Esmie’s Caribbean Fusion brings bold flavours and rich heritage to Herbert’s Yard in Birmingham. We explore how their food honours tradition while creating something new — and why it matters in a city built on diversity.
Category
🗞
NewsTranscript
00:00There's no shortage of global clivers in Birmingham, but what makes Esme different is how closely the food is tied to home.
00:13It's not a trench icing, it's tradition. Caribbean food isn't just about the heat, it's about heart.
00:19And here at Herbert's Yard, they're blending heritage with hustle, offering dishes that transport you strikers and kits, even if the M42's just around the corner.
00:29Behind the menu is a story of resilience, roots and really good seasoning, and that story starts in the kitchen.
00:36Okay, so I would say one of our most popular dishes that we do is the dirty fries, which is just like a Caribbean twist to dirty fries.
00:44It's just, we deep fry the chips, we season them with our Cajun seasoning, then it's topped with jerk chicken, some barbecue gravy, spicy mayo that we homemade,
00:53crispy onions, chilies and coriander and then we just finish it off with a slice of plantain on top.
00:59Now it might just look like a box of loaded fries, but let's be clear, these are no ordinary chips.
01:05The base is crispy, skin on fries, piled high with jerk chicken, creamy sauces and that signature Caribbean kick.
01:12It's messy, it's indulgent and it absolutely lives up to its name.
01:18But behind the spice and sauce is a careful wiring of culture, a plightful of invention, yes, but also intention.
01:25Because Esme's aren't just feeding appetites, they're feeding memories.
01:29So we try to cater to everybody. So while our menu is Caribbean, for example, like our dirty fries, we make sure that we can, you know, incorporate things that obviously people here would like to eat as well.
01:42So we also do mac and cheese. That's also very popular. And then we do our dumpling burgers.
01:48So which is Caribbean, the burgers is their dumpling. We then cut it in half and stuff it with jerk chicken and we just call it a burger because that would appeal to most people as well.
01:56And yeah, it's good.
01:57Fusion doesn't mean forgetting where you're from. It means finding new ways to remember.
02:02Esme's isn't diluting a Caribbean culture to make it palatable. They're making space for it. They found a balance that doesn't pander, but still connects.
02:11That's no small feat in a city where new ideas often get boxed in by planning permissions and picky palettes.
02:18Yet here they are turning fried plantain into a bridge between cultures, one bite at a time.
02:25So I would say it's more the fusion. I think a lot of people in Birmingham mainly go for like Jamaican food.
02:31But I think with this business, we try to make sure it's a lot of different islands that we try to incorporate.
02:35So we do like Trinidadian food. We do food from Saint Kitts. We do food from like all the islands Barbados, stuff like that.
02:45So, yeah, we try to do a lot of different islands instead of just doing the one island.
02:48But yeah, we all like provide like our own type of flavor. So it's still very like individual rather than it being, you know, very similar. Yeah.