FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. — Chef Suzanne Barr’s comfort food is an orange fruit with big black seeds that thrives in South Florida back yards.
Ackee is soft and savory and takes on the flavor of whatever it’s cooked with. The trees are abundant in Jamaica, where Barr’s parents were born, and she grew up with a flourishing tree at her family’s home in Plantation, Florida.
Her new book, “My Ackee Tree: A Chef’s Memoir of Finding Home in the Kitchen,” details the primacy of the family’s tree in her culinary journey. She cooked in kitchens in New York, Hawaii and France before owning two restaurants in Toronto, Saturday Dinette and True True Diner, and now returning to live in Plantation. The Broward city, she says is “the place where my love of food originated,” where her father still supplies her with ackees from the beloved branches of her childhood.
