Choose your fighter when it comes to Caribbean food in London — tender jerk pork, luscious mango chow, Trini doubles good enough to make grown men weep — and there’s every chance the best place to find it will be far away from a traditional restaurant environment. Patty shops tout flaking, five-bite miracles for £2 a throw; smouldering jerk pans send out sensory lassos from backyards and street corners. Anyone who has popped into Maureen’s Kitchen for a takeaway order of what might genuinely be the city’s best fried chicken will know that it is in the literal kitchen of a Brixton three-bed. As recently asserted by Carnival, island gastronomy tends to be portable, lavishly cling-filmed and not necessarily about lingering in a meticulously moodboarded dining room.
At Mauby in Brockley, however, they are charting a different course. Founded by married couple Daniel and Heleena Maynard, this newish spot occupies the sort of beguiling, design-forward space that isn’t typically associated with Caribbean-inspired cuisine. Warm, cayenne pepper tones and gauzy café curtains frame its mostly glazed frontage. Jungly houseplants loiter on raised counters. The lighting, aided by guttering candles and dipped bulbs, is the soft, flattering glow of a perpetual Bajan sunset. Mauby (named for the herbal, Caribbean tree bark drink) is not perfect. But it is unique, charming and, in its own minor key way, quietly game-changing.
