Home CultureBlack-Owned Freetown Road Project: Delicious Caribbean Food in Jersey City

Freetown Road Project: Delicious Caribbean Food in Jersey City

by Yiwei Gu
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West Indian food is, lightly put, delicious. Savory, sweet, and everything in-between, creating amazing flavors that melt in your mouth — rich spices and herbs in every dish combined with countless indigenous fruits and plants, creating some of the most beautiful blends of flavors to date. To try them, however, resorts or cruise ships are probably not your best bet. They are to be found in neighborhood bars and roadside eateries, where home-trained chefs fire up the pans and grilles and serve the wonderfully-seasoned dishes, home-cooking style. However, we’re lucky enough that here in Hudson County, we have restaurants aplenty to try this cuisine in. Enter — Freetown Road Project. We’re sharing a quick peek into this amazing restaurant located at 640 Newark Avenue in Jersey City, started by renowned Chopped winner Claude Lewis.

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How Freetown Road Project Came to Be

Freetown Road Project, a budding West Indian restaurant, was started by Claude Lewis, the son of Antiguan immigrants and a Jersey City native. Claude is, in fact, a veteran of the Jersey City food scene — he worked as the executive chef at Porta, where he built its beloved pizza program, and has been running a West Indian catering business since 2015, also called “Freetown Road Project’.” Catering, as he saw it, was a good starting point to “test the water” and practice “making things in large scale,” before spreading his wings to strive for an even higher mission — “to bring a modern and focused  representation of West Indian cuisine.”

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Things sped up after he won an episode of Food Network’s culinary competition Chopped in early 2019, in which he ingeniously made gefilte fish into a West Indian-style stew. With the attention he got from the show, Claude decided it was time to build a brand for West Indian food, first through events with Jersey City’s Midnight Market, then the Freetown Road Project restaurant. The idea? Nothing fancy. West Indian food just the way it is made at home — flavorful and delicious.

 

What’s on the Menu

“The menu essentially [consists of] the food I enjoyed when I was growing up,” Claude told The Hoboken Girl back in 2020. His mom was an excellent home cook and his childhood experience — eating mom’s food and growing up in a loving home — shaped his philosophy for West Indian food. “For guests who are looking for something different from pizza and pasta, I want them to feel welcomed and at home.”

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The food is simple, honest home cooking, but the techniques and seasonings are well-thought-out. There is the oxtail stew — undoubtedly the most popular item on the menu — consists of meaty oxtail, boldly seasoned and slow-cooked until it is melt-in-your-mouth tender. There’s also the lightly-fried fish cake, made with salted fish (typically cod), a staple in the West Indies — it’s thin, crisp, and savory in flavor. For an even more casual fair, order a flaky beef patty, or get an extremely flavorful eggplant and okra vegetable curry paired with roti (thin flatbread) to sop up the sauce.

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But it takes more than good food to showcase the glory of West Indian food. “One thing I had to think about is description,” Claude said. Many fruits and plants, though common in the islands, are unfamiliar to local eaters, and he is eager to evangelize the wide use and health benefits of these ingredients. “Take the example of soursop,” he said, a prickly green fruit with a creamy texture and citrusy taste that’s not commonly seen in American supermarkets. “If I tell my guests not only the name, but also where it is from, how it is used, or what the benefits are, they will be a lot more interested, and they will enjoy the food even more! So the food experience can be educational.”

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Another twist to tradition at Freetown Road is “presentation,” as Claude calls it. The menu is still evolving and his ambition is to fuse the best of West Indian food with elements of French and Italian cooking, in which Claude is versatile. “For example, the oxtail can potentially be shredded and made into a bolognese-style stew, to be served with pasta.”

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Freetown Road Project also delivers food to the unhoused, and it also works with local churches and nonprofits to donate food to those in need. The restaurant has also cooked meals for Hoboken’s Police Department, Fire Department, and Volunteer Ambulance Corps.

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