Bringing the Islands Home

November 2003

Bringing the Islands Home

By Kimberly J. DeckerContributing Editor

Some 500 years after Columbus put the foods of the New World on the map, a handful of South Florida chefs dubbed “The Mango Gang” did the same thing all over again. By applying their updated, South Beach sensibility to the tropical harvest that grew — and swam — right outside their doors, these culinary tastemakers, including Norman Van Aken, Allen Susser, Douglas Rodriguez and Mark Militello, raised the profile of Caribbean and equatorial Latin American foods to heights not scaled since the Age of Discovery. This “New World,” or “Floribbean,” cuisine lent a sexy sizzle to menus at trendy, high-end restaurants through the early 1990s. But the fire never spread far beyond the coast where it started.

Within the past decade, however, the realignment of America’s demographic stars has augured a boom for island flavors in foodservice, and not just in traditional expatriate enclaves like Miami and Manhattan, NY. Lucien Vendôme, senior executive chef, Kraft Food Ingredients Corp., Memphis, TN, cites in-house research showing that 20% of all casual chain restaurants across the United States already offer one or more Caribbean items, and among the top 300 chains, 10% give the tropics a culinary nod.

“The Cheesecake Factory has Caribbean items,” Vendôme says. “Cozumel, Houlihan’s, Shells, Bahama Breeze, Cha Cha Cha, El Liberio, The Rainforest Café, Chili’s, Red Lobster, California Pizza Kitchen: All of them have at least one or two menu items that are Caribbean.” These days, even restaurants as Caribbean as the Kremlin count coconut shrimp, black beans and rice, and jerk among their silver-bullet sellers.

Island appealCredit for the renewed interest in Caribbean goes to all the usual suspects: the pervasive food media, the explosion in ethnic diversity, an adventuresome streak in the American palate, and even the memory of romantic island honeymoons. Then there’s the promise, implicit in our fantasies of tropical paradise, of escape and leisure.

Mark Laubner, CEC, corporate executive chef, Phillips Foods, Inc., Baltimore, points out that “People automatically associate the beach, a palm tree and a piña colada with time off, with relaxing, with the whole idea of ‘no worries.’” And in that environment, consumers naturally warm up to the idea of trying new things. “People wearing an Aloha shirt are going to act completely differently from someone wearing a suit and tie,” he says.

Vendôme agrees, noting how most people’s reactions to coconut — “a polarizing flavor” — moderate under the islands’ influence. They may find the tropical fruit barely tolerable at home, “But when people come to the Caribbean, they love it,” he says. The simple truth is that they taste great, too, and in a way that jibes with the predilections of today’s consumers. According to Vendôme, Americans in hot pursuit of bolder flavors and just-picked freshness — that means most of us — gravitate to the Caribbean’s fiery chiles, fresh produce, sweet spices and tangy citrus accents.

Laubner has noticed people using more allspice, characteristic Caribbean chile powders and the different chiles. In many supermarkets, tropical fruits and vegetables that were curiosities before — chayotes, mangoes, and green papayas — have become commonplace, challenging chefs to go out on a limb with their own creations. “They can’t be caught making the same mainstream red beans and rice anymore,” he says.

“Times have changed,” concurs Robert S. Schueller, assistant marketing director, Melissa’s World Variety Produce, Inc., Los Angeles. Both he and Chris Faulkner, corporate chef at Melissa’s, have witnessed firsthand America’s initiation to traditional Caribbean produce. Faulkner points to the robust feedback from customers as further evidence of their curiosity. “We hear about it through our website,” he says. “People call us about these items. They contact us through mail order.”

While Schueller acknowledges the stimulative effects of the media and ethnic communities, he also believes that, at least for mainstream consumers, the “first wave of education” about Caribbean cuisine comes from the restaurants. “There’s a lot of potential in the products that we distribute nationally,” he says. “And a lot of the potential for those trends comes down through foodservice.”

