“It’s a great place to hang out to really sample the diversity of Trinidadian cuisine,” says Prime, 47. “So that’s sort of the concept for St. James: We do small plates, shared plates, so that our guests can get a bit of that experience. Trinidadian food is influenced and shaped by a range of different ethnic groups that have made Trinidad their home, and that makes for really interesting and unique food.”
With Prime pulling the strings as owner and cooks Alfredo Romero Contreras and Emma Hernandez overseeing the kitchen, St. James opened earlier this 12 months. Among the choices on the ethereal 14th Street location: callaloo, a vegetable dish of West African origins; aloo pie, a fried dumpling with Indian roots; and pork pows, a Trinidadian spin on Chinese steamed buns.
It ought to come as no shock, then, that Prime spends her perfect day embarking on a diversified meals tour, beginning with savory pastries and ending with Thai delicacies — whereas tasting a cocktail or two in between.
My dream day would be very food-oriented — not surprisingly. It’s good once I’m not working on the restaurant to be on the other facet of the fence and truly get to take pleasure in being a diner. I usually, on my days off, like to hang around with a few of my greatest girlfriends, sampling the good meals that the D.C. meals has to supply. And I like to assist different women-operated or -owned and minority-operated or -owned companies.
I’d begin at Souk, which is a bakery owned by a childhood pal, Winnette McIntosh Ambrose — we went to the identical center and excessive colleges collectively in Trinidad. I like to go to Souk as a result of she has these actually scrumptious savory turnovers — I feel my favourite is the mushroom and goat cheese model. She additionally has a golden milk latte with turmeric and even a little little bit of cayenne. That would be a actually nice method to begin off the day.
I like the entire waterways in D.C., as a result of it’s such a scenic metropolis, so I’d go to the Georgetown Waterfront for a stroll, then take a water taxi to the Wharf. I actually love oysters and I love to do a gentle lunch, so I’d in all probability go to Hank’s Oyster Bar for Jamie Leeds’s proprietary Salty Wolfe oysters and a burrata salad.
Then I’d head over to Union Market, which is growing and altering and including so many attention-grabbing eating places and outlets. I’d have a rose daiquiri at a beautiful cocktail bar there known as Serenata. I additionally actually love the sidecars at St. Anselm — they’ve a actually scrumptious grilled potato salad with smoked trout, so I really go there fairly a bit simply to have that and cocktails.
For dinner, the flavour in Thai meals jogs my memory of the Caribbean — using coconut and peanuts and the entire chiles — and I’m a enormous fan of a fairly new restaurant known as Sura. Everything I’ve tried there I’ve actually loved — the cocktails, the quail egg wontons, the spicy chili noodles.
I dwell in Brookland, the place one in every of my favourite neighborhood eating places is Primrose, and I usually have drinks there, since they do a tremendous sidecar, too, and a French 75. So I would cease there on my means dwelling. And that’s a dream day for me: a day of consuming, and simply not being on a schedule, not having to be anyplace and simply taking the day at my very own tempo.
