Oakland’s First and Only Haitian Restaurant Is a Knockout

Frantz Felix was tired of how the only time Americans ever seemed to talk about Haiti was in connection to some humanitarian disaster: a massive earthquake or mind-boggling act of government malfeasance. He wanted to show another side to his country of birth — the richness of its culture, the deliciousness of its foodways.

Last month, Felix opened T’chaka, Oakland’s first and only Haitian restaurant, in the former Miss Ollie’s location in Old Oakland. And it only took one bite into a single dish — the unspeakably succulent chunks of fried, citrus-marinated pork known as griot (aka griyo) — for me to fully embrace what appears to be the restaurant’s central thesis: that Haitian food is freaking amazing.

For Felix, the path toward opening one of the Bay Area’s most exciting new restaurants started when he was a seven-year-old learning how to cook in his mother’s kitchen in Haiti. For the first 10 years after he relocated to the Bay Area, Felix was the kind of enthusiastic home cook that friends and family were always encouraging to open a restaurant — until finally, in 2009, he started selling Haitian food on weekends on the local festival circuit. Eventually, he parlayed that business into a food truck called Caribbean Spices, and then in 2019, seven months before the COVID lockdown hit, he opened a restaurant in San Rafael by the same name.

T’chaka, on the other hand, is Felix’s most ambitious project yet. One of the reasons the new restaurant’s arrival is so heartening is because of its specific location: T’chaka’s predecessor at this corner spot at Swan’s Market was Miss Ollie’s, a beacon for Afro-Caribbean cooking until it closed last year. For more than 10 years, Miss Ollie’s was a destination restaurant for Caribbean folks from all over the Bay Area, including Felix, who says he always appreciated the love that the chef, Sarah Kirnon, showed for Haitian cuisine in particular.

“She’s like a pioneer to us,” he says, noting how few Caribbean restaurants existed locally when Miss Ollie’s first opened 11 years ago. “I take it as an honor to be in that location.”

There’s a kind of poetry to the city’s only Haitian restaurant taking up that mantle, but it’d all be for naught if the food didn’t actually hit. And hit it does, again and again. The aforementioned griot is essentially a flawless dish — deeply flavorful, juicy and tender with charred, crispy edges. I consider myself something of a pork connoisseur, and I’d easily put the dish at the very top of the top tier, especially once you factor in the A+ accompaniments. There were excellent rice and peas, sweet and savory plantains, the bright and tangy slaw known as pikliz and a punchy, mustard-hued house-made scotch bonnet hot sauce so delicious you’ll want to drizzle it on everything (and then buy a bottle to bring home).

Plainly stated, the dish is a knockout. It’s easy to see why it’s the national dish in Haiti — the first thing they’ll serve you after you get off the plane.

For first-timers to the cuisine, Felix explains that all of the Caribbean islands use more or less the same ingredients and spices, but what sets Haitian cooking apart is the marination of the meats and the particulars of the cooking process — which, in Felix’s view, yields a particularly succulent take on jerk chicken and a lighter, more toothsome version of rice and peas.

“I’m not going to say the other islands don’t cook well,” he says. “But for sure, Haitian food is one of the best foods in the world.”

I wouldn’t even consider wading into the dangerous waters of adjudicating whether Haitian jerk chicken is better than the Jamaican version, or measuring how Haitian curry goat stacks up to its Bajan or Trinidadian counterparts. Suffice it to say that even though the griot ranks up there with the best things I’ve eaten this year, it might not have even been my favorite dish at T’chaka. That honor goes to the braised oxtails, a dish I’ll order anytime I see it on a menu, and this was as good as it gets — meaty beyond expectation, with all of the soft, gelatinous bits cooked to such a state of jiggly lusciousness that sucking on the bones was pure pleasure.

There were also piping-hot fritters called akra, which imbued grated taro root with all the comforting qualities of a fast-food hash brown patty, but with no hint of grease. On the Sunday brunch menu, there was the Haitian version of saltfish and ackee, a fruit with the acidity of a tomato and the texture and appearance of scrambled eggs — delicious over plain white rice.

All that and I haven’t even yet had a chance to try some of the more uniquely Haitian dishes on the menu — the crispy fried goat served on the bone, or the weekend-only t’chaka, the restaurant’s namesake dish, a soup made with beans, corn and salted pork. Felix chose the name to honor his mother, who passed away earlier this year. “My mom taught me pretty much everything,” he says. T’chaka was her favorite dish.

As delicious as the food at T’chaka is, Felix says his ambitions go even deeper than that. Every week, he says, it seems like there’s another negative news story about Haiti, and he wants his restaurant’s sun-dappled patio to be an antidote to all of that — a chance for diners in Oakland to get a taste of Haiti’s beautiful culture and amazing history of anti-colonial resistance.

“I consider myself an ambassador for Haiti,” Felix says. “I want to prove to them that Haiti is one of the best countries in the world.”

T’chaka is open Wed. through Sat. for lunch and dinner (11 a.m.–3 p.m. and 5–9 p.m.) and Sun. for all-day brunch (11 a.m.–6 p.m.). It’s located at Swan’s Market, 901 Washington St. in Oakland.