By Daniel Massey
The 400-foot wide Potaro River rumbles through Guyana’s Pakaraima Plateau before it drops 741 feet into a deep gorge, creating Kaieteur Falls, the world’s largest single drop waterfall.
In a restaurant/sports bar named after that world famous natural wonder, Dave Anderson, 43, and his two brothers have imported a little Guyanese flavor to Lefferts Boulevard in Richmond Hill.
What appears from the street to be a small sports bar, Kaieteur opens into a spacious sit-down restaurant, one of the few such Guyanese establishments in the area.
Though nearby Liberty Avenue is peppered with take-out shops offering Guyanese fare, a recent study released by Agenda 21, a Richmond Hill community development group, said the neighborhood suffered from a “lack of family-oriented sit-down restaurants.”
With Richmond Hill’s Indo-Caribbean population estimated by community leaders to top 50,000, Kaieteur, which opened in October of 1995, has grown into a favorite spot among locals in search of good food in a relaxed environment.
On Saturday nights, people line up along Lefferts Boulevard to gain entry to the restaurant, that features walls lined with paintings depicting Guyana’s natural beauty. The crowd includes many Guyanese who moved out of Richmond Hill, but return to the neighborhood for its food and culture, Anderson said.
The chef’s special Kaieteur fish, a whole snapper prepared in a mix of five Caribbean spices that feeds two to three people, is even known back in Guyana. Visitors to New York frequently include a trip to the Lefferts Boulevard restaurant on their travel agendas.
“It’s a famous stop for a lot of Caribbean people,” Anderson said. Recent diners included Guyana’s president, Bharrat Jagdeo, and West Indies cricket star Michael Anthony Holding.
Kaieteur is both restaurant and sports bar, but the dining area is set back from the bar so that fans watching cricket via satellite dish or aspiring vocalists taking their turn on the ever-popular karaoke machine do not disturb diners.
Guyanese cuisine is enriched by a variety of foods from the various ethnic groups that make up the country: East Indian, African, native, Chinese and Portuguese. Kaieteur’s menu features spicy rotis, including the popular lamb roti, a tasty pepper shrimp, and other dishes that have been adapted to Guyanese tastes, often by the addition of spices.
Three of the restaurant’s five chefs are from Guyana and they combine East Indian and Chinese influences to create Guyanese versions of lo mein and fried rice.
“They’re different than the dishes you get in Chinese restaurants,” said Anderson, who emigrated to the United States in 1980 and abandoned his career as a mechanical engineer to enter the restaurant business. “It’s the spice.”
Popular drinks at the bar include Caribbean beers, Guyanese rum and a non-alcoholic fruit punch.
Kaieteur’s owners also run a take-out shop on Liberty Avenue at 128th Street with the same name. The success of the two restaurants has led the Anderson brothers to consider expanding to Brooklyn or Manhattan.
In Guyana, the unusual conditions created by Kaieteur Falls support an environment that provides life to unique species. In a neighborhood lacking sit-down family restaurants, the falls’ Richmond Hill namesake gives Queens residents a rare dining experience.
Reach reporter Daniel Massey by e-mail at Timesledger@aol.com or call 229-0300, Ext. 156.
