20 Essential Black-Owned Restaurants You Should Know in Boston

A multicultural Parisian bistro brought to us by a husband-and-wife team born and raised in France? Cue the stampede of local Francophiles. Antoine and Anaïs Lambert cut their teeth at local spots like Petit Robert, Frenchie, and Colette Wine Bistro before opening their first restaurant last year in the former Hsin Hsin Cafe space. Classics like quiche and steak frites are absolutely represented, but get truly excited for dishes that feature Vietnamese and North African influences: banh mi, roast chicken with fried plantains, and lemon sole with harissa and Tunisian couscous. The space is open for breakfast, brunch, and dinner and is oh-so-close to obtaining its liquor license.

It’s finally possible to get your Jamaican fix all over town, as Flames now has four restaurants in Boston proper and two more in Brockton and Malden, plus Providence, Rhode Island if you’re headed out of town. The fast-casual mini-chain will cover all your cravings with roti, jerk chicken, curry goat, stewed oxtails, creole shrimp, and more. Hire them for your next catered event and you’ll instantly become everyone’s favorite host.

They had us at the “honey house wine.” Actually, they first had us at the decor, a delightful mix of Ethiopian art and ephemera. Grab your fellow injera enthusiasts and dig into a platter of Ethiopian dishes like lega tibs, misir wat (spiced red lentils), and doro wat (spiced chicken). As for the aforementioned honey wine: not only does it pair perfectly with the restaurant’s entrees, but you can also order it to go.

This is Somalian cooking at its most exciting. The beloved East Boston spot sources global spices and the finest halal meats to produce beautiful, potent dishes like lamb biryani, chapati wraps, and beef sambusa. Plus, the restaurant bottles and sells its housemade mango-habanero hot sauce, so you’ll never have to be without that extra zing.

Your quest for quality Trinidadian street snacks ends here. This hole-in-the-wall Blue Hill Avenue storefront pushes the real deal: Curried chickpeas, cabbage, and a meat filling of your choice (stewed oxtail, chicken, or goat) folded inside a pillowy housemade roti wrap.

Boston, meet the grass-fed burger of your dreams. Owner Tambo Barrow took a leap of faith some years back, wanting to bring a high-quality and approachable burger to his community. Today, the Bred Classic is a tower of flavor, a grass-fed patty topped with Applewood-smoked bacon, lettuce, tomato, onion, pickles, American cheese, and a smear of house aioli, all served on a buttery brioche bun. Other options like the Maui and the Parisian mix it up with toppings like pineapple and a fried egg while sandwiches like the jerk chicken BLT give a nod to Barrow’s Trinidadian and Bajan roots. If you’re feeling a little overindulgent, give thanks to healthier fare like smoothies, salads, and even a side of asparagus.

Your search for the best fried chicken in town is officially over. Owner Tony Brooks looks to his family recipes to conjure up some of the finest soul food in town from this tiny storefront. Expect cornmeal-crusted fried catfish, barbecue pork ribs, and sweet potato pie, accompanied by classic sides like mac ’n cheese and collard greens. But it’s the fried bird that really seals the deal here—the meat is endlessly juicy, the skin is crispy and beautifully seasoned, and the recipe is strictly protected. It’s little wonder that Brooks goes through hundreds of pounds of poultry every single week.

Nia Grace’s soul food restaurant and jazz venue is a cornerstone of the South End community and about as vibrant as it gets, dishing up an all-day menu of fried catfish club sandwiches, chicken and waffles, Creole jambalaya, and St. Louis spare ribs. The Sunday brunch buffet is legendary (where else can you get scrambled eggs and BBQ ribs), as are the brunch cocktails. Grace also helped found Boston’s Black Restaurant Month, now happening every August.

Any Boston restaurant in continual operation since 1925 deserves a visit, and Fort Hill has earned its current chops by serving impeccable Dominican fare in a lively atmosphere. Think ceviche, empanadas, fried chicken wings tossed in jerk habanero, and whole fried snapper doused with red coconut curry sauce. The mojitos alone demand a return (if nothing else, to sample all nine flavors), as does the DJed brunch on Saturdays and Sundays.

This is the story of a catering business that grew into a food truck that exploded into a full-fledged restaurant—all because chef Ernie Campbell’s cooking is just that delicious. Choose your jerk or curry entree, add two sides (the plantains and the dill slaw top the list), and be happy that Campbell operates a second pop-up spot in Allston.

In the market for authentic Ethiopian cuisine? Settle in for layered vegetarian comforts like dinich wot (potato stew) or soulful meat courses like yebeg tibs fir fir, all of which folds perfectly into spongy, tangy pockets of injera, an Ethiopian flatbread. Do not skip over the peanut tea, a singular sensory experience.

