At Hot Peppers restaurant in Pembroke Pines, a pretty and super-friendly Asian woman — full red lips, sleek black hair — brought me a plate of Caribbean food: stewed bone-in chicken, macaroni pie, and lentils. Then a motherly black lady — older, with warm brown eyes and an apron tied around her waist — offered me fried rice and lo mein."I'm mixed with Spanish, French, Caribbean tribes, Indian, a little Negro, or black — I don't know what they're calling it these days," said June Ali, the older woman. "We are so mixed." Her family didn't keep track of which grandparents came from where or who married whom beyond a generation or two.June; her husband, Badal (who identifies as Indian but grew up in Trinidad eating Chinese food); and their daughter Khadine (who technically is not Asian but Trinidadian) are a beautiful microcosm of the cultural mashup of Trinidad and Tobago. And their restaurant is a culinary reflection of it.Read the full
review of Hot Peppers in Pembroke Pines.
