Jamaican Pat brings first Gumbo-oriented restaurant to Cedar Rapids

CEDAR RAPIDS — When Patrick Rashed first tried gumbo at age 19 in New Orleans, something magical was unlocked within him.

Little did Dorothy Jones, the Creole grandmother who introduced him to it, know that her influence would go on to open an Iowa restaurant 36 years later.

Now, the Caribbean Kitchen owner known as Jamaican Pat wants everyone to have the same feeling he had. So on Oct. 7, he opened Fat Pat’s Gumbo YaYa — the first restaurant in Cedar Rapids to specialize in gumbo.

"It’s just magical,“ said Rashed, now 55. ”I’m trying to introduce something new to the city.“

With a fixed menu of gumbo classics like chicken and sausage, steak and seafood, Fat Pat’s honors the Afro-Caribbean and French Creole heritage of gumbo while adapting it to Jamaican Pat’s flavor profile — something Midwestern palates in the Corridor already are familiar with.

Jones didn’t stick to the typical gumbo recipes in Louisiana, and Rashed doesn’t, either. She shunned the “holy trinity” of gumbo — bell peppers, onions and celery — in favor of a tomato base heavy on the seafood broth.

Today, Rashed follows a similar adaptation with a heavy hand for seafood broth in certain recipes, as well as bell peppers and onions. The tomato base is subtle — a background player in the lively jazz band that plays on the taste buds with each bite of his gumbo.

Rashed’s style is a bit more pragmatic. Unlike traditional recipes, he shuns the Southern-favored okra, uses lump crab instead of shell-on crab, and substitutes andouille sausage with kielbasa in a marriage of Cajun and upper Midwestern flavor profiles that is neither spicy nor bland.

Starting with a roux base, Rashed stirs flour and butter in a Dutch oven until it takes on a chocolate brown color. Vegetables are stirred in before the thick roux is baptized with broth.

With butter coming through prominently at the top of each spoonful, a heavy scoop of moist, white rice on top of each bowl of gumbo offers even more texture.

“You have to know when to stop,” he said as he cooked on the restaurant’s first day — it can be easy to keep adding layers to the flavor profile.

Starting at $10, gumbo is “not just a soup,” he said — a mistake many restaurants make when they add it to their menu. Each pot requires knowledge of the history and culture to do it justice.

Slightly more expensive than the average soup, each pot takes about three hours to make. With each bite, the layers of the gumbo help Fat Pat’s Gumbo YaYa live up to it’s name — a party.

“There used to be a (New Orleans) festival with the YaYa name,” Rashed said. “And my food’s like a party in your mouth.”

Also on the menu are jambalaya and sides like dirty rice, Cajun garlic buttered corn, collard greens and a sweet corn bread with a silky, moist texture akin to cake. In addition to regular gumbo fixtures, Pat plans to have rotating specials like etouffee, shrimp Creole and po’boy sandwiches.

Soon, Fat Pat’s Gumbo YaYa will offer grab-and-go gumbo containers in a refrigerator for customers to enjoy at home. Eventually, Rashed hopes to serve the gumbo out of a food truck the way he does with his Caribbean Kitchen.

Several years ago, Rashed wanted to open the concept inside the planned Cedar Bayou water park, which never materialized. Fat Pat’s Gumbo Yaya is an idea he’s been tossing around for eight years. His gumbo recipe, which he previously served once in a while at Caribbean Kitchen, always sold out quickly.

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