Meet the Woman Behind Blackpool's Only Caribbean Cafe

This story originally appeared on MUNCHIES UK on August 30.

Take a walk along Blackpool Promenade and you'll find cheap boozers, chain-smoking fortune tellers, and a shit-load of traditional fish and chip shops.

So the first thing I ask Sharon Taylor—a gregarious, 55-year-old chef from Ealing in West London, some 200 miles away—was why on earth she chose the seaside town as the place to open Frenchies, a cafe serving French and Caribbean food.

"I always liked Blackpool," she tells me, "but my husband didn't."

A change in personal circumstances three years ago saw Taylor move to the northern coastal resort with her four daughters. Back then, Frenchies was an uninspiring sandwich bar but when Taylor took over the lease in January, she decided to add a "Caribbean twist."

But bringing plantain to the Prom wasn't easy.

"I have to go to Manchester to get my spices, drinks, and beans," Taylor says, showing me containers of secret spice blends, the recipes for which she keeps guarded even from her children.

The menu at Frenchies spans homestyle favourites like curried lamb, jerk wings, and salt fish. While Caribbean food makes up the majority of orders, Taylor tells me she is keen to cater to all tastes so also offers Mediterranean dishes like coq au vin, ratatouille, and beef daube.

"No cutting corners," she says as she rolls out the pastry for today's dumplings. "So we don't have too much waste."

Any leftover food is given to single parents who live down the road from the cafe. Taylor's extends her caring nature inside the cafe too, stopping to chat with customers when she is finished in the kitchen. Many regulars, including Nathan who lives in the flat upstairs, call her "Mum" or "Auntie."

"It's important they know me and know about how the food is made," Taylor says. "I cook from the heart. There's no two-minute cooking in my kitchen. I'm old-school because I'm passionate about what I do."

Today, she has been in the cafe since 7 AM and probably won't leave until midnight. But this work ethic seems to be infectious. In the kitchen, I meet Joseph, originally from Bermuda, who is shadowing Taylor while holding down another hospitality job and running a motorcycle repair business.

"She helped me when I first got here, so now I'm helping her," he explains.

The prices at Frenchies are dirt-cheap by any other city's standards, but appropriate for the swathes of unemployed people who live in Blackpool. Taylor tells me that she found out just how bad things are in the town when she started doing deliveries, with many residents telling her that other takeaways wouldn't bring food to areas known for crime and drug abuse. She has also had a few bad experiences herself, arriving at houses where people didn't have the money to pay for their orders.

"But I just leave it for them," she says.

I soon realise that it's Blackpool's economic issues, rather than profit, that drives Taylor to keep working, insisting on high quality ingredients and healthy cooking for those who usually eat the opposite.

I watch as she prepares a ratatouille, coating the frying pan in olive oil before pouring most of it away, then sautéing the onions and peppers and adding a rich tomato sauce with courgettes, aubergines, and marrow. Her daughters may have returned to London, but Blackpool and Frenchies is where Taylor belongs.

"I'm not leaving Blackpool," she says. "It's my home now."

All photos by CJ Griffiths.