Michael Nicholas grew up around the corner from the site of Aunts et Uncles, the Flatbush café he opened last year with his wife, Nicole, not far from where they live now. One of the couple’s mottoes, Nicole told me the other day, is “make it in”—as opposed to make it out, of the proverbial old neighborhood. In 2006, Michael started a clothing store, Brooklyn Sky, across the street. By the time he closed it, in 2014, he’d married Nicole, a native of Toronto who worked in the food industry, and together they began to envision a local restaurant.
When the couple met, Nicole was a pescatarian, and although Michael was an omnivore, he’s allergic to shellfish. “It was getting a little tricky for us to find a common ground,” he told me. Moreover, “a lot of our family members fell sick,” he said, “and a lot of that was due to diet.” Four years ago, they stopped eating animal products and began to devise lighter, healthier versions of the foods they’d grown up with, which leaned Caribbean—Michael’s parents are from St. Lucia, Nicole’s from Trinidad and St. Vincent. As they experimented with meat substitutes, grains, and vegetables, they posted their meals to Instagram, and so intrigued friends and relatives that, for a brief while, they took orders, operating a casual private-chef service called Fix Me a Plate.
With Aunts et Uncles, they’ve formalized the concept, building the rare business that fits seamlessly into a tight-knit community even as it helps usher it into a new era. If there’s a single menu item that best encapsulates this, it’s the Haitian-style patty. Against tradition, its beautifully folded, flaky crust contains no eggs or dairy—almond milk and vegetable shortening replace cow’s milk and butter—and its gently spicy filling is made with Beyond Beef. It’s produced daily by the family that runs Immaculee, a Haitian bakery two doors down that Michael has been patronizing for much of his life. “It was a challenge for them at first,” Michael recalled, “but it actually only took them, like, two or three tries before they nailed it.”
I was surprised to find, after a taste-test comparison, that I preferred the vegan patty to the beef equivalent. At dinner one night, the café’s theme somehow eluded my omnivorous companion, and when I mentioned that the burger he’d just finished was vegan—Beyond Beef layered with Follow Your Heart smoked Gouda and Sweet Earth bacon, plus caramelized onions, spicy mayo, barbecue sauce, and arugula, on a pretzel bun—he was so shocked that I thought he was pulling my leg. I might have been fooled myself by the breakfast sandwich, featuring Just Egg and Beyond Sausage.
Of course, there are arguments—dietary, environmental, aesthetic—to be made against these sorts of processed products. Anyone concerned with them has plenty else to choose from here. Hearts of palm (sustainably harvested) make for less convincing but still satisfying seafood substitutes: tossed with vegan mayo and fresh dill in a “lobster” roll, or sautéed, à la salt fish, with tomatoes, peppers, and onions and sandwiched in a bake, a traditional Caribbean fried dough. In dishes such as split-pea soup with plantain and dumplings, and All Green Everything—a bowl of crisply sautéed baby okra, asparagus, and Brussels sprouts, garnished with purslane and spinach-and-basil pesto—the vegetables speak for themselves.
Between them, the Nicholases are aunt and uncle to many. “On top of that, our aunts and uncles just played such great roles in our lives,” Nicole said. “We disappeared to their houses when we were fed up with our parents.” Inside the café, outfitted with stylish furniture in muted tropical shades, shelves display books and magazines, including the food journal Whetstone; “In Bibi’s Kitchen,” a collection of recipes by African grandmothers from the Somali-born chef Hawa Hassan; and Ralph Ellison’s “Juneteenth.” On racks hang chic sweatsuits, designed by Michael. “We are all birds of paradise,” one crewneck reads. “Free to roam but always come home.” (Dishes $4-$16.) ♦
