Staying In Their Lane
Growth. Expansion. These words are usually associated with a business’ success. But if bigger is truly better, you would be hard-pressed to convince Caroline Sinclair, the COO of Kingston Tropical Bakery and sister-in-law of John and Joyce Levi, the shop’s founders, to agree. The bakery, located on 226th Street and White Plains Road, stays focused on its task at hand, making what many believe to be not only the best Jamaican beef patties in the Bronx but perhaps the best in the entire city. “One of my regular customers is a bus driver who lives in Brooklyn. He tells me he can get everything there, but he says our patties are the best.” My own informal taste-testing agrees with that assessment.
Dedicated to the notion that one must provide a product that is authentic, Kingston Tropical Bakery makes patties that use the finest ingredients, including lean beef, fresh thyme and fiery Scotch Bonnet peppers. The patty mixtures are all hand-mixed and stuffed with a special, hand-cranked turnover machine. “Other stores have nice dough, too,” Sinclair says, “but it is how we stuff our dough that makes our patty unique. This machine allows us to put more filling in our patties.”
Over the years, the menu has expanded to include chicken and vegetable patties as well as carrot cake, traditional Jamaican hard-dough bread and even fresh-squeezed carrot juice, but it is the beef patties, accompanied by pillowy, soft and sweet “coco” bread, that are the centerpiece of the bakery. It is also why wraparound queues form at busy times as everyone wants to bite into this flaky, savory island treat.
Kingston Tropical Bakery opened in 1970, under the elevated tracks of the 2 train, and has changed very little since. Like a field of dreams, founder John Levi recognized that “if he built it, they would come.” Having complete faith in the allure of his recipe, Levi and, for the past 37 years, Caroline Sinclair, have presided over the first patty shop in the Bronx. “We were here before everybody,” she tells me beaming with pride, as she names other patty shops that followed.
“We’re old-fashioned,” she responds to my query about not having an online presence. “We don’t want to do more than we are capable of and that would include shipping our product. We’ve never advertised, but the people come. So, our plan is working.”
And who can argue with that? Following a tried-and-true plan, treating customers with love and respect, and having a quality product that is both comforting and consistently delicious keeps customers lining up for their patties. As Sinclair says about the store and its products, “It’s working. We love what we do and aim to satisfy our customers. That is the reward!”
4000 White Plains Road Bronx, NY
