Quick Bites
- Singh’s Roti Shop & Bar — 131-18 Liberty Ave, Richmond Hill. Open since 1990. The buss-up-shut and curry duck are the moves.
- Trinciti Roti Shop & Restaurant — 133-26 Liberty Ave, South Ozone Park. Doubles done right, curry goat with the bone in.
- Trini Delite — Family-run South Richmond Hill kitchen. Pholourie, doubles, and aloo pies as a baseline; the curry shrimp roti is the upgrade.
- Sybil’s Bakery & Restaurant — Liberty Avenue institution for black cake, currants rolls, and bake-and-saltfish breakfasts.
- Sonny’s Roti Shop — Liberty Avenue at 118th. Some Guyanese-Chinese fusion alongside the standard Trini lineup.
Why Liberty Avenue Hits Different
If you’ve never made the trip to Richmond Hill, here’s what to know: the stretch of Liberty Avenue that runs through Richmond Hill and South Ozone Park, Queens, is the densest Trinidadian and Guyanese food corridor anywhere in North America. Locals call it Little Guyana, and the food map is shorter than the cultural one — most of the cooking pulls from both Trinidad and Tobago and Guyana, two Caribbean nations that share a colonial history, an Indo-Caribbean diaspora, and a deeply intertwined food culture built around curry, roti, and rice.
The result, on Liberty Avenue, is a food culture that doesn’t care about your trend cycle. Roti shops here have been doing the same thing since the late 1980s, and they’re still right.
Start With Doubles
Doubles are the gateway. Two soft, turmeric-yellow flatbreads called bara, sandwiching curried chickpeas (channa), with a dressing of tamarind, cucumber, mango chutney, and pepper sauce. They’re $2-$4 a piece almost everywhere on the avenue, eaten standing up, and they’re the single most important snack food in the Trinidadian-American canon.
Where to get them:
- Trinciti Roti Shop & Restaurant (133-26 Liberty Ave, South Ozone Park) — A consistent top pick. Order them “slight” or “plenty” pepper depending on your tolerance.
- Singh’s Roti Shop & Bar (131-18 Liberty Ave, Richmond Hill) — On the menu since the Singh family opened the shop in 1990, after immigrating from Trinidad and Tobago that same year.
- Trini Delite — A South Richmond Hill stalwart that takes doubles seriously and has the pholourie (lightly spiced split-pea fritters) to match.
Then Move to the Roti
Roti in Trinidad and Tobago isn’t one thing. The Liberty Avenue shops will offer you several styles, and learning the difference is the unlock:
- Buss-up-shut (paratha roti) — A foot-wide flatbread that’s clapped between two metal spatulas at the end of cooking until it tears into shreds resembling, as the name promises, a busted-up shirt. Singh’s has built a 30-year reputation on this preparation. You scoop the curry with the shreds.
- Dhalpuri — A roti stuffed with seasoned ground split peas. Soft, slightly nutty, often the wrap of choice for a curry-meat roti.
- Sada roti — A plain, puffed griddle bread, more breakfast-coded.
Pair any of them with curry chicken, curry goat, curry duck, oxtail, or curry shrimp. Curry duck is the connoisseur’s pick at Singh’s. Trinciti’s curry goat with the bone in is the order if you’ve only got one meal in you.
The Bakery Layer
Sybil’s Bakery & Restaurant on Liberty Avenue is the elder statesman for the bakery side of the cuisine. Black cake (a dense, dark, rum-and-stout-soaked fruitcake that shows up at every Caribbean wedding and Christmas table), currants rolls, sweetbread, pone, and Sybil’s bake-and-saltfish breakfast plate are the calling cards. If you’ve never had a proper Trini breakfast — fried bake (a soft yeasted flatbread) split open and stuffed with sautéed saltfish, peppers, and onions — this is the introduction.
Chinese-Caribbean Crossover
Sonny’s Roti Shop, on Liberty Avenue near 118th Street, is one of a handful of spots in the area that runs a Guyanese-Chinese fusion menu alongside the standard Trini-Guyanese lineup. Chow mein with curry, fried rice with channa — it sounds like an internet bit, it’s actually a real diaspora cuisine that goes back generations. Worth the side trip.
How to Order Like You Belong There
A few Liberty Avenue rules of the road:
- Pepper sauce is not a suggestion. The little plastic squeeze bottle of orange-red sauce on the counter is Scotch bonnet-based and is the point. Use it.
- Cash is faster. Most spots take cards now, but the line moves quicker if you have small bills.
- Doubles before noon are better. They’re made fresh in the morning and the bara softens as the day goes on. Saturday morning between 9 and 11 is peak.
- Bring a friend, order more than you think you need. Doubles are $2-$4. A roti will hold you for a meal. Pholourie, aloo pies (a fried potato-stuffed pastry), and saheena (a spinach-and-split-pea fritter) are made for grazing across the table.
Getting There
The A train to Lefferts Boulevard puts you a few blocks from the heart of the strip. The J train to 121st Street drops you into the Richmond Hill side. By car, take the Belt Parkway to Lefferts and head north. Most shops keep long hours — many open by 7-8 a.m. for the doubles breakfast crowd and run late afternoon or early evening. Always worth a call before a long trip out.
The Bigger Picture
Richmond Hill’s Indo-Caribbean food scene is one of the most underrated reasons to live in Queens, and it’s been shaped by immigration patterns that go back to the 1970s and 80s. The neighborhood’s Guyanese, Trinidadian, and Surinamese communities built this corridor as a working food culture — not a destination dining scene — and that’s still what it is. Show up hungry, eat with your hands, leave with a paper bag full of doubles for the train ride home. That’s the assignment.
