3 siblings from South Orange opened the Freetown Cafe on a gentrifying block in downtown Newark
NEWARK -- Two years after scoring a gastronomic hit with their jerk joint-plus, Vital Eating, in restaurant-rich Montclair, Jamaican-American siblings Kwame, Kanika and Nataki Williams are expanding east into Newark, with a vegan-friendly cafe that neighbors say is one more sign of the city's downtown's gentrification.
"We're trying to bring the Caribbean experience to other people," said Kwame Williams, 34, who, like his sisters, was born in Florida of Jamaican immigrants and grew up in South Orange.
The Freetown Cafe on Halsey Street, at the corner of Bleeker, is the family's new establishment. While the new cafe offers a more limited selection than Vital, and caters largely to a lunch crowd, much of it take-out orders from downtown Newark's many academic, legal and financial workers, Freetown's menu borrows heavily from that of its older-sister establishment, where some of the cafe food is actually cooked or prepared.
The success of Vital Dining in Montclair led the Williams family to open the Freetown Cafe in Newark. While vegan friendly, Freetown, like Vital, is for meat eaters, as well.
The names of many of the menu items are Jamaican cultural or historical references: the Sunsplash, a drink of grapefruit, orange and mango juice ($3.50); the Maroon, with beet, grape and apple juice ($8); and the Get Up, Stand Up, one of several coffee flavors inspired by reggae icon Bob Marley ($1.75, $2.25, $2.75 for small, medium or large).
The Talkin' Blues is the cafe's "100% Jamaican Blue Mountain Coffee," according to the menu, referring to the bean prized by the Bond author and Jamaica resident Ian Flemming and other connoisseurs. "It carries a bouquet of floral aroma with balanced acidity and full body. Simply the quintessential cup."
The appetizers, or "Quick Bites," include one of the cafe's more typical dishes, Jamaican meat patties, made of flaky yellow pastry filled with curried ground beef ($2). Jerk Chicken Caesar is among the salads ($10), referring to Jamaica's classic seasoning consisting mainly of allspice and Scotch bonnet peppers.
There is a Jerk Portabella Pannini sandwich, with ciabatta bread, avocado, tomato and mixed greens ($8). And the smoothies include a Milkless Milkshake, made with raw almonds, dates and vanilla ($8).
The family restaurant business came to be in 2014, while Williams, who studied cooking at Manhattan's Institute of Culinary Education, was working as a chef at Minton's, a popular Harlem eatery. Nataki, now 39, was tiring of her work in corporate finance, and proposed that they open a restaurant together. Reluctant at first, her brother finally agreed, and after the two drafted Kanika, now 32, an events planner, into the enterprise, the trio opened Vital Eating on Montclair's main drag, Bloomfield Avenue.
"We don't really fight as much as people think," Kanika said with a laugh. "Kwame is very mild-mannered. Usually, when my sister and I gang up on him, he just caves."
Although it was the family's first venture in the high-risk restaurant business, and one in a town known for its plentiful and varied dining options, Vital Dining survived beyond its first year, largely on word of mouth.
But it was a rave review in The New York Times last March that made dining there not only vital, but essential for suburban foodies eager to eat and be seen.
"It is the most alluring Caribbean food I have eaten off-island," gushed Fran Schumer, the Times' metropolitan food critic. Of Williams, a veteran of the Ryland Inn in Whitehouse Station and the Highlawn Pavilion in West Orange, Schumer wrote, "he cares deeply about health and sustainable agriculture, and still manages to create rich, novel dishes that go far beyond the usual coconut-besotted, excessively salty, fried or jerk-saturated staples," of lesser Jamaican menus.
Aside from packing the restaurant, Williams said the review prompted advice that he expand or open new establishments, and offers from would-be investors.
To open Vital Dining, the Williams family took over the lease on its Bloomfield Avenue space from two brothers they had known at South Orange High School, Emeka and Arinze Onugha, who run the Health, Love & Soul Juice Bar & Grill in Maplewood. The Williamses set up a meeting with Emeka to pick his brain on where to open their next restaurant, held in a vacant storefront the brothers had been leasing on Halsey Street, but not using for anything.
Onugha's advice was to outfit a food truck that could travel to different cities or neighborhoods and, based on its popularity, determine where there was adequate demand for Jamaican food. Williams said he liked the idea, but as it turned out, he also liked the meeting place itself, and decided he dind't have to look any further for the new location.
"I jokingly said, 'This relationship is really working out. Before you know it, we're going to be calling you about the Newark location,'" Williams said.
And they did, making the lease on the Halsey Street space the second one the Williams family wound up assuming from the same two brothers they had known in high school. The food truck idea remains on the back burner.
From the sidewalk outside Freetown, passersby get a hint of the Jamaican flavor from the red, green and yellow signage. Inside, the cafe's pale blue walls, natural-finish wooden tables with novel built-in seating, reggae music at a low volume, and air conditioning made Freetown an oasis of cool tranquility one afternoon this week, when Newark was as muggy as Montego Bay.
The Freetown Cafe was welcomed by the owner of the Green Chicpea, a kosher restaurant that is part of a burgeoning restaurant row on Halsey Street.
That block of Halsey, between Bleeker and New Street, has two other newish eateries: Green Chicpea, a kosher sit-down establishment that opened three years ago; and the south Asian flavored Watta Burger.
Together with Freetown, they form a burgeoning restaurant row, with a ready clientele from nearby businesses and institutions that include the Prudential's new headquarters building that backs directly on Halsey Street, and the Rutgers Newark campus around the corner.
Three vacant storefronts on the block, which have the look of availability rather than abandonment, could bolster the block's fortunes or hinder them, depending on their occupancy.
Hundreds of families could soon be moving in right across Halsey Street, where work was progressing on the old Hahne's Department Store, which finally may be nearing occupancy after years of start-and-stop redevelopment of the site.
A Barnes & Noble store is slated to occupy the base of the Hahne's complex on the Halsey Street side, while a Whole Foods gourmet supermarket slated to move in around the corner would only add to the neighborhood's culinary cachet.
Green Chicpea's owner, Martin Weber, welcomed the Williamses to the block.
"My philosophy is, the more restaurants the better it is," said Weber, who also co-chairs the newly formed Halsey Avenue Merchants Association, a group now seeking its nonprofit 501(c)(3) status. "If you have 150,000 people working in downtown Newark now, nobody can handle that alone."
Steve Strunsky may be reached at sstrunsky@njadvancemedia.com. Follow him on Twitter @SteveStrunsky. Find NJ.com on Facebook.