Crab Escovitch at Las' Lap in Miami

The New Afro-Caribbean Vanguard in American Fine Dining

12 Minute read

19 Dec 2025

Caitlin White

Journalist

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Across the US, Afro-Caribbean cooking is gaining new visibility through elevated menus, refined technique, and cultural storytelling.

On the table at Lucia, a modern Afro-Caribbean restaurant that opened in Los Angeles in mid-2025, a trio of palm-sized wagyu patties kicks off most meals. Served with petite ramekins of mango pepper and neon green mojo sauce, the appetizer is an elegant recast of the large, handheld snacks commonly sold from food trucks. A live DJ reads the energy of the room, where most guests are dressed to the nines but still gently bopping to a playlist of vintage hip-hop and R&B. At the entrance, a doorman checks his list before letting new guests in, as every table and nearly every bar seat is taken.

The final dish that arrives is a glistening jerk chicken platter garnished with fresh herbs, edible flowers, and pan jus. The pièce de résistance, it is as striking as a steak at Matū or the pork chop at Jar. What was once dismissed as a fast-casual, to-go staple is transformed into a signature dish. The glamorous setting may differ from how Caribbean food has traditionally been presented in Los Angeles, but it reflects a noteworthy shift that is happening across the fine dining landscape.

The Rise of Afro-Caribbean Influence in Fine Dining

For chefs who grew up with these flavors, elevating the setting of an already beloved and influential culinary tradition will only broaden its audience. “Food is in a place where more doors are being opened up and things are becoming more approachable,” said chef Cleophus “Ophus” Hethington, the two-time James Beard Award finalist who is newly tasked with carrying out owner Sam Jordan’s vision at Lucia. “There is a space for everybody at the table, that is what this food and culture is about.”

Part of a new generation of Afro-Caribbean chefs who are spearheading a wave of growth in the fine dining world, Ophus recently joined the team at Lucia, drawn in part by the fact that the restaurant is Black-owned. The growing number of restaurants, pop-ups, and tasting menus showcasing Caribbean, African, and Black Southern foodways is focused as much on atmosphere, style, and presentation as on flavor. “People are excited to explore Caribbean cuisine outside of the stereotypical, touristy lens that it has historically been seen in,” Ophus said.

Shaping a Vocabulary for a Diverse Culinary Tradition

A big part of changing the American diner’s perspective toward this cooking style is using language that correctly defines the cuisine. Award-winning chef Kwame Onwuachi, who has opened a string of critically acclaimed restaurants in the space, recalls initially searching for a term to describe the food he wanted to pursue. Though he had worked everywhere from hole-in-the-wall spots to some of the best fine dining kitchens in the world, the fusion he wanted to cook did not fit neatly into a single category.

“When I finally got a chance to open my own restaurant, I didn’t really know how to explain it,” said Onwuachi. “I didn’t want it to just be African, I didn’t want it to be Caribbean or Southern, so I decided to do my research. I found the term ‘Afro-Caribbean,’ and even then, I had to explain it to people a lot. So it’s really cool that it’s everywhere now, that it’s a genre of food.”

His restaurant Tatiana was well received when it opened in New York City in 2022, and Dōgon in Washington, DC, quickly became a critical favorite after debuting in 2024. Most recently, Las’ Lap launched a location in Miami in mid-2025 with Onwuachi’s guidance, a third opening in as many years that has effectively cemented him as a leading figure in this space. But he also points to economic factors beyond the kitchen when considering the rise in appreciation for this cuisine.

“It’s happening now for a multitude of reasons,” Onwuachi said. “It’s a top-down thing. People are seeing the successes of these restaurants, so now they’re investing in them more. It takes investors and landlords that are willing to buy into the concept. Food writers are now calling me to talk about this and rating these restaurants. Then, there are a lot of chefs that went out into the industry and worked in a lot of great kitchens that are getting back to their roots.”

Technique, Reinvention, and High-End Craft

Private chef and entrepreneur Lana Lagomarsini, who runs the catering and events business Lana Cooks, exemplifies that point. She spent years working in fine dining kitchens in New York and beyond before applying those techniques to the dishes she grew up with. “You have to learn the proper way of doing things before you can break the rules,” she said. “A whole generation of chefs put in their time and have now turned their attention to making dishes from their own culture. I don’t really see this as a trend at all, this isn’t going away, because the food is simply too compelling.”

Lagomarsini worked at Daniel in New York City for 18 months, where she executed house recipes for the terrine menu, learning each new preparation seasonally. Eventually, she drew on that background to incorporate flavors from Jamaican beef patties into a pâté en croûte. Her “patty en croûte” combines the two cultures in a tongue-in-cheek transformation that surprises and delights her diners. It is not just a return to her roots, but a chance to connect her past with everything she has learned since, the formal techniques and history of French cooking reinterpreted to suit her palate.

