The Best Food We Ate at The West Indian Day Parade

By Abe Beame

Don’t follow the equinox, or when you can finally pull that lightweight denim jacket out of the closet. The summer ends in Brooklyn every year on a long Labor Day weekend, which announces the opening of public schools (Thursday!) and concludes with J’Ouvert and the West Indian Day Parade on a two-mile, six-lane stretch of Eastern Parkway between Grand Army Plaza and Utica Avenue, cutting mostly through the heart of Crown Heights, where the parade has lived since it migrated south from Harlem in 1969.

Photo by Abe Beame

It is also the best food festival of the year, an irreplicable mix of vendors who have restaurant or food truck backing or are just incredibly talented local chefs who work for the MTA or the post office most of the year but have a side hustle, pulling up to events like this one, with a few hundred dollars worth of product they will flip into a few thousand extra dollars in their checking accounts.

This calendar year, Labor Day landed as late as it possibly could, and the extra week of September was a blessing. A good breeze was going, and it was a comfortable mid-70s early, a far cry from years of cooking in late-summer heat from the moment you leave your apartment. The energy was comparably chill. There were a few day-drunk J’Ouvert revelers, smeared with grease and dusted with baby powder, but not as many as you’d usually find on Flatbush on late Labor Day mornings in years past. Part of me wondered if this was an unforeseeable byproduct of the recent uptick in heritage parades celebrating the individual nationalities that make up the West Indian diaspora in Brooklyn, or if the sizable portion of newer residents in this neighborhood merely thinking of this long weekend as a last excuse to get out of town—rather than, presumably, one of the best reasons to live in Flatbush in the first place—had diluted some of the energy around this collective celebration. But I was concerned for nothing and forgot Brooklyn is always an hour late.

Photo by Abe Beame

So, yesterday morning, around 11, I got dressed in an outfit I wouldn’t mind getting covered in grease, paint, and/or jerk sauce and throwing away, withdrew $200 in cash, and walked up the hill to sample what was on offer with some friends to help me taste and discuss. By 1 PM, the streets were crushed with people who had rolled out of their house after a quick post-J’ouvert nap, or poured out of Metro North, or caravans that had come north from the Mid-Atlantic, driving in from places where there are few West Indian communities, to Brooklyn, where there are many.

The food did not disappoint, but the price of a plate, like the price of everything, has gone up. Cinnabon trucks and Auntie Annie trucks and Mister Softee trucks now compete with the independent vendors from every Caribbean nation (alongside a surprising influx of Mexican and Central American vendors, offering grilled corn and meat skewers or fresh wrapped tamales or pupusas). The nutcracker vendors, however, were ubiquitous and free to trade (and their customers free to consume) without police interference, against a soundtrack of timeless dancehall, soca, kompa, and afrobeats hits didn’t stop (as well as “Swag Surfin,” for some reason, which will send a crowd up anywhere and everywhere, until the end of time), whether it was coming from parade floats or the impressive systems in the yards lining the Parkway.

Friendly reminder: This is street food, hastily plated by vendors doing their best to keep lines moving and not end up with any leftover product on their busiest day of the year, so it doesn’t always photograph well. But enough bullshit. Here’s what I ate.

Photo by Abe Beame

Oxtail, pelau, and cabbage from a stand with no name, decorated with Trini flags on the south side of Eastern Parkway, between Classon and Franklin ($20)

I started the day with some rice to coat my stomach. Pelau is a relative of pilaf and baked rice dishes as diverse as paella and jollof. It is believed pelau was part of a Trinidadian cultural exchange brought to the island by Indian indentured servants. On the plate, it’s Caribbean fried, this iteration packed with stewed chicken and flavorful, often cooked in a bouillon-spiked broth. 

I was in the mood for oxtail, so I added the protein to my plate, two fatty chunks swimming in a thick gravy. It reminded me why I never get oxtail at these things, now a price-gouged luxury, but one of the best bites of the day came from spooning excess gravy onto the rice.

Photo by Abe Beame

Jerk salmon and mac & cheese from Lin’s Jamaican Jerk ($20)

I was hoping for jerk shrimp, as the menu advertised, but Lin’s was either sold out or didn’t bring any, and I didn’t want the time I spent on line to be in vain. So, I audibled the jerk salmon, and I’m glad I did. The salmon was perfectly cooked, practically melting, and the jerk rub had real zing. They douse the salmon in Asian sweet chili sauce and Matouk’s Calypso Sauce, a yellow pickled scotch bonnet and mustard-style condiment that elevated the salmon. The mac & cheese was tossed through with something like a mornay, which is more to my taste, as opposed to baked in a solid brick. 

