Signature Dish: Tropix Pots Cuisine Bar & Grill

Tropix Pots Cuisine Bar & Grill wants to fill a need for Jamaican food in Frederick County.

Tropix Pots started as a catering business in Anne Arundel County, which set up shop at the local Frederick Food and Wine Festival.

Kamike Myers-Pinnock and Kevin Pinnock bought their building on Prospect Boulevard in 2023 and opened in December.

The secret to their flavorful, Jamaican dishes is in the pots they use, since the right pots need to be used for certain dishes, Myers-Pinnock said.

Since its opening, the restaurant has also added events like R&B Bingo Thursdays, karaoke nights on Tuesdays, and Saturday Night Lyme on the last Saturday of each month, when a DJ or band performs for the night.

Their menu doesn’t just provide traditional Jamaican staples but also modernized twists on Jamaican food. Some dishes are even a blend of Jamaican food with another type of cuisine, like jerk chicken nachos or tacos.

That’s what they did with what they consider their signature dish, Rasta Pasta. Rasta pasta is a more recent dish from Jamaica, its name a nod to Rastafarian.

“The colors are symbolic — the red, green and gold. Hence, we use a tri-color blend of different bell peppers — the red, the green and the yellow bell peppers — to give it that Rasta color,” Myers-Pinnock said.

At Tropix Pots, the pasta is topped with a customer’s choice of protein, like jerk chicken, oxtail, jerk salmon or shrimp. Some customers also order a side of coco bread with the pasta.