Miss Lily's: Caribbean Cool

Miss Lily’s, a laidback eatery on an unassuming corner of SoHo, claims to be New York City’s most authentic Jamaican experience. It's also an instant scene, given the folks behind it are experts in luring culture vultures: Binn and Genc Jakupi of 1Oak and The Box, Serge Becker of La Esquina and Café Select, and Paul Salmon of the Rockhouse Hotel in Jamaica. “We wanted to avoid the clichés of beach shacks or colonial mansions,” Becker says of the décor, which conjures up Caribbean idylls with its modern take on clapboard and Formica, as seen in these exclusive photographs for NOWNESS by Martyn Thompson. “Instead, we mined the look and feel of the humble patty bakeries and take-out restaurants of the more urban West Indian diaspora in Crown Heights and the Bronx,” explains Becker. From the kitchen, James Beard Award-winning chef Bradford Thompson delivers facsimiles of island fare such as jerk chicken, fried fish escovitch and curried goat, to be washed down with cocktails like the “Pressure Drop” (sake, lime juice and kaffir lime leaves) or the native beer of choice: Red Stripe. A soundtrack of Soca, Ska, Dancehall and Dub keeps diners feeling irie. The partners are planning an adjacent juice bar that will also offer a small selection of records, books and curios with a Caribbean theme. “Very curated, very limited,” explains Binn Jakupi. “We’re about West Indian and Caribbean culture. It’s an extension of this place.”