Once restaurants seed consumers with an interest in Caribbean cuisine, those seeds blossom into full-fledged demand. Growers and importers, sensing the demand, step up their supplies. This gives chefs more, and more varied, resources with which to cultivate yet more demand, resulting in another spin in a well-oiled supply-and-demand loop. American growers of tropical produce, seizing on gaps left by import restrictions and a general lack of interest in Caribbean crops by other domestic growers, now harvest everything from chayote and coconuts to papayas, mangoes and star fruit. “That’s why a lot of the produce we used to import, we don’t need to import anymore,” Schueller explains.

For chefs who had been leery of committing to tropical ingredients because of notoriously sketchy quality or availability, today’s multiple supply routes soothe their fears. “We want them to get the message about how much easier it is to find these items, and to find them on close to a year-round basis,” Schueller says.

That said, chefs can always turn to dried, canned and otherwise preserved options. The swap isn’t necessarily a bum deal, either: Considering the cuisine’s peasant roots, many of the Caribbean’s most emblematic foodstuffs — salted fish, dried beans and seasonings, grain meals, chutneys, pickles, fruit jams and juices — were designed to hold out until bad times turned good. Preserved products reduce waste and save labor, too. Schueller also calls attention to the expanding selection of fresh-cut tropical produce, which gives chefs another efficient alternative to the labor demands of unprocessed.

The same vibrancy and variety that make Caribbean cuisine taste so good also make it good for you. In a reversal bound to relieve consumers fed up with deprivation diets, “The focus in Caribbean cuisine is not about what to leave out to make it healthy, but more about what you put in that makes it authentic, makes it taste great, and — oh, by the way — just happens to make it lighter, healthier fare,” notes nutritionist, author and culinary consultant Pamela Smith, R.D.

Smith believes that the cuisine’s cooking and seasoning strategies — “everything from grilling over an open wood fire to the use of marinades that are fruit-juice based” — are integral to its ability to deliver potent flavor in a healthful package. “Caribbean cuisine uses this notion of oven-roasting vegetables — many of them root vegetables like boniato and malanga — to let the flavors caramelize and intensify,” she notes, in a way that’s so innately delicious that it makes extra fat seem gratuitous.

Bringing the vacation homeWith their most vexing supply problems thus ironed out, chefs can devote more energy to creative endeavors — like serving their customers a little bit of island adventure at mealtime. “Middle America, to a certain degree, needs some adventure in its food,” Vendôme says. But to make that adventure worthwhile, restaurateurs have to think beyond what they put on the plate. Whether you call it “New World,” “Floribbean,” or good-old Caribbean, the trick lies not just in bringing the tropics home to the customer, but also in sending the customer to the tropics.

“If you think about what you experience when you go on an island vacation — just from the sights, the sounds, the scenery, the smells, the music — you immediately go into a different gear,” muses Smith. “It’s a very interesting blend between being relaxed, and yet energized.”

Smith should know: Ten years ago, she helped create the original menu for Bahama Breeze, the Orlando, FL-based Darden Restaurants concept that has honed the fine art of putting guests in an island state of mind. The restaurants themselves look like something you’d find on the quay in Nassau: breezy verandas, tin ceilings, and grounds lush with palm trees and greenery. Lively exposition kitchens mesmerize vicarious chefs in the dining rooms, while outdoor fire pits, live music and valet parking appeal to guests who nurse dreams of Club Med.

But while the island-inspired atmosphere fosters a casual, kick-back vibe, there’s nothing kick-back about what goes on in the restaurants’ kitchens. Caribbean cuisine, despite its humble ancestry, can be maddeningly complicated and time-consuming to prepare. “It’s not necessarily something you’re going to cook at home,” Vendôme says. The classic preparation of jerk pig, for instance, involves, among other tasks, digging a massive pit in the ground and tending to smoldering allspice branches for hours.

