From Trinidad and Tobago to H Street NE, Chef Peter Prime is sharing his native roots through the Caribbean-influenced cuisine at his restaurant, Cane.
"This is the food that I think developed my palate," Prime said. "This is where I learned flavor."
The curried beef is one of Prime's personal favorites on the menu.
"It's just slow-cooking, braising without adding liquid, so it's just rendered liquid," he said. "And it's very easy to burn if you're not giving it a lot of love."
Curried beef is also one of the options in the restaurant's paratha tiffin boxes.
"This is a nod to, you know, old-school, or what I thought old-school, Trinidadian lunch boxes," Prime said. "This is what your grandparents would pack for you to take to lunch."
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Cane's tiffin boxes include an assortment of curries such as chicken.
"All of our meats get seasoned with our green seasoning that has a lot of culantro, a lot of onions and garlic, as well as thyme," Prime said.
And as a base, there's garbanzos and potato curry.
A house-made flatbread called paratha is also served in the tiffin box.
"It's just an Indian roti," Prime said. "I really love the Trinidadian version. Most of the ones I see are crispy and sort of fried. This is just very soft, tender. It has all of the flaky layers of like a puff pastry, but it still pulls apart."
Prime opened Cane in 2019 with his sister Jeanine Prime. The siblings have plans to launch a second restaurant in the 14th Street corridor this year, which will also center on the culture of Trinidad.
"The whole thing is a great journey into the stuff I did as a child and the food that I love," Peter Prime said.
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