from is what I’m writing about.
Plantains: Everyone knows em’.
If you’ve ever had Caribbean food at a restaurant or casual spot, I’m almost certain you’ve tried or at least seen plantains. They’re a side that you get along with your main main, plantains are either soft and sweet or crispy and salty, depending on which country it’s coming from. Some people like them and some people don’t, it’s pretty hit or miss for people new to them.
What you actually ate though, is a staple to cooking across the Caribbean, West Africa, and Central America for centuries. Tostones are made using the green and unripe plantains, they get smashed and double fried until crispy. Maduros and Jamaican plantains are both made using ripe plantains, are soft, sweet, and have a golden color sort of look. The biggest difference is how they’re cut and the size of them, with Jamaican style being a little thicker and softer in the middle. None of these are interchangeable and they do not go with the same foods.
As a kid, my mom would make arroz con pollo and maduros on the side. My dad and uncle often made hefty plates of my favorite curry goat and a bunch of plantains on the side, but my uncle Tony does not like the word “side” much.
In his words, “Nah man, the plantains aren’t no side. They are a part of the dish! Ya need that sweetness of the plantains for balance Zachry.”
Ropa Vieja: It means old clothes, but hear me out.
Ropa vieja is Cuba’s national dish, and it’s one of those dishes that people look at you with confusion if they’ve never had it before. In Spanish, it means “old clothes.” The reason why it gets this funny name is simply because of how it looks. It’s shredded braised beef that looks like old torn up clothes. Usually, you eat it with white rice, black beans on the side, and some maduros.
Even though it has a weird name, it’s got some pretty interesting history. The dish came from the Canary Islands and arrived in Cuba through Spanish colonization, but it actually traces even further back to Sephardic Jewish cooking in Spain, way before Jews were kicked out of the country in 1492. And since they weren’t allowed to cook on the Sabbath, they had to slow cook stews the night before and let it sit overnight. The shredded meat left over is essentially the ancestor of ropa vieja. The oldest printed recipe of it shows up in a Havana cookbook from 1857, but that version didn’t yet have the tomato sauce used in it today. As time passed, Cuban cooks added in tomatoes, peppers, and a Spanish-style sofrito that colonizers brought over and turned it into Cuba’s now national dish. Little did the Canary Islands know, they made it so I could eat one of my favorite dishes.
For longer than I can remember, my mom has made ropa vieja. She braises the flank steak, shreds it, and finishes it in a pan with tomatoes, peppers, and the reserved broth. When my great-grandfather brought his family here, he decided his kids would be American. My grandmother and her siblings grew up without the language and most of the food. Then, he saw his mistake and made sure my mom and a few of her cousins were brought up as proud Cubans.
“Your great-grandfather is the one who taught me,” she said. “He realized we needed to retain our culture.”
Yes, ropa vieja translates to old clothes. But when you think about it, those old clothes are sort of like the old fabric of Cuban culture that connects people.
Escovitch fish: Just trust.
This is one of the dishes most people have never heard of.
Escovitch is Jamaica’s signature marinated fried fish. A whole red snapper gets fried until crispy, put into a pickling liquid with scotch bonnet peppers, onions, and carrots. This hits every spot on your tongue and gives you a nice amount of burn, and I’m not even a big fish person.
Its lineage actually goes back pretty far, from the Arabic dish sikbaj, a vinegar stew that was carried into Spain from the Moors. The Spanish then adapted it into a fried fish pickled in aromatized vinegar that was known as escabeche. Along coastal Spain it eventually evolved to include sardines. Some time in the early 1500s, Spanish conquistadors settled in Jamaica, and the Spanish Jews who followed brought the technique with them. Once escabeche made its way to the Caribbean, scotch bonnet peppers went into the brine, since they’re native to the region, and the quick-pickled vegetables became a must.
My uncle who makes some of the best escovitch you’ll ever have doesn’t score the fish. He prefers the pickling liquid to coat the surface instead of penetrating too deep. Pair it with festival bread, and it’s perfect.
Why this matters beyond the food.
Kabawa being named the best restaurant in New York is absolutely amazing. What’s important to understand though, is that it’s not some new arrival, but visibility.
The Migration Policy Institute states that about one in ten immigrants is Caribbean-born, the majority coming from Jamaica, Cuba, Haiti, or the Dominican Republic. The food’s been here for an extremely long time, passed down through descendants and small family restaurants. When a cuisine gets popular, the story behind it can get lost. It’s just good to know a little about where what you’re eating came from.
What to do with this.
Go find a Caribbean spot near you and try something you may not recognize. Maybe you could get some escovitch or try making tostones at home. Show some love to a mid-sized Caribbean food creator who’s really passionate about their techniques. Who knows, your taste buds might just end up being more Caribbean than I am.