Bahama Breeze chefs make sauces and marinades from scratch and slow-roast their signature West Indies ribs overnight. “We spend all day, and sometimes two days, preparing for what is going to be served on a given night,” Smith says. Even something as deceptively simple as the roasted-corn and chicken chowder would stretch the average consumer’s patience. “We grill the corn over an open fire, so you get that wonderful wood-roasted flavor. We smoke the chicken. And, we cook the corn and the potatoes as you would for a chowder,” she explains. “Each individual ingredient receives its own measure of care to bring it to the right flavor profile, and then it’s all married together. But on the home front, very few people are going to be able to take the time to do that.”

Culinary strataLike any proper getaway, a meal at a Caribbean restaurant is a great escape — from the kitchen, that is. But even the greatest escapes can go too far and there’s a lot to be said for the comforts of the familiar; successful Caribbean-themed restaurants take this into account. No matter how wild and crazy tourists get, you’ll still have a hard time selling them salt cod when they get home. So, until the average American finds his or her sea legs with bona fide Caribbean flavors, restaurants can please the widest audience with a menu that balances authenticity with accessibility.

This notion of Caribbean authenticity itself is elusive. What could be “authentic” to a collection of islands stretching from Bermuda, off the mid-Atlantic coast, down to the Greater Antilles — Cuba, Hispaniola, Jamaica and Puerto Rico — and on still to Barbados, Trinidad and Tobago, and the Virgin, Leeward and Windward Islands of the Lesser Antilles? Don’t forget Cancún and Cozumel in Mexico, or Guyana, Suriname and French Guiana on South America’s northeast coast. To complicate matters further, consider that parts of the entire region at one point or another came under the dominion of the Spanish, British, French, Dutch and Danish crowns.

As Smith points out, the Caribbean “really is the culinary crossroads.” Throughout its history, it’s remained more a patchwork quilt than a melting pot, the disparate influences not so much subsuming or obliterating what came before as building upon it. Thus, culinarians can analyze Caribbean culinary classics much the way a geologist does stratified rock, teasing out layer upon layer of history and inspiration in the ingredients, cooking techniques and flavors.

The cuisine’s bedrock consists of the foods of the early Carib and Arawak tribes — much of it the same seafood, small game, yams, cassavas, taro roots, corn, legumes, guavas, pineapples, chile peppers, and pit-style barbecuing we see today. When the Europeans arrived, they added a layer of their own, introducing sugarcane, as well as coffee, coconuts, eggplants, citrus fruits, onions, garlic and rice. “Because of the Spanish influence,” Smith explains, “you have saffron and chorizo and some of the tomato-based sauces coming in. Then you have the Dutch influence, and the French with Creole cuisine and some of their different methods of preparation and presentation.”

With the African slave trade came okra, plantains, callaloo, pigeon peas and ackee fruit — the latter scrambled with salt cod, onions and tomatoes in the Jamaican national breakfast, a proud exemplar of the island’s polyglot past. “When slavery was abolished, we had the Indian and Asian influence that came as the planters started looking for others to fill out the labor force,” Smith adds. These cultures put down their own strata in a cuisine as likely to include curries, flat breads, stir-fries and chow mein as fried conch and banana fritters. “You just get every culture evidenced,” she says, “sometimes on the same plate.”

So foodservice operators should feel no qualms when sampling from different cuisines on their own Caribbean menus. “While I do see the importance of maintaining a certain amount of respect toward the old-school traditions, the flavors and the cooking techniques, in cooking, there aren’t any rules,” Laubner explains, save for pleasing customers and, ideally, making a profit. The game, he says, “is about adaptation. It’s about creation. It’s about innovation.”

Authenticity in dosesThat’s the philosophy Smith followed when building Bahama Breeze. “What we didn’t want to do was just make a burger or a turkey sandwich, put a slice of pineapple on top, and call it ‘Caribbean,’” she explains. Instead, taking the sandwich as an example, they would consider what sandwiches would be like in the Caribbean. “We wanted to take the kinds of sandwiches that are very familiar in the U.S., but then find the ways that we could bring in the flavors, the textures, the spices and cooking techniques of the Caribbean, and come forth with a sandwich that is uniquely different: It’s familiar, it’s approachable, but it’s a sandwich unlike what you’ll find anyplace else,” she says.

