Tell us about you. What’s been the journey to where you are now?

When I came into this industry I had zero experience. I’d never worked in a kitchen, I’d never worked on the floor – I just had this idea of what I wanted as a customer. 

So initially I opened Three Little Birds. We opened seven years ago, and we had two branches – our current site here in Brixton and another spot in Clapham. But then COVID happened, and we decided to change. 

Being in lockdown for that amount of time was a real opportunity to get a real birds eye view of what we were doing. Before that I was there seven days a week. It didn’t allow me the distance to analyse what we wanted to do or how we might change. Lockdown gave me that space. If we’d come out of lockdown doing everything exactly as we were doing before and we hadn’t changed anything –  in all aspects of our lives, not just business – it would’ve been a serious missed opportunity. So basically we decided that it was time to shake things up a bit, and that’s how Wood + Water was born. 

Basically Three Little Birds was casual, but that’s what I could do back then. And now, I’m sorry, but we have the prettiest restaurant in Brixton! We relabelled it as Modern British because if I’m honest with you – what the hell does that mean? It kind of means you can do whatever you really want with it. But we said it was Modern British with a Jamaican soul because the spices and the influences are still really important to us. 

As a restaurant owner, is there a particular goal you’re striving for?

As a Jamaican coming to England, the way that Caribbean food – though more specifically Jamaican food – is portrayed in the U.K., is very much takeaway. It’s very much a whole heap of rice with a lot of meat on top presented in a styrofoam box. 

There’d of course been places like Turtle Bay and The Rum Kitchen kind of changing the landscape a bit. Bringing in more of a restaurant environment. And no disrespect to them, but to me they still portray the stereotypes that I see of Jamaica. People either think that Jamaica is like a ghetto of zinc houses and poverty or they think it’s a luxury resort. I didn’t grow up in either of those environments, and I wanted to have my say on Jamaican culture in how it was portrayed here through restaurants.

I say to everybody that in Jamaica we’re a land of extremes. We’re either cussing out the world or we’re amazing, warm, and smiley. We got no middle ground! So I wanted to be a player in the game with a space to communicate a little bit more of the spectrum. 

And we are more than just jerk chicken! I love jerk chicken just as much as the next person. But god, we’re so much more than that. 

And how come you chose to do all of this in Brixton?

The reason for Brixton is – I feel like, if I drop dead in central London, it’s like ‘yo, my girl, why you dropping dead in front of me?’ But if I drop dead in Brixton, somebody cares. And of course even in my short time of being here, just seven years, I do see how it’s changed. But I still feel like if I need something I know who to go to. And I like that, I like that comfort. 

I think that fact kind of makes a statement about Jamaica. This place has such a strong connection to Jamaica. And that makes an ideal place to make your stamp: you’ve seen a culture packaged in a particular way, but let me break that up for you and show you a different way.

As a Black woman in hospitality, I take my responsibility seriously. In Brixton, a lot of young Black people will never work for another Black person. For a lot of people, even their perception of how you run your business is off. People will ask me if I have an accountant. Why would I not have an accountant? They have this idea that you’re running something that’s just a hustle. You’re not bringing a certain level of professionalism. It’s not expected that you would. I find it necessary to say – we can do things properly, and this is how we can compete with the best of them. 

That’s important to me.