WRITING CULTURE 2012: Film, Food & Beyond

(Image: pattieproject.wordpress.com)

As a recent British Jamaican transplant to Brooklyn (aka Little Jamaica) it’s no surprise that I’m passionate about the representation of our culture, especially the food, but with over 50% of Americans with Jamaican heritage residing in New York, why haven’t we made a bigger culinary impact on the mainstream foodie map here?

New York is one of THE most cosmopolitan cities on the planet so ethnic isn’t a just a pretentious food genre, it’s what we’re all eating in this town.

Zagat’s latest guide however lists only 1 Jamaican establishment in the best of Caribbean restaurants review (by contrast 7 were Cuban) and Time Out magazine’s doesn’t even list Caribbean as a cuisine category.

This is crazy, when by contrast back in July, 10,000 people made it down to Roy Wilkin’s Park in Queens for the 2^nd annual Grace Jamaican Jerk festival. People LOVE Jerk!

This lack of mainstream respect may be down to a few key things, well known food bloggers have only recently started to venture off ‘The Island’ and then only to the most gentrified of neighborhoods, so aside from places like Negril’s and Miss Lily’s (the restaurant whose very existence is much to the chagrin of Vogue’s Anna Wintour) few other less upscale but still very tasty joints get promoted.

The core customers often think their grandmother, Aunt, cousin, uncle can do it better, so blogging or tweeting about the latest store bought curry goat dish really isn’t on the to-do list, and frankly the surly, you better know what you want because I haven’t got time to answer your questions about what the hell is on (or most likely off) the menu today attitude, of some of the smaller establishments don’t make for the most welcoming of visits.

It’s not all bad, The Huffington Post just named Goat as the in-meat for 2012 but in the meantime I am going to brave the bad service, inaudible mumbling and get my chicken and plantain to go before, the hipsters push the price up.