What started as a conversation about Stephanie’s This is Doubles Instagram, turned into a conversation about ancestral memory in the kitchen, the stories that are told about Caribbean food, and how powerful a united Caribbean could be.

Stephanie Ramlogan, a Trinidadian writer based in New York City, explains why doubles is more than bara and channa: it is memory, migration, identity, and a fight over who gets to define a culture in public. She shares her thoughts on cooking being passed down through observation, sound, and smell versus just steps in a cookbook, and how the full lived experience cannot be documented in the copy of a book.

Stephanie also shares a bit of her personal journey, moving to NYC from Trinidad later in life and how living abroad reshaped her connection to her Trinidadian-ness.

Bio

Stephanie Ramlogan is a Trinidadian writer based in New York City whose work, in fiction, articles and essays, focuses on Caribbean culture, especially food.

Stephanie has won several prizes and recognitions for her short stories and novel manuscript, such as the Iowa Review Award and The Brooklyn Caribbean Literary Festival Elizabeth Nunez Writer's Prize. She also teaches expository and creative writing at the City University of New York.

Connect with Stephanie

Instagram https://www.instagram.com/stephanieramlogan

Email stephanieramlogan@gmail.com

This is Doubles on IG https://www.instagram.com/thisisdoubles

Article: Saving Doubles: A Plea for Preservation https://www.bestdressedplate.com/saving-doubles-a-plea-for-preservation

Episodes Referenced:

The Origin of Doubles with Vinay Harrichan

The Caribbean Cookbook with Rawlston Williams

Culinary Colonialism with Keja Valens

What is moreish? | more·​ish ˈmōrish | informal, of food, causing a desire for more

Join us on TikTok, Instagram and YouTube to continue the conversation.

Music from #Uppbeat (free for Creators!) https://uppbeat.io/t/andrey-rossi/jerk-sauce

Chef Picky on Trinidadian food, Caribbean identity, and building his food brand

Chef Osei “Picky” Blackett, has been called “the driving force behind Brooklyn’s modern Caribbean dining scene” and has been recognized for his work at Ariapita and Everything Oxtail.

In this episode, we start at the beginning of Osei’s journey: his introduction to food entrepreneurship as a child in Trinidad with family businesses and through his Uncle, moving to New York City at the insistence of his mother because he was getting into trouble, and falling into the culinary world by happenstance. Washing dishes at James Beard gave him an opportunity to learn, and he embraced all of it.

He explains why he thinks Caribbean food is having a moment, how his cooking evolved from making meals at home for his cousins to avoid the fast food rotation of McDonald’s, Domino’s, and a local Brooklyn Jamaican restaurant where he broadened his taste for oxtail, and how his disdain for math led him to a hospitality & tourism program.

Chef Picky’s goal is to educate and elevate, which he does through collaborations with other chefs, developing his condiment brand UMI, and his video series Hot Mouth. His success comes from persistence, networking, curiosity, and learning from others working in professional kitchens.

Bio: Chef Osei "Picky" Blackett, is a Trinidadian chef and food entrepreneur based in New York. His cooking is shaped by Trinidad's bold, layered food culture — where sweet, heat and acidity are balanced to build real depth of flavor.

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/chefpicky_

UMI Made: https://umimade.com/

Articles:

https://tastecooking.com/a-brooklyn-chef-considers-the-oxtail/

https://www.foodandwine.com/osei-blackett-8776836

https://www.jamesbeard.org/events/platform-collab-dinner-osei-picky-blackett-tavel-bristol-joseph

What is moreish? | more·​ish ˈmōrish | informal, of food, causing a desire for more

Join us on TikTok, Instagram and YouTube to continue the conversation.

Music from #Uppbeat (free for Creators!) https://uppbeat.io/t/andrey-rossi/jerk-sauce

In this episode, Hema and Vinay discuss how language and the words you may have grown up saying in a Caribbean household are actually living records of survival, migration, and cultural memory.

Vinay Harrichan, founder of The Cutlass Magazine, breaks down how Indo-Caribbean language, food, and identity were shaped by Indian indentureship, traces the line from indentureship to the Caribbean expressions, family words, & food terms that still show up in everyday language across Trinidad and the Caribbean today.

We discuss why words like bandhania, parathai, mohan bhog, and gulab jamun carry layered histories that don't always match the version that they came from. Vinay also shares a bit of his research process, talking to and verifying information by speaking directly with elders, and why preserving oral history matters now more than ever.

If you are interested in Caribbean history, Indo-Caribbean identity, and the stories behind the words you use every day, this conversation will help you understand where our language came from and why it still matters.

What you'll learn

• How language survived in the home, in Trinidad, through family life and became part of everyday vernacular, widely understood across communities
• Elders, often women, kept Hindustani and Bhojpuri alive in the home
• Indian indentureship and how it differs from chattel slavery in the Caribbean
• How food words preserve cultural history, can be used to trace the origins of foods and language, and how language is developed locally

About Vinay Harrichan

Vinay Harrichan is the founder and curator of The Cutlass Magazine. Founded in August of 2020, it is a social media platform dedicated to the Indo-Caribbean community and descendants of Indian indentureship. TCM covers topics such as history, religion, politics, music, dance, and linguistics in the name of cultural preservation. You may follow The Cutlass Magazine (@cutlassmagazine) on Substack, Instagram, Facebook, X/Twitter, Threads, and TikTok.

https://linktr.ee/cutlassmagazine

Past Episode with Vinay

Doubles: The Origin Story https://youtu.be/GR9LhaebibI?si=Gw6PEDAyn-JtqxpA

Resources

The Repair Campaign https://repaircampaign.org/reparations-today/cutlass-magazine-founder-vinay-harrichan-explores-the-legacies-of-indentureship/

Karen Dass https://www.youtube.com/@karendass

Dr. Visham Bhimull https://caribbeanhindustani.org/

Join us on TikTok, Instagram and YouTube.

Music from #Uppbeat (free for Creators!) https://uppbeat.io/t/andrey-rossi/jerk-sauce