Photography by Rachel Maucieri
Leave it to the most acclaimed chef in Oklahoma to perfect the piña colada.
After winning a James Beard Award for his tasting menus at Grey Sweater, chef Andrew Black is returning to his roots with Dougla Kitchen, his first restaurant fully dedicated to his Caribbean heritage. His career, though, has always led to this. Since he arrived in Oklahoma City in 2007, the Jamaica native has paid homage to his home country, from a butter-poached scallop dish at Grey Sweater that was inspired by a Jamaican fish stew to a dish of broiled butter beans with grilled Caribbean roti at Perle Mesta. But Dougla Kitchen marks his fullest culinary homecoming yet.
In Dougla Kitchen, in his former Black Walnut space in Deep Deuce, reggae music gently
reverberates through a dining room awash in color. Plants dangle behind the bar, where a sugarcane juicer shares space with perhaps the deepest rum collection in the state, and on one door, a giant clock replaces numbers with Caribbean flags. It’s all an intentional part of the story, as Black pulls from his past to honor his present.
“When you come to this country, you’re always afraid of cooking the food you grew up on, because you can’t tell if people are gonna like it,” Black said, recalling a moment two years ago when he wrote a note to his grandmother, Elysabeth Bandoo. It thanked her for the inspiration she instilled in him as a cook, a chef and a world traveler. That note was the inspiration for Dougla Kitchen, a love letter to his grandmother, and an ode to his history.
“Because my father’s side is Indo-Caribbean, and my mom’s side was African, I was trying to find what word bound both culturally,” he said. “I researched the word ‘Dougla,’ and found out it was once a derogatory word meaning ‘mixed,’ but it’s a word we celebrate now.” Just as his family is a melting pot of Asian, white, Black, German and Indo-Caribbean people, the customers who come to Dougla Kitchen exhibit that same diversity Black is aiming to celebrate. Pointing to the Caribbean clock, he talked about how Caribbean customers have begun asking him when they’ll get a flag from their own country. “It gives me goosebumps, because customers are taking ownership already,” he said, touched by the cultural connection he’s fostering.
It’s not just the decor celebrating that diversity, though. Black describes the menu as Caribbean cuisine with Indo flavor, meaning the foods passed on from Caribbean immigrants descendant from the Indian subcontinent. From smoked octopus coconut ceviche to pimento- and tamarind-glazed goat ribs with Indian cucumber and mint chutney, recipes plumb the depths of flavor across the Caribbean, be it a classic, empanada-like Jamaican beef patty or grilled lamb skewers glazed with rum and spiced with suya, a nutty African dry rub.
Describing the dining experience as a “journey,” he hits on dishes both familiar—like the most beautiful, glistening jerk chicken you’ve ever seen—and novel, like a lush green papaya salad with passion fruit dressing and an earthy Caribbean herb called chadon beni, and meltingly tender curried goat with fluffy plantain and potato gnocchi. Even a side dish of plantains, fried and glazed in molasses butter, is as visually striking as a bowl of gold doubloons.
The drinks, too, are elevated but authentic. Such as the Suck Suck, a cocktail served in a bag with a straw, much like they sip in the Caribbean, and the creamy piña colada, flecked with toasted coconut. “We knew we had to do a piña colada,” Black said, citing the vast collection of esoteric rums lining the bar, and the sugarcane machine for making fresh juice. “But it had to be the best piña colada in the world.”
A casual offshoot, Dougla Lounge, is in the works next door, focusing on cocktails and small bites, and he’s planning a slew of festive events, including Dougla Rum Week in August, monthly reggae brunches and rum and cigar dinners on the patio. It’s all part of the deeper story Black is trying to share.
Dougla Kitchen is, in the chef’s words, the most “dressed down” of all his restaurants. The music, the vibe and the atmosphere are all distinctly different, especially from his tasting menu concept next door. But it’s an opportunity for the chef to reconnect with—and honor—his roots in a fuller way.
“At the end of the day, are there other restaurants that have some of this food? Absolutely,” Black mused. “But we’re in charge of telling the story, and we have to do a good job of telling the story.” As he looks around the dining room, recalling the note he wrote to his grandmother, he swells with pride. “I had no idea we’d be selling so much goat,” he chuckled. “To stand in the corner and see people drinking Suck Suck, eating goat and oxtail, it’s so rewarding. People are claiming it, and that’s what I love about it.”
