These 3 restaurants take guests to Jamaica, Puerto Rico and Venezuela

GREENACRES — You don’t have to fly hundreds of miles if you’re craving authentic Jamaican jerk chicken, crispy Puerto Rican mofongo or stuffed Venezuelan arepas. Drive to Greenacres instead. The city in the heart of Hispanic Palm Beach County is filled with eateries tucked away in shopping centers that will take your palette on a trip to the Caribbean and Latin America.

Many of the restaurants are family-run and owned by immigrants who brought their spices, recipes and flavors all the way to Palm Beach County.

Here are three, all with food you can’t find just anywhere and all run by people with stories to tell.

“A taste of it. . . “ is a Palm Beach Post series that aims to spotlight the province’s lesser-known culinary gems and the people behind the food. Tell us which region and restaurants you would like to see us write about!

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Reggae Jerk: ‘Jamaica is here’ in the hands of chef Robert Leslie

Address: 2178 Jog Road, Greenacres, FL 33415

Opening hours: Open daily from 10am to 8pm

Order the juicy and smoky Jerk Chicken from Reggae Jerk. And if you dare, enjoy curry goat.

Chef and owner Robert Leslie marinates the chicken for more than 24 hours in a container full of secret sauce and a blend of 12 spices and herbs before sizzling it on a flaming grill and drizzling it with Red Stripe beer. The juicy chicken has aromas of wood, nutmeg and thyme and is served on a bed of rice and cooked coleslaw. ($13.49)

The curry goat ($13.99) is slow-cooked in a yellow turmeric-based sauce. Goat meat resembles lamb and the dish is bursting with the aromas of ginger, chili peppers, turmeric and coriander. Diced pieces of goat meat with curry sauce, served with white rice and cooked coleslaw.

Leslie grew up in his family’s kitchen in Jamaica and moved to Palm Beach County at the age of 22, where he dreamed of becoming a chef.

He started washing dishes at a Caribbean diner. Seven months later, Leslie was the chef. After a year, a friend gave him a job interview at Mar-a-Lago.

Leslie cooked for former President Donald Trump and his guests for more than four years. In 2015, he opened Reggae Jerk, his vision for a place where people from different nationalities and walks of life would meet to slow down, unite and enjoy traditional Jamaican flavors.

“This is the Jerk Chicken that will make America great again,” Leslie said, laughing, waving and greeting customers with a big smile.

Leslie has also opened a second Reggae Jerk location on 45th Street in West Palm Beach.

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Isla del Coqui: Jeanette Carillo’s 20 years of Puerto Rican sazón

Address: 3092 Jog Road, Greenacres, FL 33467

Opening hours: Open from Tuesday to Saturday from 11 a.m. to 6:30 p.m

At La Isla del Coqui, get the Coqui Bowl ($15). It is a variation on mofongo, a Puerto Rican staple.

The stacked bowl is based on mashed green plantains, covered with a layer of rice and beans and crispy chicken or lechon – tender pork roast – topped with ‘coqui sauce’. The colorful meal combines yellow, sweet plantain puree with salty, fried chicken pieces and the spicy, pink sauce.

Also consider the El Viejo San Juan ($16), a sample platter of fried appetizers that includes stuffed potatoes, a beef empanada, bacalaito (cod fish fritters), alcapurria (fried fritters made from green plantains and taro) and a pastel, which is similar to a tamale.

When owner Jeanette Carillo moved to Greenacres in 1998, there weren’t many Boricua eateries around. So she took on the challenge of replicating her family recipes at home.

One night, after English class, she ate at El Coqui and promised her classmates that one day she would own it. In 2000 she opened a food truck. On the first day, Puerto Ricans lined up outside and around the block. Soon, other residents – Hispanic, white and black – became regulars.

In 2003, Carillo bought El Coqui and fulfilled her dream of owning a restaurant where she could serve dishes featuring Puerto Rico’s traditional “sazon.”

Carillo still cooks everything, now with the help of an assistant. She is usually in the kitchen or peeking at the door because when a regular customer comes in, she rushes to prepare their usual order.

“I’ve had the same taste for over 20 years,” Carillo said. ‘The best compliment is when someone says to me: ‘Your food tastes exactly like the island’, or ‘how my abuelita used to make it.’ ”

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Doña Arepa: Emiliana Herrera’s portable meals celebrate Venezuela

Address: 3090 S. Jog Road, Greenacres, FL 33467

Opening hours: Open from Tuesday to Sunday from 10am to 7pm

Order the bite-sized dish Doña Arepa Mix ($16.99) from Doña Arepa. It contains three arepas, three empanadas, three tequeños, or cheese sticks, and three cachapas, sweet corn disks.

To wash it down, drink papelon con limón, a Venezuelan drink made with raw sugar cane, water and lemon juice. It’s similar to lemonade, but thicker and served over ice, perfect for a hot day.

Co-owner Emiliana Herrera says their signature arepas can be filled with more than 20 fillings, including pork belly and cheese, fish and sweet plantain, and shredded beef with cheese and black beans.

Herrera and her two cousins ​​bought the restaurant last year. Born and raised in Venezuela, they wanted to start a family business rooted in the culture and flavors they were missing.

They wanted to create a new menu and bought boxes of their favorite sweets from Venezuela, such as Samba, Susy and Cocosette wafer cookies. They noticed that local residents were curious about their filled hand meals.

“It’s a little bit nostalgic,” Herrera said.

One of their main goals is also to bring people of other nationalities to Doña Arepa to give them a taste of their distant home. To meet customer demands, they launched the Doña Arepa Pantry, a food delivery service for family-sized frozen meals that taste homemade, and plan to open a second location next year.

“It’s our way of giving back to this country,” said Herrera, who lives in Boca Raton.

Valentina Palm covers Royal Palm Beach, Wellington, Greenacres, Palm Springs and other western communities in Palm Beach County for The Palm Beach Post. Email her at [email protected] and follow her on X, the platform formerly known as Twitter, at @ValenPalmB. Support local journalism: Subscribe today.

This article originally appeared on Palm Beach Post: A Taste of Greenacres: 3 Places to Enjoy Food from the Caribbean, Venezuela