The Block That Smells Like Home

Ask anyone who grew up Caribbean in Chicago where home is and they will name a kitchen before they name a street.

These businesses are the community's informal town halls. They post the flyers. They sponsor the youth teams. They hold the news. They are where new arrivals find a job, a room to rent and someone who knows a guy.

Most of them run on family labor and thin margins. Very few have ever been written about. This Spotlight series will change that, one kitchen at a time — the owners, the recipes carried across an ocean, and the neighborhoods that grew around them.