James Beard winner Andrew Black has flipped his former Black Walnut spot in Deep Deuce into Dougla Kitchen, a full-service Caribbean-Indo restaurant powered by family recipes and slow-simmered comfort. On the menu: smoky oxtails, tamarind-glazed goat and cassava dumplings, backed up by a rum-focused bar and a working sugarcane press that gives the cocktail list a distinctly island bent.
As reported by OKC Fox, Dougla Kitchen is Black’s latest venture and recently appeared in the outlet’s Flight By Fork series. In that segment, Black walked Living Oklahoma through the full cocktail program and described Dougla as a deeply personal love letter to his family and heritage.
From Grandmother’s Kitchen To The Dining Room
Black has said the menu grows directly from the dishes he learned beside his grandmother, Elysabeth Bandoo, and that he wants Dougla to balance recognizable island favorites with Indo-Caribbean spices and technique. 405 Magazine points to plates like smoked-octopus coconut ceviche, pimento and tamarind-glazed goat ribs, Jamaican beef patties and a bright, assertive curried goat, all designed to be passed around the table and shared.
A Rum-Forward Bar
The bar is a headliner in its own right. A sugarcane juicer sits right on the counter, and the bottles stacked along the back wall form what the restaurant promotes as one of Oklahoma’s deepest rum collections. According to Dougla Kitchen, the cocktails move between polished takes on classics, like a carefully built piña colada, and more playful, island-inspired options such as the bag-served “Suck Suck,” a nod to Caribbean street-drink traditions.
Why “Dougla”?
Black chose the name to put his mixed background and family history front and center. The restaurant’s site describes the concept as “a tribute to his grandmother” and explains that in parts of the Caribbean, the term “Dougla” has referred to people of mixed Indian and African ancestry. That dual heritage is the point of the project, not an afterthought, and the menu is structured to honor both sides of that lineage rather than smooth them into one.
From James Beard To Deep Deuce
Dougla Kitchen lands in Deep Deuce with serious national credentials already attached. Black was named Best Chef: Southwest at the 2023 James Beard Awards, per The James Beard Foundation. That win, paired with his other downtown projects, has given him the runway to open a more relaxed, narrative-driven spot that still operates with a chef’s exacting standards.
Since opening, Dougla has started to carve out a regular place on Oklahoma City’s food calendar. The team has teased Dougla Rum Week in August, monthly reggae brunches and rum-and-cigar dinners on the patio. 405 Magazine notes that Black intended Dougla to be the most “dressed down” of his restaurants, a place built for shared plates, signature drinks and the kind of food that keeps people coming back.
