Jul 24, 2023 - Food and Drink

5 African and Caribbean restaurants to try in New Orleans

Chelsea Brasted

Photo shows Queen Trini Lisa standing in front of restaurant and smiling — Lisa Nelson, owner of Queen Trini Lisa, serves Trinbagonian island soul food at her Mid-City restaurant. Photo: Courtesy of Queen Trini Lisa

West African and Caribbean cuisine's influence on New Orleans' food culture has rarely been acknowledged by the mainstream. But that’s changing, thanks in large part to new restaurants and chefs who are clearly outlining that lineage.

Why it matters: The slate of restaurants reckoning with that connection, in a city that was once home to the nation's largest slave market, has played an important role in helping people understand current food trends and practices, the New York Times wrote earlier this year.

“We need to let people know where the food came from. The story isn’t always going to be pleasant,” Dakar NOLA chef Serigne Mbaye told NYT's Brett Anderson.

Flashback: The U.S. ended the legal import of enslaved people in 1808, but the market for domestic sales continued until the Civil War. Estimates suggest New Orleans served as the site of purchase for 135,000 enslaved people.

Kitchen work was common for enslaved people, and the flavors and cooking techniques they brought with them influenced Cajun and Creole cooking in New Orleans. For example, the word for “gumbo” comes from an Angolan word, and the word “okra” comes from the Igbo language.
The Haitian Revolution at the turn of the 19th century also hastened the rise of New Orleans’ population of free people of color.

In the city’s 300-year history, Black chefs have rarely been known beyond the bounds of their own kitchens.

More typically, the city’s celebrity chefs — like Emeril Lagasse and Paul Prudhomme — are white.
“All of the history that was left out over the last hundreds of years, we’re having to fill that in now with our storytelling,” Addis NOLA chef Prince Lobo told the New York Times.

New restaurants centering African and Caribbean flavors are filling in that story. Here are five where you can honor this history and the growing appreciation for it.