When the next step in chef Rashida Holmes’s cooking career seemed uncertain in 2019, she jotted down everything she loved to eat and cook in a notebook. After spending decades working in kitchens across the U.S. and Los Angeles under seasoned chefs with distinct culinary visions — including Israeli Mexican, regional Italian, Asian fusion, classic French, hyper-seasonal Californian, and even Pennsylvania Dutch — Holmes was ready to strike out on her own. “I filled two notebooks and the only thing that I couldn’t go eat in LA were rotis and patties,” she says. “What are the odds that I could find the thing that LA doesn’t have that’s personal to me? Boom. Lightbulb moment. I came up with the name the same day.”

Fast forward five years and hundreds of pop-ups later, and Bridgetown Roti is opening its long-awaited restaurant on Saturday, July 20, at 850 North Vermont Avenue in East Hollywood.

Holmes’s path from ideation to execution might seem straightforward, but in reality, the timing of Bridgetown Roti’s swift rise was intertwined with the pandemic and its far-reaching complications. “I don’t know if Bridgetown Roti would’ve worked the same way if it didn’t happen when it did,” says Holmes. “There were just so many things that happened at the same time that gave us a lane that would not have been there otherwise.”

While the pop-up gained some traction in its earliest iterations, it wasn’t until COVID hit in March 2020 — shutting down restaurant dining rooms and shifting diners’ habits in its wake — that the Instagram cottage business slinging Caribbean patties caught fire. Angelenos’ hyper-energized support of Black-owned businesses following the murder of George Floyd in May 2020 further catapulted Bridgetown Roti into the spotlight. “George Floyd changed the perspective of people in this industry to not just sit on the sidelines but to lift these businesses of color up and give people a leg,” says Holmes. Glowing write-ups in local and national publications soon followed, along with prestigious awards (including Best New Restaurant nods from Eater and Eater LA), nominations from the James Beard Foundation, and financial and business support from local nonprofits, industry groups, and national brands.

With the swell of attention on Bridgetown Roti, Holmes recruited Joy Clarke-Holmes, her retired mother with a corporate background, to spearhead business strategy, finances, and “moral support,” and Malique Smith (formerly of Big Mozz) to undertake marketing and operations. “I went from cooking patties in my house to being this three-headed monster,” she says. The trio acquired a Downtown commercial kitchen space in August 2020. For the next three years, the chef made as many patties as she could sell while expanding the menu to include beloved family recipes like her mother’s chicken curry and aunt’s cod cakes, Caribbean culinary mashups, and, at last, the pop-up’s namesake rotis.

All the while, the three partners put their heads together at monthly, quarterly, and annual business meetings (“This is Mom’s influence,” says Holmes) to plot Bridgetown Roti’s future, including how to grow its brand and expand to a proper brick-and-mortar restaurant down the line. “The pop-up was always a means to this end, it never was the end-game,” says Holmes. “It was a brand builder to get us to this point. I never thought we’d have the kind of brand awareness that we have.”

“It’s a testament to how well we’ve positioned ourselves in this market,” says Smith, whose eye for design and shared passion for Caribbean cuisine informed Bridgetown Roti’s social media presence and digital storefront. “Creating food that you can’t just get around the corner, being the company that provides rotis and patties that you can’t get even in the Caribbean. It’s special. It’s through the lens of Rashida.”

It’s been nearly a year and a half since Holmes and her partners signed the lease on the 1,280-square-foot space directly across from Los Angeles City College. “We would have liked to have opened last year but it didn’t work out because of things out of our control,” says Holmes, including delayed construction permits and insurance-related clerical issues. The “roti shack,” which seats 15 or so diners, was designed by architect Nicole Cannon of NCA Studio featuring Caribbean colors, iconography, and textures, as well as artwork sourced from BLK MKT Vintage in Brooklyn.

“I just want to have people feel like they’re walking up to a roti shack in Barbados where I fell in love with roti,” says Holmes. “You get your roti, you sit down, you devour it in five seconds, and you just want to hang out and feel the Blackity Blackness of the space — really good music and good vibes.” Holmes’s wife, Shanika Honeycutt, is curating the restaurant’s playlist. “She does the playlists of our life,” Holmes says.

Bridgetown Roti specializes in a distinctly American, biographical take on Caribbean fare. “It’s West Indian street food through my American body,” Holmes says. “We didn’t grow up on those islands, so I can’t claim to be pulling stuff from Barbados to America. What I can claim to be is a Caribbean American, bringing Caribbean food to LA.”

