Let’s eat! Like it hot? Flames Caribbean Kitchen is the place for you

When a new restaurant opens in town, spending money on advertising is critical. But for Nickesha Simpson, it was word of mouth that really allowed the Flames 

Caribbean Kitchen, near the Flour Mill, to flourish these past seven years.

In 2017, it was actor Danny Glover, filming a movie in Sudbury, who came on recommendation from a friend. He spent the week ordering oxtail, salt fish, goat and jerk chicken.  

Simpson said a lot of travellers from southern Ontario come for the food, too, citing it’s better than anything they can get in Toronto.

“It’s shocking to hear people say they were told to come here for the best Caribbean food. I grew up thinking Toronto was the mecca of international foods,” Simpson said.

Most recently, Montreal artist Naya Ali was featured at the Up Here Festival and raved about the food publicly.

While Simpson has always loved to cook her mother and grandmother’s recipes, she studied child psychology at the post-secondary level in Toronto. One weekend she came to Sudbury to visit a friend attending university here and was shocked to learn there was nowhere in the north for Islanders to eat Caribbean food.

“When I asked around, the response I got was that I was in a burger and poutine town,”  Simpson said.

And so two “Island babies” — Simpson with her Trinidadian ties and her husband, Ben Baptiste, with family in Grenada — did market research and then headed north on the 400.

The couple opted to buy a restaurant location where they could live and work. Now, she said it is sometimes hard to separate the business from her personal time.  

“In the future, we would like to live in a house further away from work, but right now it makes economic sense especially with what happened with the pandemic these last two years.”  

Simpson said customer favourites are the jerk chicken, roti, curried goat and oxtail that is cooked and stewed for about four hours.

The hot sauce is also selling like hotcakes. Simpson said 20-30 bottles are sold each week.  The secret is in the Scotch bonnet peppers.

“We only pre-spice the jerk chicken. Everything else is open to how much heat you want. Many people buy this hot sauce and use it as a marinade at home, which is surprising,” she said.

Simpson said she is happy to see Sudbury diversifying it’s culinary offerings in just seven years time. She said many locals are still coming in for the first time ever.

Flames Caribbean Kitchen 
661 Notre Dame Avenue 
Find them on Facebook
Hours of Operation (subject to change)
Monday to Friday 11 a.m. - 8 p.m.
Saturday 12-8 p.m. 
Sunday 12-7 p.m.

Anastasia Rioux is a writer in Greater Sudbury.