Caribbean roots run deep in the city of Charleston
Each year, the city sees events like Carifest, the founder of which, Lorna Shelton Beck, was honored by the Institute of Caribbean Studies in Washington D.C. last year, and Charleston Caribbean Jerk Festival, which takes place on July 20 at Riverfront Park. Each event brings reminders of the islands located far from the American South and their prevalence throughout local cuisine and culture.
Throughout the year, shadows of Charleson’s Caribbean history can be found in restaurants around the city with options like plantains or conch fritters being relatively easy to find. Yet restaurants that serve solely Caribbean food — foregoing fusion — are still niche.
The Charleston area is home to a number of Caribbean restaurants, and we chatted with a couple about what makes their food so special.
Goose Creek’s Mini Mart Caribbean Grocery & Cuisine offers both takeout options and a grocery which brings more than fare to the area. It fills a gap for the population of the city.
“The grocery is important for a lot of the Caribbean citizens that are actually living here, in the Charleston area,” owner Shomari Tait said. “A lot of them don’t have access to a lot of these specialized grocery products,” he said, citing items like jerk spices, Jamaican Hard Dough bread or cocoa bread as some of those hard-to-obtain options.
Tait’s parents hail from Jamaica and Guyana and first opened the business as a mini mart in North Charleston in the early 2000s after moving from Brooklyn. The family moved the business to its current home at 119 N. Goose Creek Blvd. in 2020, adding the takeout component in March 2023.
Tait took over the business when he got out of the military in 2021, but he’s been involved since the business first opened. He credits his father, Burke Tait, as a pioneer of Caribbean food in the area, having opened one of the earliest groceries.
“A large majority of the Caribbean people here in Charleston, and especially like the long tenured Caribbean people, they know my dad,” Tait said. “He’s got customers that he’s known for over 20 years at this point.”
Recently, the business grew again with the addition of a food truck, so its dishes can have a presence in festivals, allowing the greater population to get to know Mini Mart Caribbean Grocery & Cuisine.
Some bestsellers include the jerk chicken and oxtails.
“Some people bake jerk chicken, but the authentic way is to put it on the grill and let the smoke do the work,” Tait said.
Local business owner, Tiffany James owns Ocho Orleans Food Truck and marries her culinary background with her husband’s.
“We do Jamaican and Cajun food,” James explained, “Even the name ‘Ocho Orleans,’ we have that name [because] we combined our two cultures and cities. So he’s from Ocho Rios in Jamaica, and I’m from New Orleans.”
James and her husband, Anthony, met in Horseshoe Bay, Texas and began the business in 2021. It began as a catering business before moving into a food truck in the Austin area.
The pair moved to Charleston about a year and a half ago, looking for something new and feeling the city would be a good place for their food.
“In New Orleans, cooking is a big thing,” James said. “You start really young, and you start prepping, cutting up the onions and the bell peppers and the celery. And then eventually, after a few years, you might move on to stirring the pot.”
James has been cooking her whole life and derived many of her influences from her grandfather, who was the cook of the family.
As a result, the cuisine of the food truck is fusion, and for James, it’s one that’s close to her heart. The menu does what food does best — bring people together — for a union of dishes representative of both cultures.
James prepares a New Orleans-style succotash that she calls her favorite food in the world. Her “must tries” are her crawfish macaroni, beignets, jerk chicken tacos, gumbo and Jamaican rum raisin bread pudding.
“It’s to die for,” she said of the pudding. “We use a specific rum. … It’s called Wray & Nephew.”
The rum is the main ingredient but it’s cooked out to make it kid-friendly. She then prepares a milk and egg pudding, and infuses it into stale French bread and adds golden raisins.
Additional Charleston-area Caribbean restaurants include: Caribbean Delight on Rivers Avenue, Irie Jam Souls on Ashley Phosphate Road and Taste of the Islands in West Ashley. All of these locations prove there’s a plethora of Caribbean food around town, and if you’re in Charleston, you don’t need to cross the sea to get to it. … At most, you need only cross Interstate 26.
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