More than delectable dishes: Water & Brood serves a pop-up space for chefs like Reggae Rita’s

Interview by Sharaf Aqeel - Photography by Jaer Vogelland

Taraq J. Hok-Ahin is an entrepreneur and the bright mind behind Water & Brood, an all-day breakfast/lunch spot and bar in Amsterdam. When they aren’t serving their signature delicacies like chicken and waffles, Taraq invites fellow Black food professionals to host their pop-ups at his location. Like Rita from Reggae Rita’s, who invites you to indulge in authentic Jamaican flavours.

We sat down with Taraq to talk about his passion. And we caught Rita from the pop-up at the time for a chat too.

Hi Taraq. Can you walk us through your background and tell us how Water & Brood was born?

Taraq: This has never been an easy question for me. My name is easy but what I am and where I come from isn’t. My first name is Arabic and my last name Chinese-Surinamese. My parents currently reside in Suriname, while my siblings and I grew up in Amsterdam as a unit.

We’re now sitting at what used to be my father’s bike shop and when the time came for him to retire, I told my brother that I was thinking about turning this joint into a restaurant. The thought process behind it was basically that if we were gonna do something, we had to be comfortable with it. Since none of us had experience working in a kitchen, we had to do it our way so there would be no limit to what we could do and how.

We make sure to hit a certain level of quality, and then a certain level of consistency. If we’re serving an Eggs Benedict, we make sure it's the best Benedict you’ve ever had. So basically the heart of it is good food and no bullshit.

How did you come up with the name Water & Brood?

Taraq: Well, it translates to ‘Water and Bread’. To my understanding, this is the foundation. If you strip me of everything I have and give me some water and bread, I’ll survive. The message we set out to deliver is that anybody who looks like us has to feel welcome when they step foot in here because this is not necessarily a given in Amsterdam. 

With most places out here, you can pretty much gauge if the space is for you or not. You wouldn’t necessarily sit somewhere and consciously go “I’m not welcome here,” but it's more a feeling you get that makes you act accordingly. It’s a phenomenon I feel you can’t explain to someone who hasn’t felt it themselves. With this space, I wanted to make sure it’s a place where we could turn water into wine and break bread with family. The level of comfort we demanded for ourselves, we want to extend to people that look like us.

“I wanted this to be a place where we could turn water into wine and break bread with family.”

What’s it like for you to maintain a safe space for Amsterdam’s Black community?

Taraq: This business isn’t easy, it's really rough. Where we come from, many of us work hard to build something with everything we got but once it’s gone, it’s hard to build it back up. Sometimes our people are also our hardest critics. I feel like the familiarity and comfort with your own people makes it easier for us to scold our own. Sort of like if you see your brother do something wrong, you’d hold him accountable. I relate to this because at the end of the day, I think my biggest struggle was meeting my own quality standards. We’ve established Water & Brood as a safe space, but how do we keep it safe and alive?

“I introduced the “Restau-rent” concept:
Offering our restaurant space to other food professionals, to test if their idea can be flipped into a brick-and-mortar restaurant.
If it works here, it can work anywhere in the city.” - Taraq

This is what I want for my people and I feel like it's a necessity to have a place where people get the opportunity to reach the goals they set for themselves.

How did Reggae Rita’s end up at Water & Brood?

Over the years, I’ve established a great relationship with Rita. We align when it comes to the level of respect we have for food and culture. What she’s whipping up is authentic Jamaican food, with Jamaican ingredients you wouldn’t find easily, and cooked by Jamaicans. After establishing herself at multiple food events around Europe, she’ll now be operating here for the next couple of months while I focus on myself and my family.

Hey Rita, nice to see you here too. Can you tell us the story behind Reggae Rita’s?

Rita: Well… I worked in the fashion industry for three years when I moved to the Netherlands but got fed up with it and decided to pursue my passion for food. I couldn’t find any proper Jamaican food in Amsterdam so I said why not do it myself? I just started cooking from home and had it delivered through Uber. Eventually around 2018, I decided to pursue it full-time.

What’s a hurdle you’ve faced in the restaurant business?

Rita: I think finding a physical space to run the restaurant was the biggest one. Especially as a black woman, I remember multiple occasions where I’ve gone to view places and they would tell me later on that the place was already rented out. Weeks later, I’d still see it listed for rent. Even banks wouldn’t take me seriously when I went to get my loan for the restaurant. Taraq has been of huge help because I don’t think I would’ve survived the pandemic if I’d had my own restaurant space back then. But thankfully times have changed!

As of September 15th, Reggae Rita’s officially opened its new location in the heart of Amsterdam. Serving you real yard food at Lange Leidsedwarstraat 108.