Black business owners bring flavours of Africa, Caribbean to Northern Canada

Inside an eye-catching building with bright green siding and yellow trim in downtown Whitehorse, diners are being whisked away to Jamaica.

At Pickapeppa Restaurant, named after a popular Jamaican sauce, patrons can enjoy Caribbean dishes such as jerk chicken, oxtail and fried plantains, among the brightly coloured walls decorated with beach scenes.

Owner and chef Andrea Reti, who is from Jamaica but has lived in Canada since the 1980s, opened the restaurant in 2009.

"I've always wanted to start a Caribbean restaurant here," she said. "I thought I'd bring a little bit of Jamaica to the North."

Reti said she enjoys sharing her heritage with others, describing Jamaican food as tasty, spicy and flavourful with lots of seasonings.

"All the dishes that I make are dishes that I grew up with," she said.

It may be thousands of kilometres away, but the tastes and smells of the Caribbean and Africa are alive and well in Canada's North.

It's a busy Wednesday lunch hour at Zehabesha, a popular Ethiopian restaurant in Yellowknife, owned by couple Eline Baye and Dinku Tadesse since 2014.

It's a gathering place for locals and tourists alike to meet over curried goat, red lentils and injera — a traditional sour, spongy flatbread — among other dishes.

Zehabesha has earned several certificates of excellence from TripAdvisor, and rave reviews on the travel information website.

Not far away is Safari Foods Family Restaurant, offering a blend of Indian and Ugandan fare including a staple plantain called matooke, butter chicken, samosas and chapati, a type of flatbread.

Sureya Luyombo opened the restaurant last year, taking over the space that formerly housed her friend's East African establishment, Savannah's Family Restaurant, after they moved to Edmonton.

"We kind of got used to, 'OK, we have a restaurant where we can go and eat food, like home food,'" she said.

Luyombo, who is originally from Uganda, said her mother is half Indian and many people with Indian backgrounds live in Africa. She said the dishes she serves reflect the cuisine she ate back home.