Wadadli

Jerk Chicken Pop-Up Wadadli Opens a Cafe in Bed-Stuy | Eater NY

"To find Bed-Stuy’s newest Caribbean restaurant, I head down Tompkins Avenue until I smell the smoke — the small cafe opened this summer and starts smoking its meats around 9:30 a.m. most mornings. Owner Edwin Hughes, known around the neighborhood as “Brods,” built the operation from a pop-up outside the Bed-Vyne cocktail bar into a permanent spot he named Wadadli after Antigua’s indigenous name; he reopened after the pandemic and moved into a tiny space next door to Bed-Vyne in June. The charred, slow-cooked chicken is the star: Hughes marinates pieces for up to three days, then slow-cooks them over charcoal for about an hour, producing some 750 pounds of chicken a week; an order (about $13) comes with rice and peas, plantains, a couple of lettuce leaves and a squirt of scotch bonnet jerk sauce. The expanded menu fills a Caribbean-brunch void in the neighborhood with items like jerk chicken and waffles (a hugely popular breakfast item), shrimp and grits, and ackee and saltfish served in aluminum containers, while escovitch fish — a pan-fried red snapper — appears only on weekends; hard dough, a sweetish white bread baked downstairs each morning, accompanies most brunch plates. Seating is almost entirely outside at benches and picnic tables, and Hughes keeps grilling outdoors “as long as it’s over 40 degrees”; current hours are Tuesday–Wednesday 11 a.m.–7 p.m., Thursday–Sunday 11 a.m.–9 p.m., closed Monday." - Luke Fortney