Central to the menu is the paratha-style rotis made with a blend of all-purpose and locally milled Grist & Toll flours laminated with vegan butter. The boldly flavored parcels come neatly packed with crispy potatoes, turmeric-spiced cabbage slaw, and a choice of filling, including Mom’s chicken curry (Holmes’s childhood favorite), green curry shrimp (Holmes’s current favorite), and roasted red pepper goat that the chef learned to make by studying a thrifted Indian cookbook. “I was just reading about the different ways [Indian cooks] use red peppers with goat and I was like, ‘Well, if they can do it in India, then I can mix it with Caribbean-style goat curry,’” says Holmes. “A lot of my inspiration came from trying to connect the Southern Indian roots that have a lot of influence on the Caribbean.”

Holmes feels a tremendous sense of freedom to explore and experiment with the myriad cuisines represented throughout the Caribbean. “The Caribbean is full of these forced communities — the Africans were forced there, Southern Indians were forced there, the Chinese were forced there,” she says. “I feel very free to pull influences from any place that was touched by the British Empire because those colonies had such a huge impact on the food story of America.”

“It’s really our story, our bloodlines were there on those islands. We take it to another level,” says Smith. “My family’s from Trinidad. I was raised on roti, patties, doubles, and channa, and my grandmother instilled my identity and made sure that I always had a connection back to the islands, which I frequented as a kid.” Seasonal rotis, like ones filled with soft shell crab, fried fish, and lamb will periodically appear on the menu.

Playing alongside the roti lineup are patties inspired by the ones Holmes grew up eating when visiting family in Flatbush, Brooklyn, including the signature oxtail patty, one filled with green curry shrimp, and two vegan options: roasted garlic eggplant with scallions and curried mango with sweet potato. The selection of side dishes includes mac and cheese pie, Aunt Vie’s codfish cakes (a Holmes family staple), sweet-spiced plantains, pigeon peas and rice, jerk cucumber salad, and callaloo, greens stewed in a mixed-pepper coconut dashi. Under the menu’s Caribbean “Tings” section are doubles ladled with channa curry, honey jerk chicken wings, and coco bread sourced from Café Tropical in Silver Lake.

What sets Bridgetown Roti’s bold flavors apart from other Caribbean restaurants in town are the chef’s half-dozen proprietary curry powders and pastes found in nearly every dish. “A lot of times, curry you get in the Caribbean is made from the same kind of curry powders and I wanted to do that differently by making our own powders and pastes from scratch,” she says. Holmes formulated Bridgetown Roti’s blends by learning from cookbooks and reverse-engineering mass-produced curry powders to her tastes.

Bridgetown Roti will serve Caribbean beers and wine from Black-owned wineries once its alcohol license comes through at the end of this year. Until then, the restaurant’s drink options include homemade juices and teas, like coconut mint limeade, sorrel, and passion fruit guava tea. A trio of ginger beers from Inglewood-based Plush Ginger Beer will also be on hand, including ginger pineapple, hot apple, and spicy melon flavors.

Working alongside Holmes and Smith are 10 employees. Bridgetown Roti’s commitment to employee equity is informed by the decades Holmes spent working as a Black woman in predominantly white male-dominated kitchens. “The counter service model allows us to have the equity of tip share,” she says. Staffers start at the same hourly wage and receive pooled tips. Employees are trained to perform every job in the front and back of house to create more of an “all-for-one kind of atmosphere,” says Holmes. “I think it comes from my sports background. I want the kitchen to have a ‘next man up’ kind of mentality.” Paid time off is available after a year of employment and raises are based on longevity and performance rather than official titles. Traditional health benefits are currently unaffordable for the restaurant, however, Holmes and Smith will cover “things that help with self-care,” like gym memberships.

Looking toward the future, both Holmes and Smith are incredibly optimistic about the possibility of bringing Bridgetown Roti to more locations. “Maybe there is an airport we can exist in, a stadium, a cart,” says Smith. “There’s just so much potential we’ve realized in our food and our concept.”

For now, though, the two are focused on making their first restaurant a success. “LA has given us both a sense of home as people who moved around a lot,” says Holmes. “I’m just trying to bring a little more of what home means to me to the place that I have made my home.”

Bridgetown Roti is located at 850 N. Vermont Avenue, Los Angeles, CA 90029, and is open from 11 a.m. to 8 p.m. Wednesday through Monday.

Disclosure: Eater LA reporter Mona Holmes is related to Rashida Holmes.