Neighborhood Guides
Trini and Caribbean Food: A Flatbush Brooklyn Guide
A guide to Trini and Caribbean food in Flatbush, Brooklyn — doubles, patties, oxtail, and roti along Church Avenue.
The best Trini and Caribbean food in Flatbush Brooklyn is a fifteen-minute train ride from downtown Manhattan and a food neighborhood most food guides completely ignore. Church Avenue and Nostrand Avenue between the 2 and 5 trains are lined with West Indian restaurants, bakeries, and roti shops — the biggest concentration of Caribbean food in New York City.
Ali’s Roti Shop: the Trinidadian anchor
Ali’s on Nostrand Avenue does the doubles that a lot of Trinidadians in Brooklyn grew up eating. Doubles are two soft fried flatbreads (called bara) sandwiching curried chickpeas, topped with chutneys — a proper Trini breakfast or snack. Two doubles and a Solo cola for under six bucks. Order them “slight pepper” if you want a starter heat level; “plenty pepper” if you want to sweat.
Kaieteur Restaurant: the Guyanese classic
Kaieteur on Nostrand does Guyanese food — a cousin of Trinidadian and Jamaican cooking with its own accent. The pepperpot (a slow-cooked beef stew with cassareep) is the specific order, and the chow mein — Guyanese-Chinese style, with cabbage and thick soy — is one of the great Caribbean-Chinese fusion dishes anywhere in the city. Cash only. Portions are enormous.
Peppa’s: the jerk chicken you tell your friends about
Peppa’s on Flatbush has one job — jerk chicken — and does it right. The chicken is marinated overnight in scotch bonnet, allspice, thyme, and ginger, then grilled over pimento wood. Get a quarter chicken (dark meat is the answer) with rice and peas and festival (fried sweet cornbread). It’s takeout only. There’s a small counter. There’s usually a line. It’s worth it.
Gloria’s Caribbean Cuisine: the Jamaican sit-down
Gloria’s on Nostrand is the Jamaican sit-down restaurant that Brooklyn regulars have been eating at for decades. Oxtail with butter beans, curry goat, brown stew chicken, escovitch fish. The oxtail here is the specific pick — slow-braised for hours until the meat falls off the bone, gravy thick enough to eat with a fork. Bring cash. Bring an appetite.
Trinidad Golden Place: the West Indian bakery
Trinidad Golden Place on Nostrand is the bakery for Trinidadian and Guyanese sweet breads — the sugar cakes, the currants roll, the pineapple tarts, the black cake at Christmas. The pholourie — fried split-pea fritters — are the counter snack to eat while you decide what to buy to take home. The saltfish buljol on hops bread for breakfast is the specific move.
Golden Krust: the reliable pattie stop
Golden Krust is a chain, but it’s the chain that got Jamaican beef patties into New York consciousness, and the Flatbush location is one of the busier ones. Order a beef pattie in a coco bread — the pastry inside a bread, which is exactly the carb-on-carb move it sounds like — and eat it on the walk to the train. It’s under five bucks and it’s a legitimate meal.
Ordering vocabulary for Caribbean food
Doubles are the Trinidadian breakfast sandwich. Roti is the flatbread — dhalpuri or paratha, wrapping curry inside like a burrito. Jerk is the marinade-and-grilling technique from Jamaica. Rice and peas is rice cooked in coconut milk with kidney beans. Callaloo is a leafy green (usually taro leaves or amaranth). Ackee and saltfish is the Jamaican national dish. Curry goat is what it sounds like and is one of the great slow-cooked dishes anywhere. Pepper shrimp is small dried shrimp with scotch bonnet, addictive.
What to drink
Sorrel (hibiscus tea, often spiked with rum around Christmas), mauby (a slightly bitter bark-based drink you either love or don’t), sea moss (a thick smoothie made from seaweed, actually good). Ting is the grapefruit soda that goes with everything. Solo is the Trinidadian cola. Red Stripe or Carib beer if you want a proper beer with your meal.
When to go
Weekends are the busy time — the neighborhood eats out on Saturdays and Sundays and the roti lines get real. Weekday lunches are the peak-food time; most West Indian restaurants have their curries and stews at their best around noon. Church Avenue is worth walking end to end at least once — the bakeries, the record shops, the fabric stores, the whole neighborhood ecosystem.
Combining the Caribbean day with the rest of Brooklyn
Flatbush is worth pairing with a walk through Prospect Park or a stop at the Brooklyn Museum a few train stops north. If you’re building a bigger Brooklyn food day, our guide to vegan restaurants in Williamsburg covers a completely different piece of the borough. Every restaurant mentioned above is on the NewYorkEatsguide map.
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