Afro-Caribbean cuisine added to ‘melting pot’ at South Beach food fest
Afro-Caribbean cuisine will take center stage during a new signature event at the South Beach Wine and Food Festival.
Led by New Orleans-based chef Nina Compton and Kwame Onwuachi, who has a Miami-based restaurant, Las’ Lap Link Up: A Celebration of Afro-Caribbean Cuisine brings together nearly 20 chefs of Caribbean descent offering their culinary spin on Caribbean cuisine for a late-night celebration.
The latest food fest event joins other Black-centered efforts: The Cookout hosted by JJ Johnson, and The Overtown Brunch, formerly called The Gospel Brunch, hosted by chef Marcus Samuelsson, which will be at his Red Rooster restaurant.
This year marks the first time a South Beach food festival event will focus on Caribbean cuisine. For Compton, a St. Lucia native who spent a decade living and cooking in Miami, it fills a longstanding gap at the nationally known fest.
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“Having an event like this spotlighting Caribbean food is important, and I don’t know why it hasn’t happened before, especially in a place like Miami, where you have so many people from the islands living there and contributing to the culture,” she said. “So I think it made perfect sense to have this event and celebrate Caribbean people.”
Kwame Onwuachi, chef and owner of Las’ Lap in Miami Beach, said having an event of this magnitude for Afro-Caribbean cuisine reinforces that it, too, is a part of American cuisine.
“America is a melting pot of so many different cultures,” he said.
Onwuachi is serving the Oxtail Cuban, a signature dish at Las’ Lap that’s been described as slow-braised oxtail, Swiss cheese, Wagyu beef bacon, mojo sauce and black truffles on pressed bread.
“You have so many different cultures always represented at these events,” he said. “This should always be the case.”
Compton, who will be serving cow heel soup, said the event comes as Caribbean food is seeing a resurgence in the food world.
“Caribbean food is having a moment,” Compton said. “We’re seeing more Caribbean sit-down restaurants across the country. It shows that people from the Caribbean are putting their best foot forward with our cuisine and cooking authentically.”
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Compton said the event broadly celebrates Black chefs such as Wayne Sharpe, whose Jamaican restaurant JrK! has expanded to three locations in Miami-Dade County, and Tristen Epps-Long, who was crowned champion of Top Chef last year as he wowed the judges.
Sharpe said traditionally French cuisine has been looked at as the standard, and chefs have conformed to fit that standard. Sharpe lamented that Afro-Caribbean food doesn’t always get “a fair shake,” but is happy it’s being taken more seriously with the Las’ Lap Link Up.
He’ll be serving a Caribbean Splash Fry, which includes crispy fried chicken and fish filets, mango salsa, coconut rice and house-pickled veggies.
“I’m a rebellious one, because I’m not one to water down my food,” he said. “I’ll change the way I present it, but what I’m presenting is always going to be unapologetically Jamaican.”
For Epps-Long, the Las’ Lap Link Up serves as a homecoming: The renowned chef was executive chef at Red Rooster in Overtown and his work at Eden Roc’s Ocean Social earned him a semifinalist nod for a James Beard Award.
“Culturally and tangibly, Miami always feels like a place that I like to call home, because I’ve had a lot of really great success,” said Epps-Long, who now works as a chef at Buboy in Houston. “There a lot of really great stories there. A lot of life happened there.”
Epps-Long, who is serving a Trinidadian-style macaroni pie with oxtail sauce and callaloo with black truffles, said having an Afro-Caribbean cuisine-centered event is a reflection of the diversity of culture in South Florida, home to one of the largest Caribbean populations in the United States.
“It’s important that people are seeing it as its own entity,” he said, “because it gives us its own credibility to stand toe-to-toe with everything else and see its vibrancy.”
If you go
What: Las’ Lap Link Up: A Celebration of Afro-Caribbean Cuisine
When: Friday, 10 p.m. to 1 a.m.
Where: Kimpton Surfcomber Hotel, 1717 Collins Ave, Miami Beach
Cost: $145
Info: https://sobewff.org/islands/
This story was originally published February 16, 2026 at 5:00 AM.
