Chef Wayne Sharpe’s journey from a shy pupil at Tarrant Excessive College in Kingston, Jamaica, to co-owner of Mangrove, Miami’s top-rated Caribbean restaurant in Downtown Miami, reads like a testomony to culinary imaginative and prescient and perseverance.
The 53-year-old chef has reworked his pure cooking skills into Mangrove, an upscale Jamaican restaurant that challenges perceptions about Caribbean delicacies in one among America’s best eating markets.
Sharpe’s culinary basis started in his grandmother’s rural kitchen and was nurtured at Tarrant Excessive, the place meals and diet trainer Marva Campbell acknowledged his skills. “I used to be just a little shy fats child,” Sharpe recollects of his teenage years. “Marva Campbell stated to me sooner or later, ‘Wayne, you’ll be able to cook dinner.’ And all the things took off from there.”
After graduating highschool, Sharpe started his skilled journey on the Wyndham New Kingston in 1989, working within the Italian restaurant earlier than coaching at HEART Academy in Runaway Bay. He progressed by Jamaica’s hospitality sector, together with positions at Morgan’s Harbour and Versair at Norman Manley Worldwide Airport, earlier than in search of alternatives overseas.
Annoyed by what he perceived as a choice for international cooks over suitably certified and skilled locals within the hospitality trade, Sharpe emigrated to america. “There was this factor that when you’re not an expat, then you definately don’t meet the factors,” he explains, describing how this expertise formed his willpower to show Jamaican delicacies belonged on the highest ranges of high quality eating.
His profession flourished in Atlanta, the place he constructed a popularity for remodeling conventional Jamaican dishes into elevated eating experiences. “I’ve at all times needed to search out methods to current Jamaican meals to people who blow their thoughts,” Sharpe says. “I need you to have a tremendous expertise when you’ve gotten my meals, and I need you to come back again.”
In 2020, Sharpe partnered with entrepreneurs Kavan Burke and Harrison Soffer to launch Jrk!, a fast-casual restaurant with three locations, including Aventura, Downtown Miami, and soon to be in Dadeland. The trio has lately been acknowledged with the 2025 StarChefs Miami Rising Stars Award.
The success of JrK! impressed the trio to evolve their providing into Mangrove, a complicated sit-down restaurant in downtown Miami the place Chef Wayne presents a menu that displays his philosophy of elevated but nonetheless genuine Jamaican delicacies.
“No person goes to provide you Jamaican meals like I’m going to provide it to you due to the way in which I consider it,” Sharpe states.
Mangrove ranks as Miami’s top-rated Caribbean restaurant on Google, constructing a loyal following in a metropolis the place individuals might not acknowledge or acknowledge Caribbean delicacies as being part of the highest finish of the culinary panorama. “I’ve confirmed them incorrect at each juncture,” says Sharpe.
Mangrove is one among 300 eating places taking part in Miami Spice Restaurant Months, the annual program providing discounted three-course menus at eating places throughout Miami and Miami Seaside throughout August and September. “Summer season months are often very, very gradual for eating places in Miami,” Sharpe explains. “Miami Spice now brings visitors to our eating places in what was historically a gradual interval.”
Miami Spice represents a strategic financial driver for Miami’s tourism trade, which welcomed a file 28 million guests in 2024, producing $22 billion in spending. “For over twenty years, Miami Spice Restaurant Month has been a much-anticipated celebration of Miami’s greatest eating places, cooks and culinary creativity,” stated David Whitaker, President & CEO of the Larger Miami Conference & Guests Bureau.
By Mangrove and Miami Spice, Chef Wayne Sharpe continues proving that Jamaican delicacies deserves recognition alongside the world’s most interesting culinary traditions—one completely seasoned dish at a time.
