Jonkanoo Caribbean restaurant closes

The closure of Jonkanoo after just 18 months in Surry Hills has food pundits asking if Sydney has limited taste for Caribbean cuisine, or did the restaurant just pick a tough strip of Crown Street? Its owner-chef, Damion Brown, who cooked for a who's who of prima donnas on several Hollywood blockbusters before opening the restaurant, believes it was the strip.

"It's tough," he says. "Pork'd, which replaced Red Lantern, has closed, and so have a couple of Japanese restaurants and ice-cream shops." Brown pinpoints construction work and parking issues as major impediments to the area of Crown Street between Cleveland and Devonshire Streets. The Jamaican-born chef pulled the pin to stymie greater losses and hopes to eventually rebirth Jonkanoo in a Sydney beachside location. "Everyone says we should be by the beach. Really, it should work," he says. Mofongo, soused mackerel and Haitian griot pork are rarities in an otherwise well-catered city, he argues.