Marva Lane, Brittney “Stikxz” Williams, Nneka Nurse, Tiffane Stephens, and Shari Brown, recipients of the Caribbean HERitage Awards honoring girls in meals, beverage, and hospitality.
Picture by Brendan Miller
Nneka Nurse’s ardour for Caribbean meals and tradition sparked a motion to protect and promote the area’s culinary heritage and struggle in opposition to cultural appropriation.
What started as a easy Instagram web page, Best Dressed Plate, has advanced right into a dynamic platform championing Caribbean cooks, documenting conventional recipes, and educating the general public on the wealthy variety past the “avenue meals” stereotype usually related to the delicacies.
Nurse, whose heritage spans Jamaica, Trinidad, Barbados, and Nevis, recollects a pivotal second on a Memorial Day weekend when she missed the colourful Caribbean flavors that normally outlined Brooklyn’s Shhh events. Impressed by Jamaica’s well-known “greatest dressed rooster,” she launched Greatest Dressed Plate to merge her love for meals and trend.
“I really like trend, and I really like meals,” Nurse stated. “Greatest Dressed Plate was born from that fusion.”
As Caribbean chair for the upcoming 50 Greatest Eating places in North America listing, Nurse is dedicated to elevating the profile of Caribbean delicacies within the fantastic eating world. She emphasizes breaking free from slender labels that scale back Caribbean meals to informal, cheap fare.
“They wanna put us in a field,” she stated. “We’re battling stereotypes deeply embedded in folks’s minds.”
Past storytelling, Best Dressed Plate hosts their inaugural HERitage Award dinner, spotlighting girls in hospitality whose contributions usually go unrecognized till after their passing. Nurse cites St. Lucian chef Nina Compton for instance of Caribbean expertise excelling on the worldwide stage alongside honorees like Marva Lane, proprietor of Negril Village, and Charmaine Gumbs, proprietor of Sugarcane, each pioneering girls who opened what are thought of the blueprints of the primary seated Caribbean eating places in New York over 20 years in the past and proceed to function in the present day.”
A major focus for Nurse is combating cultural appropriation. She factors to cases the place Caribbean elements like sorrel are renamed hibiscus tea or the place an article that appeared in Oregon State University claimed the invention of the Trinidadian pimento pepper.
“That’s erasure of our tradition,” Nurse stated. “We should assert the origins and doc our traditions.”
Earlier this 12 months, Greatest Dressed Plate teamed up with the Culinary Institute of America to host a lecture collection spotlighting Caribbean delicacies. The collection featured famend cooks Omar Walters of Omar’s Rum Bar, Alain LeMaire of Ou Manje Deja, and sensible nutritionist Maya Feller, MS, RD, CDN. The initiative aimed to convey Caribbean culinary traditions into the highlight of formal culinary training.
“There’s a scarcity of documented Caribbean meals historical past in establishments,” Nurse stated. “That is the following frontier for us.”
Nurse’s position with 50 Greatest Eating places will highlight Caribbean institutions when the listing launches later in 2025 — a milestone anticipated to spice up culinary tourism, which has surged 32 % globally.
“That is large for the Caribbean,“ she stated. “We would like our area to assert its place within the culinary world.”
Addressing a mind drain within the Caribbean’s hospitality sector, Nurse factors out how native expertise is usually ignored in favor of international hires paid in U.S. {dollars}, forcing many cooks to go away dwelling for alternatives elsewhere.
“They don’t need to go away, however they’ve payments to pay,“ she stated.
Trying forward, Greatest Dressed Plate plans expanded academic programming, extra video content material, and its third Caribbean Tradishon Heirloom in November 2025. Previous occasions have traced the Spanish and French influences shaping Caribbean flavors, connecting cooks throughout the area.
“These dinners function an encyclopedia of why and the way Caribbean delicacies advanced,“ Nurse stated.
The platform additionally goals to raise underrepresented cuisines, like Guyanese meals, which is usually overshadowed or mistaken for others within the area.
Nurse is devoted to preserving Caribbean culinary traditions via Greatest Dressed Plate, demanding rightful recognition, and empowering the following era.
“Time for Talawa,“ she stated, utilizing a Jamaican time period for rising sturdy. “We’ve matured, and now it’s time to refine and personal our story.”