The policy produced a menu that blows a balmy trade wind through all the expected segments — samplers, soups, salads, sandwiches, meats and seafood, desserts and beverages — and even through a couple that you wouldn’t expect in the Caribbean: pastas and wood-fired pizza. Jerk chicken tops one of those pizzas, along with red onion, thyme and mozzarella. The restaurant’s Island Onion Rings sport a coconut breading and come with chile-horseradish and citrus-mustard dipping sauces. An entrée of Tropical Tiger Prawns stir-fries America’s favorite seafood with passion fruit, and serves it with roasted-red-pepper angel hair and squash. And for those craving something red and meaty, the Oak-Grilled Sirloin Palomilla gives them just that, but in a Latin-style cut and with a side of Cuban black beans.

It’s a menu that skillfully blends what Laubner calls “American comfort proteins” with accents that shift them in a Caribbean direction. “You have to start with what people are comfortable and familiar with,” he continues, meaning chicken, shrimp, tuna, crabmeat or even mahi-mahi — a middle-of-the-road, tender, flaky, mild white fish — and then build their flavor palette by adding something that will complement the dish, like a mango-habanero salsa.

No wonder, then, that at a Nation’s Restaurant News culinary development and research conference last year, Rick Crossland, Bahama Breeze’s senior vice president of culinary and beverage development, attributed the success of the restaurant’s best sellers — Coconut Prawns and Jerk Chicken Pasta — to being “grounded.” After all, shrimp, he said, “is a very recognizable protein.” On the other hand, he surmised, a stab at salt cod may not have done so well because it was just too “esoteric.”

That’s not to say that salt cod will never work. Crossland even holds out hope for Caribbean-style goat. But the key lies in feeding authenticity to customers in small, strategic doses. Have fun introducing items in daily specials, or on appetizer platters, where the mix-and-match approach invites experimentation. Laubner suggests four or five dishes that people generally like, and one or two that are unique, such as marinated octopus salad or conch seviche. So, after the habanero wings sweet-talk customers into lowering their guard, they might not be so resistant to conch. Those who don’t like it can just go back to the chicken.

Other avenues for experimentation, both on the part of the guests and the chefs, include desserts and beverages. Faulkner suggests making an upside-down cake with star fruit instead of, or in addition to, the usual pineapple. “Or, you could take the same star fruit and caramelize it with a little bit of brown sugar and maybe flambé it with a little bit of rum. Then you could serve that with crepes or inside of a coconut shell,” he offers.

Drinkers sidling up to the bar at Bahama Breeze can choose the classic and always popular piña colada, or they can opt for trendier tropical tipples, like a frozen “Bahamarita” in kiwi, strawberry or mango, or the Cuban libation, mojito, made with spearmint, lime juice, seltzer, Bahama Breeze’s freshly squeezed sugarcane juice called guarapo, and that Caribbean favorite, rum.

Ed Hamby, foodservice manager, Degussa Flavors & Fruit Systems, US, Philadelphia, advises restaurant operators not to overlook the strength of the smoothie, which he says is highly profitable and still in its growing stages. So while customers can feel good about drinking one of their “5 A Day” servings, the exotic appeal of the tropical-fruit theme fits right in with the delivery vehicle and gives it an edge. “Anytime you come out with something new that’s different from the strawberry-banana basics, there’s going to be an excitement about it,” he notes. Ingredient suppliers offer smoothie bases in shelf-stable, portion-controlled formats, making things easier on beverage managers, too.

If only easy, exciting and appealing all came in as convenient a package as Caribbean cuisine, tweaked just enough to bring it even closer to what American restaurant patrons crave. It brightens chefs’ days, too. “Especially from a chef’s point of view, you want to tell a story with your food,” Faulkner says. “When you recreate a dish, you’re trying to tell a story through that dish.” And the dishes of the Caribbean have quite a story to tell.

Kimberly J. Decker, a California-based technical writer, has a bachelor’s degree in consumer food science with a minor in English from the University of California, Davis. She lives in the San Francisco Bay area, and enjoys cooking and eating food in addition to writing about it.

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