Chef and owner Douglass Williams draws on Italian influences and places a premium on seasonal ingredients to churn out impeccable fare like Sicilian mussels, gnocchi cacio e pepe, smoked short rib lasagna, and citrus almond cake. His menu rotates regularly, but the wine list remains committed to both Northern Italian and French bottles (although kicking off your meal with a white Negroni certainly wouldn’t hurt). Wiliams has recently opened a second location in Newton, as well as a New Haven-style pizza spot inside The Hub on Causeway called APIZZA, so we’ll be reaping the rewards of his talents for many years to come.

M&M BBQ is living history. The eatery was originally founded by Marion and Maurice Hill as a famed food truck called M&M Ribs back in 1982. Their grandson Geo Lambert took the reins more than a decade ago, and has since given those famous fall-off-the-bone pork ribs an even bigger platform with the team’s very first brick-and-mortar outpost. Housed inside Dorchester Brewing, M&M BBQ also serves brisket and pulled pork sandwiches along with barbecue chicken and bar snacks like grilled corn and loaded fries.

This cozy corner cafe in Dorchester is one of just a few Black-owned vegan restaurants across the country, and it has all the healthy made-to-order drinks and dishes of your dreams. From juice shots to African couscous bowls to a vegan mac ‘n cheese pie, the entire menu reflects the passions of owners Jahriffe Mackenzie and Nahdra Ra Kiros. As you wait for your meal, bask in the atmospheric warmth from the aromatic pull of stewed lentils to the bright wall art to the piped-in music.

The Pearl is the brainchild of co-owners Luther Pinckney, Teda DeRosa-Pinckney, Malik and Mika Winder, and Reggie Cummings, a group intent on presenting celebratory family seafood recipes to a convivial neighborhood crowd in a space free from any expected oyster bar pretension. Mission accomplished and exceeded—the setting is beautiful yet inviting, the service is as kind as any you’ll encounter, and the potent cocktails immediately get the conversational juices flowing. All of this is precursor to a lovely dining experience featuring chargrilled oysters, lump crab cakes, shrimp scampi, and a lobster roll served both hot and warm.

Whenever a Texas transplant starts lamenting Boston’s paltry barbecue scene, a helpful birdie flits down and whispers three magic words in their meat-seeking ear: “Pit Stop Barbecue.” For more than three decades, the Mattapan restaurant has doled out heaping platters of beef back, pork ribs, juicy grilled chicken, and slow-smoked brisket buttressed by craveworthy sides like candied yams, cornbread, collard greens, and mac n' cheese. Note: The spot is only open Thursday through Saturday, making this appointment dining in the purest, most urgent sense.

There’s no easier way for a Bostonian to revel in the Cape Verdean experience than with a night at Cesaria. The restaurant’s mission is three-fold: great food, great service, and great entertainment. Eat your way through traditional fare like katchupa (a stew of hominy, pork, beans, and kale), feijoada (bean stew), and cabritada (stewed goat with yucca, carrots, and potatoes), to the live musical stylings of a traditional morna band complete with clarinet, violin, guitar, and cavaquinho. The Sunday brunch is surely the best deal in town at $12 a person, although the $8.99 lunch buffet is another steal.

You know the signage: A huge 3D piano circling a globe, embodying the restaurant’s embrace of entertainment and community. Slade’s has been a gathering place for Boston’s Black community since 1935, hosting the likes of Muhammad Ali and Martin Luther King Jr.; Celtics luminary Bill Russell was even an owner in the 1960s. Today, co-owners Leo Papile and daughter Britney Kyle Papile carry the torch with classic soul food (including the restaurant’s famous fried wings and the oxtail special), sublime cocktails (go for the Malibu bucket), dancing, and regular live music and karaoke, which will hopefully return soon.

Chef and co-owner Cheryl Straughter has made a name for herself by dishing out three square meals of Southern-tinged comforts cooked up daily with copious amounts of love. It starts with her vast array of breakfast offerings, from sandwiches to omelets to chocolate chip pancakes. Come lunchtime, you’re hard-pressed to choose between footlong po’boys, specialty sandwiches, and loaded salads, but rest assured that dinner’s on lock thanks to succulent steam table offerings like beef brisket and fried catfish.

Chef and owner Cecelia Lizotte originally launched Suya Joint as a catering business, but her trained approach to Nigerian cuisine proved too popular to contain and the current Roxbury space came to the fore in 2016 after a brief stint in Roslindale. The restaurant’s name borrows from Lizotte’s namesake dish, a flame-grilled spiced skewered beef that routinely sells out. The Jollof rice entree is another favorite, as is the Saturday-only Ofada stew—a rich, spicy concoction made with palm oil, fermented locust beans, onions, and bell peppers.