Photo by Abe Beame

Bake and shark from Heather’s Caribbean Kitchen ($20) 

Heather’s was frying their bakes (fried flatbread) to order, which made the difference. The “shark” (possibly chunks of marinated deep-fried snapper) was also fresh-fried. It was garnished with fat slices of tomato and pineapple and squeezes of garlic sauce, tamarind sauce, and shado beni. It was the world’s greatest Baja fish taco, wrapped in a pillow.

Photo by Abe Beame

Queen K’s Infamous Adults Only (?) Guava Don Julio Margarita ($10)

Unclear if this proprietor’s name is Queen K and she has a line of nutcrackers called Adults Only, or the name of the brand is simply Adults Only Queen K, but she was a charming saleswoman, and in this market, a decent-sized nutcracker pouch for $10 is a steal. One of my associates was in the mood for guava, so that dictated the purchase, which was very sweet and very strong and could’ve used some sour, as there was no discernible citrus. 

Photo by Abe Beame

Conch fritters from several folding tables, with no signage or tent on the south side of Eastern Parkway, between Franklin and Bedford (6 for $10)

The consensus best bite of the day. I was briefly in the Bahamas over the summer and had a few different iterations of one of their national delicacies, the conch fritter, which is something I have to get at least one paper boat of at the parade every year. These were made to order in a cast iron pan heated by a gas canister-fed Camp Chef grill, and they were better than the fritters I had in the Bahamas, glistening fresh from the oil (but crucially, not oily), and served with a homemade, plussed-up Russian dressing. 

Photo by Abe Beame

Curry shrimp, rice & peas + gravy, plantains, and cabbage from Semper’s Delight ($25)

You live and die by your curry when you’re dealing with pre-cooked shrimp, and fortunately this stood up. It was textured, turmeric-forward, and soaked in pepper sauce.

Photo by Abe Beame

Fried shark and rice & peas from Ella Spice ($25)

These were fried steaks of shark (?). They were a bit overcooked and dry, but the BBQ and jerk sauce covered up for it nicely. 

Photo by Abe Beame

Jerk chicken and rice & peas from Yah Suh Nice Jerk ($25)

I have a policy at these things not to get jerk chicken because it is ubiquitous in my neighborhood, but I broke that rule yesterday and feel affirmed in that decision. According to a neighbor, Yah Suh Nice staked out their parcel on the southwest corner of Eastern Parkway and Nostrand on Saturday, and I believed it because there were cooks sleeping sitting up in folding chairs between “shifts.”

Their hard work, moving hunks of jerk pork and chicken thighs out of a massive black iron smoker, was well worth it. This was the second best bite of the day, with a visible smoke ring and a jerk rub that was so flavorful and spicy it didn’t even need the jerk sauce that was served on the side. 

Photo by Abe Beame

“Jerk” lamb gyro and “jerk” hot dog from Caribbean Party World ($20)

The danger of this exercise is you want to be able to report novelty and cool discoveries in a field of excellent staples that can be hard to distinguish from one another. Some stands prey on that, and what you end up with is generic, anglicized drunk food tagged with “jerk.” In this case, that means defrosted and griddled or boiled proteins sauced with piquant BBQ sauce and wedged into a stale bun or pita. 

Photo by Abe Beame

Jerk pork and rice & peas from a grill on Flatbush, between Midwood and Rutland ($12)

Fatty, but extremely flavorful and the perfect spice level (very, and the leftovers served as a perfect breakfast). If you’re bargain conscious, going off the main strip on the Parkway is a good place to find sub-$20 plates, because most of the “vendors” are people who set up a grill on the sidewalk and don’t owe anyone fees.

Photo by Abe Beame

Pork Griot and “black rice” from Lavila ($20)

My wife requested I bring home a plate, and I’d wanted to hit at least one Haitian stand during the day, so fortunately I stumbled upon this vendor who had prime real estate to themselves at the southeast entrance to Prospect Park, on the corner of Ocean Avenue and Parkside Avenue. There was shredded pork in a tinfoil roasting pan, but they were frying a fresh batch, so I opted to wait 15 minutes for it. The black rice was really pilau, and even fresh out the fryer, the pork was dry. But I got two ramekins stuffed with great pikliz, and griot really is a dish you make or break with its condiment, and the pairing rocked. 

Bottle of Modelo (free)

A member of our crew lives on Eastern Parkway and invited us over to take a break from walking to sit on a stoop, hang out in front of their building for a bit, and take advantage of a non-portable restroom. The building was throwing their own mini-party in the yard, grilling and blasting soca, and one of the neighbors handed me a Modelo in a glass bottle. I tried to give him some bread, but he waved me off. It was ice cold and delicious. I forgot to take a picture.