A similar fine dining take on a classic Jamaican snack has been a hit at Kabawa, chef Paul Carmichael’s collaborative restaurant with Momofuku in the East Village that opened in spring 2025. On the island, pepper shrimp is a dish served cooked, shell on, spiced with Scotch bonnet and thyme, and made vivid with red food coloring. It is a “messy and delicious” peel-and-eat shrimp dish typically sold at small shops. Carmichael’s version uses raw local shrimp and the same spices but replaces the food coloring with hibiscus powder, which brings acidity and vibrancy to the plate. Those small tweaks and what he calls “fancy plating” turn a roadside classic into a dish fit for a $145 prix fixe menu.

As a kid growing up in Barbados, he recalls feeling frustrated that local food was often ignored and not served at luxury resorts or upscale restaurants. “Top restaurants and hotels cooked mostly foreign food,” Carmichael said. “I believe that probably had an effect on the chefs who were learning how to cook, and it didn’t give them the confidence or agency to cook their home food. Now they’re standing tall and feeling proud of the food from their heritage and wanting to showcase it.”

Chefs Turning Heritage Into High-End Expression

For chefs with multiracial backgrounds, heritage can encompass American traditions as well. Third-generation chef Jonathan Harris opened his restaurant, Linden, in Hollywood last year as an ode to what he calls the “recipes of stories.” Harris cites his style as rooted in the food he grew up eating in an Afro-Caribbean household and in a “restaurant household.” Many of his ideas pay homage to dishes his father used to make at his New York–based restaurant Cornbread and Caviar.

“Those of us who grew up with Caribbean food are sometimes surprised by how much interest it's getting,” Harris said with a laugh. “Working in kitchens, I know people used to wait weeks for somebody to make jerk chicken for staff meal… but there was still the dismissal, ‘oh, no, chefs would never sell it.’ Now people are trying to find new and inventive ways to recreate that dish.”

On Harris’s menu at Linden, his version of jerk chicken appears as The Parkway, a jerk duck leg and breast paired with a coconut pea risotto approximation of “rice-n-peas” and a bit of heat and color from escovitch peppers. The dish is based on his memories of taking the train to Brooklyn every Labor Day weekend, which coincides with a Caribbean street festival. “When you come up from the train platform, you’re smelling jerk in the air,” he said. The dish is meant to capture the mood of that one day of the year, when the Parkway transforms into a Caribbean hub.

Bringing those memories of a street food festival in New York into an elegant space on Sunset Boulevard is the realization of a lifelong dream for Harris. “People started to stray away from the traditional French restaurant and realized we could make our own food and use techniques on the dishes to actually tell a story,” he said. “It was more about having a platform to tell a story than following a recipe.”

Afro-Caribbean Storytelling

Storytelling is also a central part of what drives Trinidadian-American chef Tristen Epps, the winner of this year’s season of Top Chef along with numerous other awards. Epps grew up with a parent in the military, which meant stints living in places such as Guam, Japan, and the Philippines, an upbringing that shaped his palate and eventual cooking style. Even so, it took him years to consider incorporating Afro-Caribbean dishes into his menus and bringing the story of his own culture into high-end restaurants.

“I didn’t value Afro-Caribbean food as having a place in fine dining,” Epps said. “It’s a different mindset, where everyone assigns a value to types of food and the genre they belong to, and Afro-Caribbean wasn’t there, or even Black food wasn’t there at the time. If I look back at the menus I wrote, Afro-Caribbean only comes in 10 years down the road. African food was unknown, and Caribbean food came in a to-go box, and that’s what I knew.”

Moving to New York to work under Marcus Samuelsson had a major impact on Epps’s way of thinking. Working with Samuelsson, he was able to discover the kind of chef he wanted to be and advocate for that in a completely new way. Making that pivot has also been a significant part of his continued success. On the cusp of opening Buboy, an Afro-Caribbean tasting menu in Houston later this year, Epps believes advocacy is a big part of why this food has been recontextualized.

“For a really long time, we didn’t advocate for ourselves,” he said. “Even some of the greatest chefs I idolized who were Black didn’t make Afro-Caribbean food. Now we’re changing the format, taking it out of to-go boxes, using a little less sauce, putting it on a white plate, and pairing a wine list with it. To me, that’s all amazing. Now that we’re advocating for ourselves to make the food we know is delicious, we’re demanding value out of it.”

19 Dec 2025