North Street Restaurant Serving Authentic Afro-Caribbean Cuisine
Andre Lynch has transformed the former Lulu's on North Street into a bright and sunny space to serve his Caribbean cuisine.
The new restaurant at 137 North St. is holding its grand opening on Friday and Saturday from 5 to 10 p.m.
Owner and chef André Lynch said the cuisine is straight from his mom's cooking.
Deborah Burchell, a well-known chef and instructor in New York, grew up in Trinidad and learned to cook when she was little. Lynch has taken her recipes and also made his own modifications to her cookbook.
"Thirteen of us grew up in a household eating home-cooked Trinidadian meals every single day in Crown Heights, Brooklyn, mostly, which is a very thick West Indian or Caribbean community," he said.
Once he left New York, he realized not many other places share the influence of his mom's cooking.
"Leaving New York, Brooklyn, really opened our eyes to how much Caribbean influence was not in other places."
Lynch's background is in education, not cooking. He holds a master's in educational leadership and has held equity leadership roles at in higher education and within the region.
But he was looking for something more fulfilling. He knew food was a top priority as he has always loved sharing meals with others and to see the joy on someone's face when they try something new.
"All the attacks on DEI, and I was like, this is not feeling as fulfilling or as safe as it once felt right. So how do I shift the gears but still keep the spirit of community like alive and food was that for me," he said. "Even when I was in higher ed, I always hosted gathering some for the community to come and eat my cuisine and have facilitated conversation about issues and challenges, but always resting and aiming towards joy."
Lynch had been using the kitchen in the former Lulu's Tiny Grocery at 137 North for more than a year when he started catering as Dre's Global Kitchen. His friend Austin Oliver, who owned Lulu's, decided to close and Lynch was able to takeover the space in September.
"I was already utilizing this kitchen as a catering kitchen for the catering business as my commissary. So we had a really good working relationship with that understanding of what I needed in a kitchen and what I needed to operate," Lynch said. "And yet he made the decision to kind of want to step away from that endeavor so he can focus more squarely on his other business. And I was happy to kind of step in."
Dre's Global Kitchen was supposed to open in November but there were some challenges with readying the space. Family from all over came to Pittsfield to help him redo the floors, paint the walls, and more.
"It's all just a real show of family and the things that we want to imbue within the community, within this space. So, yeah, it moves me quite a bit," he said. "Like, how much we did, what we had to do to make this happen. It's incredible."
He hopes that when people try his food, they have a great time making a connection -- whether it's a date night, a lunch with friends, or by themselves.
"That's the kind of experience I want people to have when they come in here," Lynch said. "It's not just the connecting with the food, but connecting with the other folks who are also connecting with the food."
He hopes restaurant becomes a community hub, a place for people to gather and to break down barriers.
"That's what it's really about for me. Like, how do you instill community? How do you practice community? So that's what I view this as, a practice of community, not just of talking about it," he said. "Not just us saying we have a great community here, or saying we want community. This is what it literally looks like to build and practice community."
Lynch also plans to have a food truck and hopes to be able to expand his cuisine to other locations in the county.
"We definitely imagine a location in South County right at some point, hopefully North County at some point, and then start to kind of spread our wings outside of this area proper," he said. "There's a very high demand for just different types of cultural cuisine within this area. So I think that we fit that niche perfectly."
Lynch said the food he and his family will serve is very important to them. Their mother's recipe book will on display and available for order if anyone wants make any of the items on Dre's menu.
"The food that we're offering is like food that is near and dear to our hearts. It's not just a business for us. This is something where we work on pouring our hearts into the cuisine in order to offer that to the community," Lynch said. "And every single recipe is a variation of my mother's recipes, recipes we grew up on that she got from her parents, and they got from their parents."
Some of his menu favorites are jerk chicken, braised oxtail, Trinidadian doubles (a curried chickpea dish), and fish and bake that will soon be made with shark, as it is traditionally.
He said he's very outdoorsy, which plays a lot into his meals and which most people might not know about him.
"I'm an avid outdoorsman and urban farmer, I raise meat rabbits and chickens and I ice fish quite a bit," he said. "Just love, love, love the outdoors. So that kind of plays into the cooking aspect. We try to source the very freshest of meats and ingredients. We actually venture about an hour and a half to two hours away to get real quality oxtail."
Lynch is looking to work with local farms and other businesses.
The restaurant will be open Fridays and Saturdays for lunch and dinner from 12:30 to 2:30 p.m. and 5 to 10 p.m. and Sundays from 5 to 10 p.m.
Tags: new business, grand opening, restaurants,
